Curtis WestbayA Few Trends of American College Admission in the Past 40 Years
More money in academia = more parity in academic quality
- Tuition has risen eight times faster than wages since 1989
- More and more people are attending college
- College athletic revenue
Conclusion: there is more money at more colleges than ever before.
More money means greater purchasing power for a lot of assets. In combination with this money, there are more college graduates vying for teaching positions at American colleges. With tenure-track positions often receiving dozens (or even hundreds!) of applications, there are bountiful educational opportunities at more than just elite American universities. Students who seize these opportunities can do great things, even at schools that you may have never heard of.
I remember my astonishment when my alma mater, a small liberal arts college in Missouri, produced its first Rhodes Scholar in 2009. Though many students aspire to attend the most prestigious (and therefore most selective) institutions, that doesn't mean that there isn't academic excellence at a wide range of schools.
More applications per student = lower overall acceptance rates
- Since the 1980's, the number of applications per student have risen several times over
- Yield protection is a crucial consideration for colleges.
- Colleges are concerned with college rank because applicants are.
Conclusion: it's harder than ever to gain admission to highly selective American universities, and the selectivity of these institutions increases year after year as a result of the trends described above.
More applications in total = more challenges for college admission personnel
- College application readers have to work at a faster pace to keep up with the increased volume.
- Grade inflation makes it difficult to predict future college success.
- The college prep industry and plagiarism in consulting decreases the reliability of other components of the college application.
Conclusion: it's more difficult than ever for college application readers to make decisions, and the decisions they make have become increasingly arbitrary.
I've said it before— there are no shortcuts to a great college admission outcome. Especially with applicants from China, if there is any suspicion that a student looks better on paper than they will in person, a college application reader may not even give a student a second look. To really stand out, students must be authentically passionate, must have excellent English proficiency, and must earn their acceptances by means of verifiable, measurable achievements. Next post, I will discuss why the bar is so high for students applying for international colleges from China.