The Falling Acceptance Rates for the Class of 2023 at Top US Colleges
Including a Comprehensive Report on Acceptance Rates at Selective Colleges for the Class of 2023
With a high school senior and junior in our family, I keep a close eye on college acceptance rates.
As acceptance rates drop, anxiety levels for families go up. Great academics alone are not enough to gain admission to the selective colleges. Our kids are expected to show up with “demonstrated passions” that can change the world or they have to show up with demonstrated athletic ability to be recruited onto college sports teams.
Either way, the college admissions experts tell me that the unhealthy cycle drives families to make the most rational decision under the circumstances. Given that admission to top colleges has become a crapshoot for many students, families hedge their bets by having their students apply to many more colleges than they otherwise should have.
Experts recommend that students apply to 8 to 10 schools at most. But with panic setting in among so many families, students apply to as many as 15 to 20 schools! Despite the common application, students end up writing a total of between 60 to 80 supplemental essays in support of their applications! This is really too much stress!
Inflating the denominator ends up lowering the acceptance rates since colleges have a fixed number of spots, regardless of how many applications they receive.
For the class of 2023, 15 colleges reported single digit acceptance rates. As Top Tier Admissions, a college admissions consultancy put it:
“These numbers are almost unbelievable. Vanderbilt for example, once thought of as second tier, has gone from a 40% acceptance rate in 2005 to a 6% acceptance rate in 2019, almost as tough to get into as Yale!”
At New York University the acceptance rate almost halved over a 4 year period. It fell from 31% for the class of 2019 to 16% for the class of 2023. NYU received 84,000 applications, and accepted 12,307 students for the class of 2023, of which about 6,500 enrolled.
For fencers trying to distance themselves from this college admissions madness, the 46 colleges with NCAA fencing teams are a beacon of hope. FP is in the process of updating the Handbook of Colleges with NCAA Fencing Teams, and will release it to our mailing list later this month.
Meanwhile, we share with you a comprehensive report on acceptance rates for the class of 2023 compiled by Top Tier Admissions, covering the top 51 highly selective universities plus the top 20 selective liberal arts colleges in the US.
See the Comprehensive Report on Acceptance Rates for the Class of 2023 HERE
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