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Comment by svarlamov | Hacker News Reader

Why are university admissions so much more competitive now than they were just a decade ago?

"In 2010, USC's acceptance rate was 26.3%. By 2015, the acceptance rate had dropped to 18%. In 2020, USC's acceptance rate was 16%. For the Class of 2027, USC's acceptance rate further decreased to 9.75%."

https://www.crimsoneducation.org/us/blog/usc-admission-rate/....

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Why more competitive? Basic math. Kids apply to more schools. Why do they apply to more schools? Because the schools have gotten more competitive.

The correlary to that is that the "yield" goes down for all but the very most competitive colleges, so colleges have to build longer waitlists to ensure a full class. And more uncertainty for everybody.

That's nonlinear. Because if schools get more competitive also fewer kids get into more than one.

You stopped short: why did they get more competitive? Because demand is outstripping the supply of desirable schools. Second tier schools need to improve their offering, and burnish their prestige, which takes time.

I don't think there's a satisfactory monolithic reason for this.

Maybe it's questions all the way down until, why do the common people need to get good jobs/hobnob with the upper classes? Because central banking policy of inflation?

The application process to many universities has been dramatically streamlined. It is in a students best interest to cast the widest net of applications for suitable schools— so naturally rates go down as the volume of applications per student is going up. It has also long been an open secret that universities are encouraging as many applicants as they can in order to reduce their acceptance rates to boost their prestige and rankings.

We need the actual data on university acceptance criteria itself (i.e. mandatory SAT score minimums) to truly assess the competitiveness of these schools over time. Raw % acceptance has become a diluted metric

Foreign online applications.

“ Recent trends in college admissions include increased numbers of applications, increased interest by students in foreign countries in applying to American universities,[10] more students applying by an early method,[8] applications submitted by Internet-based methods ”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_admissions_in_the_Un...

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