In my last post, I took a look at trends in admissions–finding, most notably, that admission rates at the most competitive schools are continuing to trend downward in the single digits. This post will give three year results for all of the Ivy League universities, below, as well as results on other universities that were popular with my clients this year. (This data changes from early in the year until late spring; I update as I get new numbers but not necessarily immediately.) Some schools are holding steady, others are seeing decreasing rates of admissions, while a few saw a slight increase in admits.
I also made some suggestions in the last post about looking outside the usual suspects, i.e, the 12 or so big names that always come up when constructing a college list, something I have been discussing for years. I will repost and link the relevant posts in the coming days and weeks.
In addition to broadening your college search and making a longer target list, the supplementary work that you do in applying to college this year will be even more important for the selective schools. Essays are always the center of this effort, which is why I spend so much time addressing them in by blog posts, and essay development and editing is central to my business and my work with applicants. My first recommendation on essays is to get started now.
It’s true that most new prompts will not be up until July or later, but this is a good time to find a small notebook and carry it around so you can jot down ideas when they come to you–I am serious about this; you will need a bit of focus for your thoughts, so have a look at my post on this year’s Common Application Prompts, then get that notebook, carry it with you, and take the time to scribble an idea down when it comes to you. You will find that good ideas can fade and be lost as quickly as you forget your dreams–if you don’t write them down. A notebook is best for this because it is really good only for making notes, and so tends to work better for this task than does that most distracting platform called a smart phone.
Check the admissions trends below; but for a comparison, before you do check our trends in the U. S., here is the most recent data from the University of Edinburgh:
University of Edinburgh
2012-2013 Total Number of Applications: 47,076; 18,155 offers; 5,457 accepted; Offer rate 38.6%. The offer rate does vary by “programme”.
Note that a single applicant can make multiple applications to the university, to different programs, so the acceptance rate is a bit exaggerated–but still . . . compare this to the Ivy League three-year returns, below:
Three Year Admissions Results, Ivy League (these numbers represent the total percent of applicants who were offered admission)
Brown–2011: 8.70%; 2012: 9.60%; 2013: 9.16%
Columbia– 2011: 6.93%; 2012: 7.42%; 2013: 6.89%
Cornell–2011: 17.95; 2012: 16.2%; 2013: 15.15%
Dartmouth–2011: 10.14%; 2012: 9.79; 2013: 10.05
Harvard– 2011: 6.17%; 2012: 5.92%; 2013: 5.79%
Princeton–2011: 8.39%; 2012: 7.86%; 2013: 7.29%
U Penn–2011: 12.26%; 2012: 12.32; 2013:10.05
Yale–2011: 7.35%; 2012: 6.81%; 2013: 6.72%
Three Year Results, Other Universities
Cal Tech–2011: 12.99; 2012: 11.76; 2013: 10.55%
M. I. T. –2011: 10.07%; 2012: 8.9%; 2013: 10.2% (pending final number)
Georgetown–2011: 16.8%; 2012: 16.5%; 2013: 16.6%
Northwestern– 2011: 18.03%; 2012: 15.27%; 2013: 13.90%
Stanford–2011: 7.10%; 2012: 6.61%; 2013: 5.69%
U. C. Berkeley–2011: 25.54%; 2012: 21.13%; 2013: 20.83%
U. C. L. A.–2011: 25.28%; 2012: 21.27%; 2013: 21.10
University of Chicago–2011: 16.29%; 2012: 13.24%; 2013: 8.81%
As I said in the last post, apply to the university of your dreams, even if your stats make an admit unlikely, but then look around for more fallback and sure thing choices. And start thinking of yourself as an internationalist as well. There are many fine anglophone schools, abroad, and not just in Canada. The University of Edinburgh, for example . . .
