College Acceptance Trends for Class of 2024
As most families have certainly learned by now, applying to college isn’t what it used to be.
Why the massive increase in college applications?
As we summarized in our newsletter this time last year, there are several factors still at play contributing to the rise in college applications which is causing the unpredictability in college admissions. From 95% of schools now being “test optional”, to highly selective schools practicing “yield protection” , to an increase in the sheer volume of applicants including spikes in under represented minorities and first generation students now applying to college, we have a perfect storm.
This Forbes article summarized the Common App’s reported data: total application volume from the 2019-20 cycle to the most recent 2023-24 cycle is up a whopping 65%, and the number of applicants themselves has also increased, up 41% from pre-Covid times, including a 12% increase in the number of applicants between last year and this.
Why are so many applicants getting deferred?
Early application due dates are in early November with decisions getting released as early as December. To manage the influx of applications during this brief window, many colleges use deferrals, leaving many applicants who applied early action and early decision waiting till the regular round for a final decision in March. It’s a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle: higher application volume leads colleges to defer more applicants from the early rounds to the regular decision round (and, ultimately, reject more students). The uncertainty that these deferrals (and rejections) cause leads students to apply to more colleges in the regular decision rounds. And the cycle continues. The bottom line is this: MORE APPLICATIONS = MORE DEFERRALS AND FEWER ACCEPTANCES FOR STUDENTS.
What is the application trend at private universities?
Schools like Northeastern, NYU, Boston University, and the University of Miami continue to see a skyrocketing number of applicants exceeding 100,000 each year. Spots on main campuses are limited so it’s become common to offer students spots on their main campuses only after they do a semester or year abroad or on a different US campus.
Northeastern - 98,373 applicants applied for 3,345 spots across Northeastern’s global campuses. 2024 acceptance rate not yet disclosed (2023 acceptance rate: 5.64%). That is a 53% increase in applications over the past five years.
University of Southern California (USC) - 82,000 students applied, and USC accepted 9.2% of applicants overall (a drop from its 9.9% acceptance rate in 2023).
New York University (NYU) - 118,000 students applied, and NYU admitted 8% overall, and only 5% to certain of its schools.
Is the application trend the same at small liberal arts colleges (LACs)?
The short answer is yes. Despite adding more supplemental essays, even the small LACs are receiving a record number of applicants.
Bowdoin: 13,200 applicants, an increase of 30% over the last five years
Barnard received 11, 832 applicants, accepting 7% and with an increase of 20% of applications since 2020
Amherst received 13,700 applications, up 1000 over last year, and admitting 9% of applicants overall.
What about at public state flagship universities?
Public universities continue to become more selective for both in-state and out-of-state applicants.
The University of Virginia continues to be incredibly selective for out-of-state students. This year it received a total of 58,995 applications and accepted only 12% of out-of-state students and 25.5% of in-state students.
The University of Texas-Austin had a record-breaking 73,000 applicants in the fall of 2023. 75% of the student body is admitted from the top 6% of high school students in Texas, and UT-Austin accepted just 11% of applicants from the remaining 25% of applicants.
The University of Washington-Seattle received 69,080 applications in 2023-2024 and expects to make offers to only 7000 of those students, 66% of whom will be in-state students.
Some schools have become unexpectedly selective
Who would have thought that the University of Tennessee would be deferring and denying so many high stats kids? Last year its acceptance rate plummeted to 33% for out-of-state students, less than half of what it was the year before. Other schools, like Clemson and the University of South Carolina, are deferring high percentages of out-of-state students as their application numbers soar. This year I have seen multiple high stats students offered a place at Penn State only if they would begin in the summer– an option that used to be offered just to students with much lower numbers— or will accept a 2+2 program, spending the first two years on a satellite campus.
All that said, take heart: we saw many Class of 2023 wait lists turn into acceptances, and I predict a similar trend for the Class of 2024. If you are facing a wait list, follow our best advice for getting off that list and into the college of your choice.
A reversal in the test-optional trend
This winter, Dartmouth announced it would require test scores for the Class of 2025– that’s this year’s current juniors. This was the first Ivy League school to return to requiring test scores since the pandemic pause (Georgetown, MIT, Purdue, and the public schools in Florida, Tennessee, and Georgia returned quickly to requiring testing or never stopped requiring it in the first place). Yale then followed with the announcement of a test flexible (but required) policy that allows students to choose among submitting SAT, ACT, AP scores, and/or IB scores, followed by Brown and UT Austin.
In April ‘24, both Cal Tech and Harvard also revoked their test optional policies, effective immediately. This leaves only Columbia, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell as Ivy League colleges not requiring test scores for college admissions. The next news may come from the University of North Carolina, which is currently considering a plan to return to requiring test scores for certain students.
