<p>BBMom, you may find what you need here:</p>
<p><a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/programs/projections/tables.asp[/url]”>http://nces.ed.gov/programs/projections/tables.asp</a></p>
<p>If you like the pdf version for printing, here it is:</p>
<p><a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2005/2005074.pdf[/url]”>http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2005/2005074.pdf</a></p>
<p>Thanks, xiggi…exactly what I was looking for.</p>
<p>xiggi:</p>
<p>Cornell accepted 6,927 applicants, so wouldn’t that be the minimum number of Ivy apps…</p>
<p>I refuse to feel bad for high school seniors who “only” got admitted to one Ivy. Please.</p>
<p>We need to stop instilling into our children the crazy and completely unfounded idea that they need to go to one of the top 20 or 50 schools for their undergrad to get a leg up. That’s ridiculous. You can get an excellent education at almost every university, excluding a few at the bottom of the barrel. Yes, you may have to show initiative in seeking opportunities that are virtually handed to you at the Ivies, but to me, that makes the student learn initiative and responsibility. And there are almost no jobs that will fall into your lap just because you got an Ivy League education. In just about every instance where the name of your school would matter, you need a grad degree, and it’s the name of the grad institution that matters, not the undergrad.</p>
<p>Encourage your children to find good fits, not search for names. Students from lesser-known universities earn Fulbrights, Marshalls, Rhodes, and NSF grants. That alone should indicate the education that can be had anywhere.</p>
<p>“xiggi: Cornell accepted 6,927 applicants, so wouldn’t that be the minimum number of Ivy apps…”</p>
<p>You are, of course, absolutely correct. The number of discrete applications could never be lowered than the 6,927 accepted students at Cornell. </p>
<p>My mistake!</p>
<p>Xiggi, thanks for the links in post #21.</p>
<p>I think the numbers speak for themselves, but anecdotally I haven’t noticed much of a change for this year’s results vs. last year’s - either on CC or my daughter’s high school. Actually, my daughter’s high school seems to have had the best year ever in terms of overall admissions, but I am seeing only the admissions & not waitlists and rejections. (The GC sends an email announcing who has gotten in where – the waitlist/rejection info only comes by word of mouth). </p>
<p>In any case, every year on these boards we see students who are getting into their top choices, includng those with multiple Ivy admits – and those who are disappointed, including some with inexplicable rejections from what should have been “match” schools. I think the clear winner in that category is still Andison from 2005 – there is no rational explanation for the devastating results he had last year, especially given his admissions to top schools like MIT & generous merit awards from schools like Brandeis this year. In other words, if there was anything “wrong” with him last year to account for those results, then you wouldn’t accept such a drastic turnaround in result this year. </p>
<p>The problem is that we don’t know how much of the overall numbers really show students casting a wider net, than a real change in results. My son was admitted to 8 of 9 schools 5 years ago; my daughter to 9 of 12 this year. Mathematically, my son fared better in terms of percentages… but overall my daughter has more fat envelopes in her collection. I’m not posting this to focus so much on their individual results, but on the trend – that is, the typical 2006 student is collecting more rejections, more waitlists, AND more acceptances than students in past years. </p>
<p>I do think this whole process is crazy and gets crazier every year. I do think that the stress & frustration level is at an all time high. And we have to keep in mind that every rejection letter hurts – so when a kid applies to 16 colleges and receives 7 rejection letters, it can be hard for that kid to feel all that great about the majority of colleges that sent admission letters.</p>
<p>Also, is it just me, or are the financial aid awards much skimpier these days? I see grant money going up, but it hasn’t kept pace with the tuition increases, so the bottom line – what we pay – looks a lot bigger this time around.</p>
<p>It looks the same around here as always - the athletes got into Stanford, maybe one to Harvard and Princeton (both athletes), and the rest (including the vals) rejected. But we did, for the first time anyone can remember, have a non-athlete get into Yale (SCEA) though he still hasn’t decided whether he is going (still thinking about Swat and Chic.)</p>
<p>I can’t say that anyone cares a heck of a lot - if they’re not Dogs or Cougs or Greeners (or, occasionally BYUs), we’re not likely to see 'em ever again anyway. Western Washington has been getting increasingly difficult.</p>
<p>It is good to remember that the number of non-discrete applications have NO bearing on the statistics for each individual school. In this regard, we cannot overlook the 35% jump in applications at Cornell nor the fact that Penn now shows an admit rate of below 18%. Swarthmore’s increase of 19% in applications and free fall in admission rates to 18% is nothing less than mind-boggling. </p>
<p>Qualifying the process as irrational or arbitrary or acknowledging that more and more people decide to roll the dice won’t change much to the overall conclusion that the admission to the Ivy League -and highly selective schools- has never been more competitive nor more selective than today. </p>
<p>The individual statistics for each school also offer a not so subtle reminder that one increases his or her chances of success by compiling a realistic list of target schools and not blindly or obnoxiously defying the odds by ignoring solid and highly likely safeties and probable matches.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure about that. Swarthmore’s acceptance rate in 1970 was 22.8% and that was after the height of the baby boomer glut. I’d want to see data from the 1960’s to know for sure.</p>
<p>One thing that is certain…there was much more self-selection back then. Swarthmore’s yield in 1970 was 57%.</p>
<p>I remember posting something about the correlation of tuition and applicants at Harvard. I think they had about 13,000 applicants in 1991. The admit rate must have higher than today. </p>
<p>Yes, here it is: </p>
<p>Year Tuition</p>
<p>1984 $8,752
1985 $9,500
1986 10,266
1987 11,040
1988 11,645
1989 12,310
1990 13,085
1991 13,960 => 13,029 applicants
1992 14,860
1993 15,870
1994 16,856
1995 17,851 => 18,190 applicants
1996 18,838
1997 19,770
1998 20,600
1999 21,342
2000 22,054
2001 22,694 => 19,605 applicants
2002 23,457 => 20,987 applicants
2003 24,630
2004 26,066 => 22,717 applicants</p>
<p>Quote: “With a cross-Ivy yield of maybe 85%, there are 27,000 discrete admits”.</p>
<p>Mini, could you explain what you mean? We see from xiggi’s first post that the total ivy admit number for this year is 23,215, so I don’t get what you’re saying.</p>
<p>I thought (but I might have had it wrong) that this was the number of entering students. Still, the Ivy admit rate would be 40-50%.</p>
<p>Xiggi - it was I who noted the relationship between raising tuition (not just Harvard) and increasing the number of applications. In fact, schools that were quite mediocre 25-30 years ago (Georgetown, George Washington, NYU immediately jump to mind), did just that, and acquired significantly more “panache” as a result. University of Richmond is now trying the same strategy. And as tuition increases continue to well outstrip inflation, the number of applications (at the top 150 or so institutions) will continue to rise.</p>
<p>Good ol’ Thorsten Veblen at work. ;)</p>
<p>Well I guess then my case isn’t so random, looking at this girl that got accepted at Yale but rejected at others.</p>
<p>what kind of impact will this have on waitlists one tier down from Ivies --any at all?</p>
<p>Reading all these numbers is fascinating. I hope that kids can focus on whether they were admitted to a school that they would like to go to, rather than where and how many they were rejected from.</p>
<p>But the admit rates really leave me wondering about some of this stuff. My son was admitted to Brown, Chicago, BU, Tufts, Brandeis, waitlisted at Columbia, and rejected from Yale and Penn. His guidance counselor also was puzzled about Brown and Columbia versus Penn.</p>
<p>Plenty of academic stars have been admitted in the last 3 yrs. to either Harvard or Yale EA, while also being admitted to Princeton or Penn or Columbia or MIT (or all of them) in the RD round. I know some of those students rather well. They are hardly “a subset of inferior applicants.” In fact they are quite the opposite. They often apply somewhere Early not because they’re “inferior,” but because they would so love to reduce their application efforts. (Some don’t reduce them, as we’ve seen, but multiply them.) But many seriously narrow their efforts after one acceptance. Others, who are applying for FA, find that even one Early acceptance can provide some negotiating room or at least comparison room with an RD result.</p>
<p>There is also the mistaken notion that hooks are the province of the “lesser qualified.” Not necessarily. Plenty of achievers with hooks apply EA or ED.</p>
<p>But that’s o.k.: Whatever “belief system” works for you.</p>
<p>Epiphany: the poster you are responding to was specifically talking about students applying ED, (as OPPOSED TO EA at Harvard or Yale) as being “inferior applicants” (btw, this is not my point of view).</p>
<p>"Some counselors say they are less surprised by the decisions at elite schools than at colleges a notch or two below the top.</p>
<p>“Schools where good, solid kids were a sure admit a few years ago, now are places where they find themselves wait-listed or denied,” says Amy Belstra, post-graduate counselor at Cherry Creek High School in suburban Denver." </p>
<p>So true…grr still can’t believe i got rejected from USC and NYU…sorry just had to vent once again because when I read that I felt that it applied to me</p>
<p>That’s right Donemom, i was merely poking fun at the stereotypical “rankist” (a mythical creature, not a real person) who has Harvard and Yale at the top of his wishlist but applies ED to…say… Cornell, because he knows it is his best (and only) chance of an IVY acceptance. Which reminds me, Cornell is really skewing the numbers. They account for 30% of total Ivy acceptances. If your friend boasts of being accepted to an Ivy league school, most likely it was Cornell. </p>
<p>And going back to my original question. I just find it interesting to see how concentrated the acceptances are. Penn, for example accepted 3600 students. I think they represent about 1800 high schools. So you find many high schools with several kids accepted to Penn, and many more that get shut out completely. Likewise, I wonder how many total students are receiving those 23 thousand acceptance letters. We have heard of many students getting accepted to multiple Ivy league schools. As much as we like to view it as many students chasing a few spots, it seems to me at the top level there are also many schools chasing a few students.</p>