<p>from Comparative Guide to American Colleges, Cass and Birnbaum, 1964
and US News Best Colleges 2006</p>
<p>This is over a 42 year span. The year 1964 was before the baby boomers reached college age. If a top 100 university is not listed it is because they did not report the acceptance rate in 1964. In 1964, many public universities had simple cutoffs for admission based on class rank, average grade (e.g. ‘B’ average, ‘C’ average. Some publics had cutoffs for eligibility and then accepted a proportion of eligible students. There were much higher standards for out-of-state students.</p>
<p>I hope to post the same thing for LACs when I have a chance, and post some information about changes in SAT scores (but I have to recenter the 1964 SATs first).</p>
<p>Pretty interesting, I think.</p>
<p>university, acceptance rate 1964, acceptance rate 2006, change</p>
<p>Washington University in St Louis 75 22 -53
The University of Texas at Austin 90 51 -39
University of Southern California 66 27 -39
Georgetown University 60 22 -38
Columbia University in the City of New York 50 13 -37
University of Delaware 82 45 -37
University of Notre Dame 64 30 -34
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 48 16 -32
George Washington University 65 38 -27
University of Miami 69 42 -27
University of Pittsburgh-Main Campus 75 49 -26
Yale University 35 10 -25
Tulane University of Louisiana 69 45 -24
Lehigh University 61 38 -23
University of Maryland-College Park 75 52 -23
Carnegie Mellon University 60 42 -18
Harvard University 29 11 -18
Marquette University 85 67 -18
Southern Methodist University 82 64 -18
California Institute of Technology 30 13 -17
Ohio State University-Main Campus 93 76 -17
Princeton University 30 13 -17
Stanford University 30 13 -17
Clemson University 85 69 -16
Cornell University 45 29 -16
Dartmouth College 34 19 -15
Emory University 54 39 -15
New York University 50 35 -15
American University 67 53 -14
Brigham Young University 90 76 -14
Brown University 30 17 -13
Johns Hopkins University 42 30 -12
University of Virginia-Main Campus 51 39 -12
Vanderbilt University 50 38 -12
Syracuse University 69 59 -10
University of Chicago 50 40 -10
Duke University 32 24 -8
Purdue University-Main Campus 88 80 -8
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 76 68 -8
University of Pennsylvania 28 21 -7
University of Connecticut 56 50 -6
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 67 62 -5
Case Western Reserve University 75 71 -4
SUNY at Binghamton 48 44 -4
University of Rochester 50 48 -2
Boston College 33 32 -1
Boston University 55 55 0
Yeshiva University 0
Auburn University Main Campus 82 84 2
Saint Louis University-Main Campus 75 80 5
Baylor University 67 73 6
Rice University 16 22 6
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 62 71 9
University of Iowa 70 83 13
Brandeis University 25 40 15
University of Denver 71 87 16
Stevens Institute of Technology 30 49 19
Iowa State University 70 90 20
Clark University 40 62 22
Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus 34 58 24
University of Washington-Seattle Campus 44 68 24
University of Missouri-Columbia 62 89 27
Rutgers University-New Brunswick/Piscataway 27 61 34
Worcester Polytechnic Institute 28 75 47</p>