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<p>I doubt that very much. The rationale for that argument is mostly increasing SAT scores, but that fails to account for the recentering of scores and a bit of SAT inflation with more intensive test prep and multiple test dates becoming more common.</p>
<p>Swarthmore publishes a chart of their historic SAT scores, including both pre-recenter and post-recenter of the 1995 scores for comparison purposes. Overall, the SAT scores are largely unchanged from 1970.</p>
<p>The falling acceptance rates don’t necessarily imply better students enrolling. It could just be that the same students are beating out larger numbers of students who wouldn’t have been accepted last year or last decade either. Same wheat, more chaff thanks on on-line one-click applications.</p>