You can see those numbers in a school’s CDS, section H.
For Yale class of 2026: https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/cds_yale_2022-2023_vf_10062023.pdf
54.5% (847/1554) of Fall 2022 freshman qualified for financial aid, note that 499/1554 (32%) did not apply for financial aid (I assume those students are not included in the table above).
Not replying to the latest posts as I am only halfway through this thread.
IMO, the system is broken because it causes a lot of stress to the kids - to have straight As from 9th grade on, to participate and excel in ECs to the detriment of academics and/or free time including in the summer, to spend inordinate amount of time writing college applications instead of focusing on learning. Kids are so exhausted by mid senior year that they waste almost a full year of a four-year HS learning little as nobody cares about performance after the acceptances are in.
Participating in organized activities only and not having personal time to grow as an individual and find interesting hobbies is the recipe for producing “bots”.
I have some insight into other systems - the Canadian as I have nephews there, the British where my daughter went to college and the German as I have friends with kids in international schools following the German arbitur. Yes, there are high-stakes exams but these kids are nowhere near as stressed as the American kids from our nationally-ranked LPS. First, they do limited amount of ECs and strictly for personal enjoyment and fulfillment. Their college applications are trivial (no essays in most Canadian and German Us and 1 personal statement and 1 application for 5 colleges in the UK). Grades from the first two years don’t matter.
And most importantly, all Universities in these countries are public (including Oxbridge where my daughter went to college) and the outcomes for the students after graduation are not that different. There are no private colleges with opaque admission policies founded by oligarchs to educate their offspring which are pipelines to the most lucrative jobs. So, nobody cares that much where you go to college.
The ratio of population to number of seats at each university is also very different from the US situation.
If you include all the public colleges and community colleges, I believe the ratio is not that different. It has been repeatedly stated on this thread that there is a place for everybody that wants to go to college.
Also, as I am at the point in the thread discussing bland personalities, the most interesting people I know are the ones that read, take risks, think for themselves and outside the box. You can be as much of a “bot” playing piano, or doing ballet, or playing soccer for 20 hrs per week as solving math problems. Supervised activities where the kid follows rules set by adults do not produce interesting personalities.
Yes, but the ratio is different for the most desired universities, which explains why (for example) Harvard is much more selective than University of Toronto.
Of course, a good student who is satisfied attending the local moderately selective public or starting at a community college is not likely to find college admission and preparation for such stressful (unless they want the nursing major). Some may find affordability to be an issue, however.
Ask the parents of the 2E kids (highly gifted but with learning issues) how stressful the admissions process is in the UK, Korea, China, Germany. Ask the parents of kids who were late-bloomers when they took the tests which determine their HS curriculum and subsequent university options. Ask the parents of a kid who had behavioral issues early on (but was clearly on track academically) how those systems worked.
It’s fun to romanticize a system which has none of the peculiarities of ours. And if you have a straight up smart kid who performs well on high stress tests and hasn’t exhibited any behavioral or learning challenges in middle school-- fantastic.
But I have cousins overseas who wring their hands (or try to figure out a way to send their kid to the US to live with family for HS) when they see the supports and interventions that are available here to kids who have high potential but may be dealing with other, non-intellectual issues.
Our country is different. Are you surprised that our higher ed system is different?
If you have a kid who had challenges- it’s actually nice living in the land of second chances.
Well said. I couldn’t agree more. We are not doing a favor to our students. Also, the whole idea of writing a bunch of essays and PIQs ( for UC system) seems to be designed to create a bunch of salesmen and not critical thinkers.
I am not particularly familiar with higher education admission system of the countries that you have mentioned. I am sure they have challenges. On a different but somewhat related note, I have seen people argue in favor of our health care system in a similar way. In aggregate, we spend about twice per capita for health care, have worse patient outcomes and people still have medical bankruptcies in USA. I am sure, we can offer faster and some novel treatments that other countries don’t.
Not even close to being related. Let’s not get sidetracked
There are lots of colleges where you don’t need essays. That’s the stressor- that a kid who is ready for university-level work (hundreds of pages of reading, writing lab reports, research papers, etc.) can’t craft a typo-free essay?
Really? Is it just about crafting an essay? Is that why you have so many admission consultants?
It is understandable that kids with good academics aspire to get into good colleges that require a bunch of other things. This board is full of advice from parents on how kids should sync their ECs with PIQs and create an interesting story. It is not about critical thinking but more about salesmanship.
I do believe though that parents should tone down the importance of the most selective colleges. We should take care of mental health of our students.
Highly paid private consultants woud exist even if you abolished essays. Many people are very anxious about getting their kids into the “right” colleges and desperate for any way to game the system. (Edit to add, I don’t mean to say that college consulting is just about gaming the system; I just mean that many families are desperate to do so. 
) Consultants do a variety of things but in addition to essays, may help with test prep, selection and packaging of ECs, HS course selection, putting together college lists, advice on showing demonstrated interest, interviewing, some even help kids stay on track during high school… you name it.
If you take away one aspect of the application process, it simply increases the importance of other aspects. Take away standardized tests, kids and families stress out about ECs and essays. Take away essays but not tests, kids and families stress out about tests. Take away both tests and essays, kids and families stress out about grades and rigor. Etc etc.
I agree that the pool of qualified candidates is much bigger than the number of seats in CS at UCs. But here is what I don’t understand. How come so many academically competent students have decided that they want to study CS? Why not physics, math, electrical engineering? I am sure their decision is not solely based on their love for CS, but their decision is being influenced by parents, peers and job prospects. What if UCs didn’t select for CS, but selected for college of engineering as a whole? It is reasonable to assume these students want to study subjects that use math, physics and computational problem solving.
I always thought it was due to students’ love of computer games.
I am biased here. But this so called “holistic admissions” was introduced by Ivy leagues to restrict admission to talented Jewish students. I am not sure people know that Feynman was denied admission to Columbia based on Jewish quota. He went to MIT. Under the current holistic criteria he might not even be admitted to MIT.
But there is another aspect to this history. Despite this discrimination, those unwanted students went on to make pivotal contributions in the area of science. That can happen even now for the talented kids who are denied admission to currently prestigious colleges. Parents should tone down the importance of most selective colleges.
Its also worth noting that younger generation being more into video games, social media, etc, also plays into it. Like, the most desired job for children nowadays is “internet content creator,” especially youtubers. Software is very much more tangibly related to their lives then something like biology or literature, for example.
If I could summarize the advice I’ve read here, the vast majority of it suggests a student do what they are interested in/makes them happy. But maybe we are reading different threads.
To a certain extent much of what we do in life is about salesmanship. We dress appealingly for a date, we curate our resume for a job, etc. I wouldn’t characterize that kind of ‘salesmanship’ as nefarious, but rather as trying to present oneself in the best light.
And I agree, we place far too much importance on prestige, but I don’t think that will ever change.
Many other students choose CS because they are fascinated with what can be done software. Our S was programming an Nvidia GPU in high school - fascinated by what it could do with computer vision and then with machine learning. After I saw his adaptation of an ML model that generated cats I was sold - I took a stock position in Nvidia in 2015. Helped me offset some of that Stanford tuition 
Sure, lots of people are interested in computer science for other reasons. I studied CS and AI back in the day, when it wasn’t as popular 
But the primary reason it’s SO POPULAR as a major right now is that you hear about big, big salaries being offered to kids right out of college. And since many kids get exposure to programming in HS or even middle school, it doesn’t seem as difficult as a more hard-science engineering major.
Lots of fields may be interesting, but when a kid is on the fence between various interesting things, many are swayed by the promise of $$$.