<p>It is no secret that colleges like having a low acceptance rate. It makes the school look more prestigious and indicates that the college is composed of highly qualified applicants. The word “competitive” is thrown around quite often. Thus, colleges want lots of people to apply so that the number accepted represents a low percentage of the overall pool of applicants. Anyway, I have found that the application process is long and complicated. Especially when one applies to multiple colleges, each with their own supplements etc. I’m sure lots of students begin various applications but do not fully complete them. When say Princeton indicates that 21,000 students applied, it surprises me that so many students were able to complete every part of the application with all the essays, school forms, letters of recommendation and what not. So, how much of an application must be completed for someone to be considered an applicant? I mean colleges have an incentive to make it look like as many people applied as possible. Or does that actually represent the total amount of people considered for acceptance?</p>
<p>The total amount of applications a college receives is every application submitted through Commonapp, which means every part is filled out and the application fee is paid. And you only fill out the common app once and you are reusing your application essay for all the schools you apply to through the common app, so you are really only doing the supplement form for Princeton.</p>
<p>But you can submit the common app without submitting the supplement. I think the last thing you can do is pay the app fee, so is it based on the number of people who pay the app fee? What about people who don’t send test scores, transcripts, mid year grades etc?</p>
<p>Yes. Absolutely it’s based on the number of people who complete an application from start to finish, get all their transcripts and letters in, and pay an application fee.</p>
<p>I think you may not appreciate how many high school seniors there are in any single year. Currently, it’s about 2.7 or 2.8 million, I think. Compared to that number, even Harvard’s 34,000 applications is a drop in the bucket.</p>