My third is a college freshman now but my older two are the same years as yours. And, yeah, it was noticeable how much more competitive the most coveted schools were. Overall across all colleges, enrollment is down but we’re still seeing a flight/fight for what is perceived as top quality where the tippy top gets harder even as many other schools need students are are having to incentivize them to apply. Schools that were relative safety/likelies for the older two became at best matches and borderline reaches for the third, made worse because many of those schools have become addicted to ED and now take the majority of their class that way. So the same school can be likely ED and skip to high reach for RD. The admission stat for my S16’s college literally halved by the time S23 applied (from ~14% to ~7%). The college S23 went to in the end had a 3% RD rate, which is insane. UCLA (seems like you are in CA) is now a single digit admit.
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