Record Low Acceptances

It has been an emotional roller-coaster for many students over the past few days as they agonized the wait for the news about college acceptances. Some of the bigger "names" as far as colleges are concerned are announcing record low acceptance rates. The most important thing for everyone to keep in mind is that there is not just one perfect school - it truly is about finding the right match and while that certainly doesn't make everything better for those who are disappointed, it does not take away the fact that incredible students who were very well qualified had to be rejected from schools. Sadly, it is in part a guessing game and the colleges are trying to make their best guess on who will actually attend their school and contribute to their campus community. As I have said before, there are simply no guarantees...

Below is a snapshot of a few of the admissions rates:

Harvard: A record-low 7 percent of applicants were accepted, down from 7.9 percent last year. That's just 2,046 of 29,112 applicants. The school saw a 6 percent increase in the total number of applicants.

Columbia: The university saw a 13 percent rise in the number of applicants (a record 25,428), resulting in a record-low 9.8 percent acceptance rate this year.

MIT: The school saw a 17 percent increase in applicants, and its admittance rate dropped to a record low of 10 percent, with 1,597 students out of 15,661 applicants admitted.

Brown: In its "most selective year ever," the institution admitted 10.8 percent of its applicants. The number of applications rose 21 percent over last year. In total, 2,708 of 24,988 applicants were admitted.

Dartmouth: The school has admitted 12 percent of its record 18,130 applicants.

Duke: The university accepted a record-low 17 percent of applicants after seeing a 17 percent increase in applications. "We'll be denying and wait-listing people that we may have easily admitted a year or two ago," said the dean of undergraduate
admissions. "In terms of talent, broadly defined, this is the best class we've ever seen. And that's made possible by a larger applicant pool."

University of Pennsylvania: The school accepted 17 percent of its applicants this year, roughly the same as the year before.

While getting a denial letter to a school is difficult, I have to admit that the one thing that I think would be worse is getting a denial and then a few weeks later receiving a congratulatory e-mail on your acceptance that invites you to an accepted student event. And, yes, that is exactly what happened to 28,000 students who were rejected at the University of California San Diego this week. They sent out an appology several hours later explaining to the students that they really had been rejected and that the wrong database had been used when sending out the invitation for the accepted student event. I can't even imagine...