Admissions Snapshot

College admissions and who gets in and who doesn't get accepted can feel so frustrating and confusing to students and families.  It often feels impossible to understand the decisions of the admissions committees, but it is important to recognize that each admissions office has specific goals and objectives that they are trying to achieve.

I thought it might be helpful to see the exact data from a few colleges (OSU and Notre Dame) just to give you a glimpse of how some of those college goals have played out.

The first point that has become very obvious is that with test optional being a choice, many more students are applying to colleges and, as a result, more students are being denied which makes admission to many colleges more competitive than ever.

For example, OSU shared that they received a record 71,320 applications this year.  In 2019, they received 52,018 applications.  That is an increase of 37%.  (Insane).

Test optional data can be complicated.  54% of OSU's admitted students submitted test scores compared with 46% of their admitted students who applied test optional.  At Notre Dame, 67% of their admitted students submitted their test scores while 33% of those accepted did not use their test scores.

Obviously, with test scores being optional, even more consideration and emphasis is being placed on the rigor of the courses students are taking and how well they are doing in those classes.  For example, 98% of OSU's admitted students are in the top 25% of their graduating classes and 72% are in the top 10% of their class.  If you think about Kilbourne's current graduating class, the top 10% are all over 4.0's and the top 25% is a 3.9 or higher.

Diversity is a huge goal of many colleges.  OSU shared that 38% of those admitted from the US are students of color, 19% are international students, 21% are first generation students, and they have accepted students from all 50 states.  Notre Dame shared that 41% of their admitted students are students of color, 18.7% are international students, 14% are first generation students, and they have also accepted students from 100 50 states.

Colleges are inviting large numbers of students to join their wait lists.  OSU currently has 3,235 students on their wait list.  At Notre Dame, their waiting list option was offered to 3,049 students which is a huge number when you realize that they accepted 3,412 students total.  (Which goes back to my reminder from last week about the fact that if you are on the wait list you can't count on being accepted and so it is important to get your brain wrapped around the fact that you like and will attend one of your other colleges and then if you get accepted you can be pleasantly surprised.)

Johns Hopkins also recently sent us a short video clip that explains holistic admissions and so I'm sharing that too just to give you an idea of how colleges are evaluating applicants.

So why am I telling you all of this?  Well, honestly, I think it is interesting and I thought it might be interesting to you as well.  But, it also is a reminder that students determining where they want to apply to college should be realistic in their personal self assessment of their potential competitiveness for admissions.  It is hard to receive a rejection from a college... but remember, it is a business for the colleges and they are doing their best job to meet the goals of their institution and build the best class that they can.  It does NOT mean that you wouldn't be successful at their college, but it does mean that they can't accept everyone. So try not to take a rejection personally (easier said than done) and know that you WILL be successful at whichever college ends up being lucky enough to have you as their student in the future.