Wednesday, May 14, 2014

National College Admission Trends (2013-14)

Over the next couple weeks, I will share with you national college admission trends that my colleagues have circled around in our conversations for the past few weeks.

I will be sharing these national trends with Casady's Board of Trustees tomorrow.

National Trend #1 - Business as Usual at the Top.

A colleague once remarked, "Highly selective colleges have the only business model I know of  where their goal is to grow their business through customer dissatisfaction."

I would add potential customer dissatisfaction.

Every year, these schools turn more potential customers away in disappointment...and every year the line to try and get in is looonnnnngggggeeeeerrr!

Consequently, the majority of the most highly desirable schools saw increases in application volume and decreases in application rates.

Here is a statistical sampling:

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Name:                                                Applications                        Admits                        Admit Rate
Stanford                                             42,167                                    2,138                                    5.07%
Harvard                                              34,295                                    2,023                                    6.26%
Yale                                                    30,932                                    1,935                                    6.26%
Columbia                                           32,967                                    2,291                                    6.95%
Princeton                                            26,641                                    1,939                                    7.28%
Brown                                                30,432                                    2,619                                    8.86%
Penn                                                   35,868                                    3,550                                    9.90%
Duke                                                  32,457                                    1,705                                    10.80%
*Dartmouth                                       19,299                                    2,220                                    11.50%
*Vanderbilt                                        29,504                                    3,631                                    12.31%
Cornell                                               43,041                                    6,014                                   13.97%

* decrease in applications

 Here is a link to a Huffington Post article that expounds on the admission numbers at the top.