Changing Difficulty of Getting Into Your College, Past Two Decades

It’s gotten more difficult to get into top colleges over the years, but most schools have either admitted students at the same rate or increased admission rates since 2001. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, see how your school changed with the chart below.

Colored circles represent admission counts, and outer gray circles represent applicants. Search for a school. Use the slider to compare years.
 

Looking at my two alma maters, the University of California at Berkeley and at Los Angeles, admission rates were about 1 in 4 applicants in the early 2000s and then decreased to 1 in 10.

You might say that the schools grew more selective, but it’s not because the schools take fewer students. There are just way more applicants now, and admissions don’t increase at the same rate. For example, UCLA received 40,739 applications in 2001 and then 3.7 times that in 2022. Admissions in 2022 were only 1.2 times that of 2001.

On the other hand, many state universities continue to increase admission rates to almost 100%. The pandemic seemed to push that along in more recent years. For example, SUNY Buffalo State University jumped past 80% in 2020 when admissions were under half a few years prior.

Then there are numbers with sudden spikes that probably need more looking into. Change in process? Change in reporting? For example, Dallas Baptist University only accepted 39% of applicants in 2017 but then applicants more than doubled the next year and the school accepted almost everyone. New Jersey City University shows a similar trend. Also Mississippi Valley State University.

What does the trend for your school look like?

Notes

The data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics IPEDS. I originally used College Scorecard but then realized that it was based on IPEDS, which offers more detail.

I analyzed and prepared the data in R. I made the chart above with D3.js.