Bad News U: Colleges Reject Record Numbers

Anjali Athavaley:

The college-admissions season set records this year -- both in the number of students who applied, as well as the number of students who were rejected.

Harvard University has a record applicant pool of 27,462 and an admissions rate of 7.1%, meaning that 1,948 students were accepted -- the lowest number in the school's history and a drop from last year's 8.9%. Yale University received 22,813 applications and accepted only 8.2%, down from 9.6% last year. And at Princeton University, of the 21,369 applications, 9.3% were accepted, down from 9.5% last year.

State schools, too, are reporting a tough admissions season, with acceptance rates down at the University of Texas and the University of North Carolina, among others.

On the positive side for some students this season, schools are having a hard time predicting their all-important "yields" -- the percentage of students admitted who will actually attend. And high-school counselors are hoping that ambiguity will result in more acceptances for students who are on waiting lists -- a strategy schools use to reach enrollment targets.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 3, 2008 3:22 PM
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