How Colleges Deflate Acceptance Rates

Today I want to tell you why you shouldn’t use a college’s acceptance rate as a metric for how good of a college it is.

Colleges know that when people see a low acceptance rate, it makes them seem super selective and it drives up their ranking on these lists people seem to care so much about. But the reality is a college’s acceptance rate is not a metric of the educational quality you’re going to receive there, but rather a simple fraction of the number of students who were accepted divided by the number of students who applied.

So, if they want to get that acceptance rate down, all they have to do is increase the volume of applications they receive. And colleges know how to do it.

Some things they could do is waive the application fee so it’s a free application. And a lot of students think, well, I wasn’t going to apply there, but if it’s free, I might as well. They might waive their SAT or ACT score requirements so students with lower scores don’t see that as a barrier to entry and think, “I might as well try.” They could have no school-specific application essays, so it’s not that much extra work to put in an application. So hey, give it a go, see what happens.

And then there are colleges that invest a lot of money into their athletic programs because they know when they’re on TV, when they’re ranked, when they’re in the big tournament, when they win the big championship, more people are thinking about them, talking about them, and are more likely to apply. Because everybody loves a winner and everybody wants to have fun with sports. Why not?

Then there are colleges that deliberately fudge their numbers where students who apply but then get accepted maybe for a different campus for the first semester, maybe abroad for the first year; they don’t count those accepted students in their acceptance rate. Also, when students apply for the fall, they might get accepted early for the summer or later for the spring, and many schools don’t count those students in their acceptance rates either.

So, keep in mind, colleges know how to play this game. They’ve been at this a lot longer than you or I have. So look for the right college for you. Don’t worry about the acceptance rate.

And if you have questions, call us at 732-556-8220. We are here to help.