College Admissions Roundup: What Happened in 2022, What’s Next
Last month I was speaking with a colleague who’s worked in the test-prep industry for over twenty years. As we both tried to make sense of the current admissions cycle, he made this observation: “Kids that used to get into 5 or 6 top schools and have their pick are now are getting into one school — if they’re lucky.”
I had to agree. Not only have the top schools been getting more competitive for years, the pandemic changed everything. In the 2020–2021 admissions cycle most schools went test-optional or test-blind, the College Board eliminated the SAT Subject Tests, and the overall number of applications soared.
The most recent admissions cycle, which just ended, didn’t bring as many radical changes, but it did see a continuation of the same trends: more applications, lower acceptance rates at highly selective schools, and more uncertainty in the admissions process.
This article seeks to better understand those trends by unpacking data from the past two years. It also offers predictions on where things are likely to be headed next year. Based on that analysis, in a follow-up post I suggest strategies for seniors applying to college this fall.
A Puzzling Landscape: Applications Up, Enrollment Down
Nationwide, the last two years saw the acceleration of a paradoxical pattern: each year fewer young people are enrolling in college, yet more are applying.
As of last fall, undergraduate enrollment across the country had fallen 5.1% since fall of 2019, accelerating a trend that began before the pandemic. Yet nationwide, application numbers have risen sharply over the last two years. According to data released in March by the Common App, a nonprofit that facilitates admissions, total applications to US schools rose from 5.5 million in 2020 — the last pre-pandemic admissions year — to 6.6 million in 2022. That’s an increase of over 20% over the last two years.
These conflicting trends are causing confusion and disruption throughout the higher education sector. As we’ll explore below, much of the growth in applications seems to be directed towards the most selective public and private schools. Because most universities are unable (or unwilling) to increase enrollment on short notice, the result is that at many of America’s top schools, acceptance rates have fallen over the past two years, in some cases significantly.
A recent headline in a Virginia newspaper put it succinctly: “While enrollment grows at Virginia’s most prestigious universities, other schools struggle.”
At the Top, Applications Rise and Acceptance Rates Fall
Among the Ivy League schools, more applications are the new normal.
Harvard, in particular, saw first-year applications jump from 40,248 two years ago to 57,435 in 2021 and 61,220 this year. That’s a staggering increase of over 50% in just two years, and it drove the acceptance rate down to 3.19%. (As a point of comparison, 20 years ago 10.5% of students who applied to Harvard were accepted). Harvard does close reads of their applications, and especially with the heightened scrutiny of a Supreme Court lawsuit, I have to wonder how their admissions officers are coping with all this.
Similar, though less extreme, trends are happening at the other Ivies. Yale saw 50,015 applications this year, up 42% from 35,220 two years ago. That brought their acceptance rate down to 4.46%. Penn reported 55,000 applicants, an increase of nearly 38% over two years, while Princeton declined to publish their numbers this spring, explaining that “We know this information raises the anxiety level of prospective students and their families and, unfortunately, may discourage some prospective students from applying.” (Cornell and Penn also did not announce their acceptance rates this spring. Federal regulations require that the data eventually be released.)
It’s not just the Ivies, however, that are seeing more applications. More people also applied to the top public universities for entry in 2022, although the numbers rose less rapidly than they did last year.
At the University of Michigan, for example, approximately 65,000 students applied in 2020, 80,000 in 2021, and 84,000 in 2022, a 29% increase over two years. Acceptances fell from 26% in 2020 to 20% in 2021, and although they haven’t released acceptance rates yet for 2022, presumably that number will be below 20%.
UC-Berkeley saw an even sharper increase, as applications rose from 88,067 in 2020 to 128,196 in 2022, an increase of 45%. Berkeley has not yet released acceptance rates yet for the current year, but the best guess is that acceptance fell significantly, from 18% in 2020 to around 12% this year.
Even some of the less-selective, but still highly-ranked, state schools are seeing similar trends. The University of Georgia, for example, saw a 37% increase in applications over the past two years, while Virginia Tech saw an increase of 46% in the same period.
Better news at moderately-selective and less-selective schools
Fortunately, not all of the news is grim. Some schools have responded to this trend by increasing enrollment, while others have seen less growth in applications than the Ivies.
The University of Virginia, for example saw large increases in applications over the last two years, with applications up 24% since 2020. Yet UVA’s acceptance rate only fell one point over that period — from 20% to 19% — as they accepted nearly 1,500 more students this year than in 2020.
Another highly selective school, the private University of Southern California, had an 18% rise in applications last year, from 60,000 apps before the pandemic to 71,000 in 2021. However, that number dropped slightly to 70,000 this year. While it’s too soon to know why, I wouldn’t be surprised if USC’s decision to go test-optional, in a state where the entire University of California system (Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, etc.) is now test-blind, discouraged some students from applying.
Additionally, at some of the less-selective schools, application rates have been flat. Iowa State University, for example, has a 91% acceptance rate. While they haven’t released data for the current year, they only saw a .6% increase in applications between 2020 and 2021; essentially zero. Similarly, Skidmore College in upstate New York saw only a 7% increase in applications between 2020 and 2021, but like UVA they admitted more students. Their acceptance rate thus dropped only slightly, from 32% to 31%.
Taken together, this data suggests that in the coming years, students should be broadening their lists of target and safety schools. They should also be looking very closely at each school’s most recent admission rates. A simple Google search for “acceptance rate” often turns up older numbers that may no longer be relevant. All students — even those at the top of their classes — will want to be giving more serious consideration to schools that may have once seemed “beneath them.”
Less Testing, More Diversity
The second big change that accompanied the pandemic was a widespread shift towards test-optional and test-blind standardized testing policies.
Pre-pandemic, around 60% of US colleges required test scores. According to the Common App, that number dropped to 11% last year, falling further to 5% this year. Many observers believe that this contributed to the massive uptick in applications, as students felt empowered to apply to selective schools they might have shied away from beforehand.
That change, along with the elimination of the SAT Subject Tests in early 2021, has meant that American high school students are taking fewer standardized tests than before the pandemic. Just a few years ago, an application to many selective schools required the SAT or ACT, plus two SAT subject tests. That’s in addition in addition to AP tests, IB tests, and any state-mandated testing like the New York Regents Exams. As an advisor and former teacher, I think this is a welcome and needed change. Our kids have been over-tested for years. Fewer tests mean kids have more time for learning, activities, and — dare I even mention the word? — fun.
In addition, most (but not all) proponents of diversity in higher education believe that eliminating standardized tests increases equity by encouraging students from underrepresented minorities and first-generation families to apply. The data seem to bear this out: over the last two years, applications by kids from underrepresented minorities and first-gen families have risen faster than the national average. Encouragingly, the Common App reported that over the last two years, “first-gen applicants increased at twice the rate of continuing-gen applicants.”
Despite these changes, the Common App also found that the vast majority of students applying to college this cycle, by a 2:1 ratio, were white and had parents who went to college. This year, more than half of all college applicants also came from the wealthiest quintile of zip codes in the country (i.e. the top 20%).
What’s Next? Continuing Change & Unpredictability
Looking forward to the 2022–2023 admissions cycle, what can we expect?
On the application side, I think it’s safe to predict that numbers will continue to rise. One reason is that, at least for the foreseeable future, test-optional and test-blind policies are here to stay. That may have seemed less certain back in March, when MIT announced that they will require standardized testing again this fall, but in the last two months few-if-any schools have followed suit.
Instead, the Ivies have announced that they will all be test-optional at least through 2023; Columbia and Harvard are extending their test-optional policies to 2024 and 2026, respectively. I could conceivably see an engineering school or two following MIT by reinstating standardized tests, but I don’t think there will be a broader trend towards testing this fall. For better or for worse, most American universities take their cues from the Ivies, and from Harvard in particular.
On a school-to-school basis, we can also expect unpredictability to continue. Jim Jump, a well-regarded commentator, admissions counselor, and former admissions officer, recalls an admissions dean remarking that in the old days, “…if a student is a legitimate candidate for the nation’s ‘elite’ colleges and applies to enough of them, they would likely be admitted to one, but perhaps not the one they hoped for.”
That is no longer the case. With so many strong applicants vying for so few spots, the old strategy of applying to a bunch of elite schools and hoping that one comes through becomes riskier each year. Trying to predict a student’s outcome at any particular highly-selective school is now nearly impossible.
What this means for rising seniors
While no one is likely to be excited by these trends, the good news is that it’s not all doom and gloom. America is filled with excellent colleges and universities, and as mentioned above, many schools are not seeing such extraordinary drops in acceptance rates. Students applying to college in 2022 and the years that follow will simply have to adjust their admissions strategies to fit the new reality. What worked for an older brother or sister may no longer be appropriate today.
Specifically, students who are willing to broaden their searches, and who take the time to think carefully about what they’re looking for in their college experience, will still find schools where they will flourish. And that, I believe, is the goal of a healthy admissions process.
In the following post, I lay out some specific strategies that rising seniors should consider in the 2022–2023 admissions cycle.
