As the number of high school graduates rose to a record high at the end of the decade, Ivy League colleges were reporting record-low acceptance rates, leading many to believe that the college admissions process was becoming more competitive than ever.<\/p>\n
However, a recent paper by Stanford economics Prof. Caroline Hoxby, director of the Economics of Education Program for the National Bureau of Economic Research, pushes against this theory. Hoxby argues that most U.S. colleges are not more selective now than they were 50 years ago and that at least five percent of colleges have become substantially less selective.<\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Changing Selectivity of American Colleges,\u201d Hoxby calls this misconception — the perceived increase in competition — a consequence of people extrapolating from the experiences and acceptance rates of a small number of colleges, particularly schools in the Ivy League, Stanford, Duke and a handful of elite liberal arts colleges.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese colleges have experienced rising selectivity, but their experience turns out to be the exception rather than the rule,\u201d she wrote, adding that only the \u201ctop 10 percent of colleges are substantially more selective now than they were in 1962.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hoxby indicates that the selectivity of most colleges has been trending downward consistently since about 1950, explaining that although competition has increased for schools like Harvard and Stanford, it is now easier for students to get into a state college.<\/p>\n
\u201cA student now needs weaker preparation, lower test scores, etc., to be admitted to most colleges in the U.S.,\u201d she wrote in an e-mail to The Daily.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you are the average student, you certainly should not be worrying about college admissions standards rising,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is really only students who are at or above the 90th percentile in aptitude and achievement who should think about college selectivity rising.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hoxby believes, however, that the overall decrease in college selectivity has not been caused by falling demand for a college education. Rather, the supply of \u201ccollege places\u201d has risen faster. According to her research, the number of high school graduates has grown by 131 percent while the number of college spots has risen by 297 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are many more students demanding a college education today than in the past, both because there are more people in the U.S. now and because college education is now more necessary for attaining a middle-class lifestyle,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Hoxby reasons that when supply grows faster than demand, selectivity is going to decrease.<\/p>\n
In addition to supply-and-demand economics, she attributes the decrease in selectivity to a second phenomenon: \u201cre-sorting.\u201d She explains that students used to attend a local college regardless of their abilities or the school\u2019s characteristics; now, however, students\u2019 choices are driven less by proximity and more by a college\u2019s resources and student body.<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly, if high-aptitude students were now more determined to attend selective colleges and less concerned about attending local colleges\u2026the initially more-selective colleges would become more selective and initially less-selective colleges would become less selective,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In its recent early admission cycle, Stanford\u2019s 13.5 percent admit rate for early action applicants from the Class of 2014 actually represented an increase in the number of students accepted from the previous year, when the University accepted 12.8 percent of early applicants — a seeming exception to Hoxby\u2019s theory.<\/p>\n
However, Hoxby maintains that these numbers are \u201cmeaningless\u201d in explaining trends in selectivity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf students who applied to Stanford early have better scores and grades than in previous years, the admissions office should have accepted a higher share of them,\u201d she said. \u201cThe fact that more were accepted says nothing about selectivity. You have to look at an absolute standard of selectivity (scores, grades, other qualifications). You cannot look at acceptance ratios and expect to get the answer right.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the number of high school graduates rose to a record high at the end of the decade, Ivy League colleges were reporting record-low acceptance rates, leading many to believe that the college admissions process was becoming more competitive than ever. However, a recent paper by Stanford economics Prof. Caroline Hoxby, director of the Economics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/195"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}