Admissions to Elite Colleges Continue to Get Harder

Admissions to elite US colleges continues to get harder each year. The percentage of admissions to one list of top 10 colleges sank below 10% for the first time with the class of 2015. Admissions to the Ivies plus Stanford and MIT dropped to 9.5% from 10.3% last year and 13.3% for the class of 2011 just 4 years ago. This increase in competitiveness is due mostly to a 45% increase in number of applicants from 4 years ago since the number of seats and number of admits in these colleges have increase by about 4%. The total number of college applicants should have topped out last year but the number of applications submitted per student has increased and the number submitted to the top 10 schools has continued to grow, up 9.8% from last year. Part of the increase for the top 10 schools is due to Columbia's acceptance of the common app for the first time this year which saw applications to that school jump nearly 33%. But every one of the top 10 schools saw an increase and this was probably due to the fact that these schools continue to be needs-blind while others have seen a decline in available funds for financial aid.

School	apps	admit %		admits	places	wait	wait/in	yield
Brown	30,946	8.7%		2,692	1,485
Columbia	34,900	6.9%		2,405	1,075			45%
Cornell	36,392	18.0%		6,534	3,150	2,988
Dartmouth	22,385	9.7%		2,178	1,150	1,984		53%
Harvard	34,950	6.2%		2,158	1,668		70	74%
MIT	17,909	9.6%		1,715	1,120	1,000	50	62%
Princeton	27,189	8.4%		2,282	1,300	1,248	100	53%
Stanford	34,350	7.1%		2,427	1,675	1,078	26	69%
Upenn	31,659	12.3%		3,880	2,420			63%
Yale	27,269	7.4%		2,006	1,310	932	-	65%
Total	297,949	9.5%		28,277	16,353	9,230