College Applications 101: 2023-2024 Edition — Part I

With the colleges that people deemed to be safety schools, are currently turning into their target schools— and eventually their reach schools. What is it that is making the competition increasingly difficult the more we grow older? It’s the exception of how each college has a maximum set for how many they can bring in each year, with the increasing amount of students scoring high scores on their SAT/ACT, with a strong resume that would impress colleges of their feats.

Boston University had a record of 75,778 applicants in their 2021-2022 Common Data Set, with only 14,129 being admitted, making their acceptance rate an approximate 18.6%. If compared to the 2022-2023 admissions cycle, only 11,607 have been admitted out of 80,796, making the rate a staggering 14.4%. The institution has seen a 6.6% increase in their applications, which is the current trend of increasing applicants. Schools such as University of Southern California have sought out an increase in their applications, on top of people applying through their Early Action cycle to obtain the generous scholarship that is given to the best students that matched with their values. These schools let alone are not part of the famous Ivy League, but they were once schools that people have considered hard-target for the majority. This makes you wonder about the infamous and low acceptance rates of colleges like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, and Brown; all of which that are currently in the single digits.

What is it that these elite institutions want from their students to be able to get accepted? In one word, it is: values. These values are what majority of the students are not considering when applying to the colleges they have in mind.

I, myself, as a current incoming first year at a private college in Texas, have finally just realized that my values did not comply with my Early Decision school at the time, being a college I grew to love in New York. I knew it right after I had been deferred— knowing that I would be able to get into other schools, but I found myself happy with the institution I am currently heading towards.

It is not the end of the world as people stress it out so much, but students at the staggering age of 18 have been given an important decision to pick our own college— the place where we would grow and learn to become an adult with an open mindset. Each school shapes their own students through their own values and creating better humans, and even giving us the opportunities for more beyond our graduation.

These numbers of what people called an “acceptance rate” is just a way for these colleges to intimidate those that do not bother to face against the odds, but being an applicant and letting someone there review it is an achievement as it already is. It is truly better to shoot your shot then not do anything.