Record Low Admission Rates Across Ivies and UC Schools

One week ago, on March 28th around 7pm, a handful of students received notifications that they had been admitted to one, or more, of the Ivies. A significant portion of the incoming classes were accepted in December as part of the early admission cycle, but last Wednesday’s admits brought unprecedented acceptance rates to light.

All eight Ivy League institutions admitted a record low percentage of students, except Yale where the acceptance rate of 6.31 percent was marginally more generous than its all time low of 6.26 percent in 2018. With an acceptance rate of 4.59 percent, Harvard became the first Ivy to drop below a 5 percent acceptance rate, although Stanford has it beat this year at 4.3 percent.

Princeton and Columbia were only slightly less competitive with acceptance rates of 5.5 percent, though Dartmouth and Cornell showed the sharpest percent decreases, at 16.3 and 17.3 percent respectively.

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Dartmouth admission reps credit this drop as a result of their largest applicant pool since the early nineties. The college’s 22,033 applicants marked a 10 percent increase from last year, or roughly 2000 more students. Dartmouth was hardly alone in seeing such a dramatic rise in applicants. In fact, every other Ivy attracted its largest applicant pool in school history. Compared to last year, the applicant pools at Columbia and Brown increased by 8 percent, but Princeton’s increased the most significantly — by 14 percent.

“[That growth] exceeded our expectations,” Dead of Admission Jane Rapelye said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. “Our outreach to low income backgrounds, students who may be working with community-based organizations, and to schools we haven’t had applicants from before may have contributed.”

Many other admission representatives also proudly explain their school’s increased applicant pool by citing augmented efforts to recruit low-income students coupled with improved financial aid opportunities. Harvard, for example, has seen the number of Pell Grant recipients double since its 2004 financial aid initiative, suggesting that more low-income students perceive Harvard as a viable option and apply accordingly. At Brown, this will be the first class admitted under the Brown Promise Initiative, which eliminates loans from financial aid packages and replaces them with scholarships.

Surely the growing number of applicants across Ivy League institutions can also be attributed in part to the declining admission rates themselves, which drive students to hedge their bets and apply to as many top options as possible.

Though spikes in applicant pools are no doubt a major factor in this year’s record low admit rates, Dartmouth Dean of Admissions Lee Coffin acknowledged that his team also worked to accommodate a potentially high yield rate. Dartmouth had seen a record high yield rate of 60 percent in 2017, as had Harvard with a yield rate of 84 percent.

Wariness of increasingly high yield rates at competitive institutions is perhaps at its peak this year in response to UC Irvine’s admissions debacle last spring. The university received an 800-person higher yield than expected and rescinded 500 acceptances, citing missing paperwork as the reason for admission reversals. After much public criticism, UC Irvine re-accepted most of the students. This January the California Board of Regents instituted a policy that bars state schools from managing yield rates in such a fashion.

In response to this, as well as applicant pool increases akin to those at the Ivies (some UC schools saw pools increase by 12 percent or more compared to last year), UC admission rates have also experienced record declines. In a recent interview with Inside Higher Ed, California counselors express shock at how many of their top students were denied admission to state schools, concluding that UC Schools can no longer be deemed safety options.

Students who did receive the fat envelope so to speak will attend accepted students days at Ivies and UC schools throughout the month of April as they prepare for May 1st, National College Decision Day.