Admissions Blog

Regular Decision at Emory University becomes more selective

Posted on March 30, 2023 by admissions.blog Leave a Comment

Emory University’s campus.

Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has become more selective to get into when applying Regular Decision.

While approximately 78%, of admission offers at Emory are made Regular Decision and roughly 22% of offers are extended to Early Decision applicants, that doesn’t mean an applicant’s statistical odds of getting into Emory Regular Decision are better than getting in Early Decision. The university, which accepts first-year applicants into two colleges – Emory College and Oxford College, has shared that in 2023 Emory College’s Regular Decision acceptance rate was 8.4% and Oxford College’s Regular Decision acceptance rate was 15.1% whereas Emory’s overall Early Decision I acceptance rate earlier in the 2022-2023 admissions cycle was roughly 37%. Last year (2022), Emory accepted 9% of students who applied Regular Decision.

2023-2024 Regular Decision (RD) Applicant Pool

	Emory College	Oxford College
RD Applicants	29,330	18,612
RD Admits	2,463	2,815
Offered Spot on Wait List	5,663 (plus additional 199 placed on wait list from ED II)	2,991 (plus additional 37 placed on wait list from ED II)

Regular Decision Admitted Class Composition

	Emory College RD Class	Oxford College RD Class
Mean Recalculated GPA	3.92	3.90
25-75th Percentile Max Testing (of students who opted to share their SAT or ACT scores with us)	1470-1560	1470-1550
% Admitted Without SAT/ACT	36%	33%
# of States Represented	50 plus DC, PR, VI, Mariana Islands, and Guam	49 plus DC, PR, and Guam
# of Non-US Citizenships	71	58

Of course, final acceptance rates are contingent on what action occurs on Emory’s waitlist.

Interestingly, only roughly one third of those accepted to both Emory College and Oxford College Regular Decision did not submit ACT or SAT scores. These numbers were a bit lower than numbers released earlier this cycle when 38% of the admitted Emory College Early Decision class and 41% of the Early Decision class admitted to Oxford College applied without an ACT or SAT score.

For Regular Decision at Emory College, nearly 22% of domestic admits would be the first generation in their family to graduate from college. The most represented high school states in the admitted RD class are Georgia, California, New York, Texas, and Florida respectively and the most represented high school countries in the admitted RD class are India, Canada, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Singapore respectively. Approximately 9% of the Emory College RD admitted class are from rural or small town communities across the United States.

For Regular Decision at Oxford College, approximately 16% of domestic admits would be the first generation in their family to graduate from college. The most represented high school states in the admitted RD class, in order, are California, Georgia, New York, Texas, and Florida. The most represented high school countries in the admitted RD class, in order, are India, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom and China. Finally, as was the case with Emory College, approximately 9% of the Oxford College RD admitted class are from rural or small town communities across the United States.

Ultimately, the university is aiming to enroll 1,420 students at Emory College and 525 students (up from 450 last year) at Oxford College this fall.

Emory will remain test-optional for first-year and transfer applicants during the 2023-2024 admissions cycle.

Brown’s Regular Decision Acceptance Rate Now 3.8%

Posted on March 29, 2023 by Craig Meister Leave a Comment

Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Brown University’s Regular Decision admission decisions will be posted on Thursday, March 30 at 7:00 p.m. US Eastern Time, and, as in previous years, most students will not be thrilled by the decision they receive.

According to Logan Powell, Brown’s Dean of Admission, Brown received 51,302 applications for the Class of 2027, which represents a 1% increase over last year and makes the Class of 2027 applicant pool the largest in the university’s history. Brown will make 1,730 Regular Decision offers of admission to the incoming Class of 2027 in addition to the 879 Early Decision admission offers made in December. The overall acceptance rate for the 2022-2023 admissions cycle was 5%, the Regular Decision acceptance rate was 3.8%, and the Early Decision acceptance rate was 13%.

A total of 18% of accepted students represent the first generation in their family to attend college, and this year’s admitted students come from 90 countries, all 50 American states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The top countries represented outside the United States are China, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, and South Korea.

Of the 4,192 applicants to the Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME), 74 students were admitted with a 2% acceptance rate. Of the 916 applicants to the Brown-RISD Dual Degree Program, 20 students were admitted, also with a 2% acceptance rate.

If spaces in Brown’s entering class are available after the May 1 reply by date, Brown will make additional admission offers to students on its waitlist; yet, all spaces in the Program in Liberal Medical Education have been filled. The number of students admitted from the waitlist will depend on how many students accept Brown’s admission offers by May 1. In recent years, the number of waitlist spaces available in Brown’s incoming class has ranged from 15 to 120. Waitlist activity will conclude by mid-summer, and more information on the waitlist is available here.

Meanwhile, Brown will host two admitted student programs on campus for the Class of 2027. A Day on College Hill (ADOCH) will take place on April 14 and 21 for students who are able to visit Providence in person. Brown will also continue to support its admitted students with a variety of virtual programming that provides opportunities to explore, learn, ask questions and connect to Brown’s campus while showcasing Brown’s vibrant community.

Northwestern Releases Regular Decisions, Class of 2027 Statistics

Posted on March 24, 2023 by Craig Meister

Northwestern University, located in Evanston, Illinois, finalized is Regular Decision selection process and notified applicants of their decisions today, Friday, March 24.

Overall, Northwestern reviewed over 52,000 first-year applications from over 10,000 high schools around the world for a class that will ultimately only include roughly 2,100 students, according to Liz Kinsley, Northwestern’s Associate Dean & Director, Undergraduate Admission. Last year Northwestern reviewed 51,554 applications.

Northwestern previously admitted about half of its incoming Class of 2027 through Early Decision, and the university’s overall admit rate will stay roughly 7%. Northwestern’s Fall 2022 ED applicant pool grew by 3.5% to just over 5,200 applicants. This means that Northwestern’s Early Decision acceptance rate now hovers around 20%. In addition to growth in volume, Northwestern saw growth in the number of secondary schools represented in its ED pool of applicants: the number of schools represented by ED applicants was up 22% overall with a 25% increase in U.S. public schools represented.

Students admitted Regular Decision have until May 1 to accept their offer. Official steps toward enrolling in the Class of 2027 are outlined on Northwestern’s Admitted Student Website and will also be mailed with an admit packet.

For applicants offered a place on Northwestern’s waitlist, the deadline to accept a waitlist offer is May 1. Students who accept a waitlist spot before April 15 will be asked to reconfirm their interest in the waitlist on that date; the university will reach out via email with reconfirmation steps. Northwestern’s waitlist is unranked, and waitlisted students are welcome to write the admissions office if they’re still particularly interested in Northwestern. Additional materials should be uploaded via the applicant portal or emailed.

In other news, high school students in the Class of 2024 should know that Northwestern has confirmed that it will remain test-optional for the 2023–2024 admissions cycle.

Northwestern University’s campus in Evanston, Illinois, USA.

The Birthrate Crisis, and How Colleges Should Respond

Posted on December 30, 2022 by Patrick O'Connor Leave a Comment

The biggest stumbling block in education research is its lack of replicability. In science, the same amount of vinegar plus the same amount of baking soda gives you the same result—and the same-sized result—no matter who does the experiment. But take someone else’s methods and teaching materials, implement them the exact same way the first experimenter did, and you will likely get nothing even close to the same result.

A happy exception to this “it’s never the same” rule occurred in the 90s, when a number of studies showed, time after time, there was a way to significantly improve student learning—and it had nothing to do with changing curriculum, retraining teachers, or extending the school day. This swath of studies showed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the best way to improve student learning—especially in grades K-3—is to follow the magic recipe of 15 students or less with one teacher in one classroom. Do that, and great things happen.

What has happened to this rare pillar of education reform? Well, not much. Once the magic recipe was discovered, administrators scoffed at the idea of dropping class size that low. For that matter, so did taxpayers, who didn’t take long to realize that lower class size meant more classrooms and more teachers—and both cost more money. As a result, education has largely turned its back on this piece of magic, except for some not-so-clever administrators who believe they can keep 30 kids in one classroom with a teacher and an aide and still maintain the ratio.

Since all three parts must be honored, this would be like doubling the baking soda and eggs in a cookie recipe without increasing the amount of flour. You get something different, but you don’t get better cookies. The magic recipe failed on its promise to deliver because the people in charge of schools—administrators and taxpayers—decided the change wasn’t worth the cost, offering instead some sleight of hand with ratios that satisfied most everyone, largely because Americans really don’t understand mathematics.

The leaders of our higher education systems are on the verge of making a similar error, with far more serious consequences. It’s no secret that the birthrate in the US declined about 20 years ago, and is headed for a serious nose dive of the number of high school graduates in about 2025. Since this isn’t exactly new news, one would think colleges would be looking at these numbers and saying something like “Fewer high school graduates means fewer college freshmen. What should we do about it?”

Like the K-12 class size issue, the answer here is pretty easy. No every high school senior goes to college right after high school, so there’s plenty of room to increase the number of college-bound seniors, and still maintain strong college enrollments. The trick here lies in talking to students who don’t see college as part of their futures, and getting them to change their minds. If every high school student already went straight to college, this couldn’t be done; but that just isn’t the case.

As is often the case with answers that appear easy, this one has at least one major snag. A very close read of most college recruiting literature shows it’s based on one big assumption; the student or family reading the literature is already convinced a four-year college is the answer for them, and they now simply need to sort out which ones they’ll consider. They know about testing and application essays and degree requirements and different application deadlines, so it isn’t a question of “If College”. It’s a question of “What College”.

Any student unsure about the benefits of four-year colleges would look at this admissions information and feel like they’ve walked into the middle of a three-hour movie; they know they have some catching up to do, but no one seems to want to help them, since they’re too busy watching the movie themselves. Given that mindset, you’d think most colleges—especially those that experienced freshman enrollment declines of up to 40 percent during COVID—would move heaven and earth to make sure they don’t end up as losers in the birthrate lottery. A few new pamphlets, a different kind of open house, a new video or two, and a little admissions training, and you’re all set.

To date, that has not been the response of the higher education community. Senior admissions officials tell me the general overall response has been to double down on an admissions strategy that includes making their institution the best choice, a strategy that turns what could be a bona fide effort at expanding college access into a zero-sum game. This approach seems to glean support from the national papers who have always covered college admissions like there are only 25 colleges in the country. The more “Ivies Report Record Application” stories they print, the more they feed the attitude that asks the question “Enrollment problem? What enrollment problem?”

The real irony here is that the creation of a “Why College?” campaign for students new to the idea is fairly affordable and relatively easy. Colleges that have like-minded missions and student bodies tend to be in the same athletic league. Imagine what could happen if all colleges in one league pitched in a couple of admissions officers and a modest amount of cash to create, for example, The Big Ten Guide to the Benefits of College. Since the goal of the campaign is informational, this wouldn’t constitute monopoly-building, and could even be overseen by the US Department of Education, which has a vested interest in making sure the college market doesn’t shrink.

The magic recipe of 15 students didn’t generate the results it was capable of for one reason—in the end, most people didn’t really care about fixing the problem. The difference with the birthrate decline is that a lack of students means more than a few colleges will wither, or even die. That would be a shame, but the only way to get something different is to do something different. Are colleges wise enough to realize this, and innovate?

Tulane Early Decision Applicants Notified of Decisions on December 1

Posted on November 30, 2022 by admissions.blog Leave a Comment

Exciting news just in from Tulane.

The Tulane admissions team is a bit ahead of schedule with reviewing applications and as a result Tulane Early Decision 1 notifications will go out tomorrow, December 1, at 4:00 p.m. Central (New Orleans) Time. Updates will be posted to students’ Green Wave Portal, and physical letters are also on their way.

There is also a bit of a change in what type of decisions students may receive: some ED applicants will be deferred and released from their ED Agreement. In recent years Tulane has focused on simply accepting or rejecting ED applicants. Deferred applicants will be read again in the regular round before getting a final decision in Spring 2023. Such students can also be considered for Tulane’s Spring Scholar cohort. There will be a form on the Green Wave Portal on which a deferred ED student can indicate an interest in the Spring Scholar program.

In past years, Tulane would admit the vast majority of its Spring Scholars at this time. This year, Tulane is admitting a smaller group for now and will reassess when it sees the pool of deferred ED and EA students in the spring. Deferred ED students cannot switch to Tulane’s ED 2 plan.

Meanwhile, Early Action applicants will hear back from Tulane no later than January 15, but Tulane is trying to notify these students of their decisions earlier than scheduled as well.

Tulane Early Action Admit Rate Plummets to 10%

Posted on December 13, 2021 by admissions.blog 1 Comment

Jeff Schiffman, Tulane’s former director of undergraduate admission, may be gone, but elements of his transparent approach live on as Tulane has recently shared some interesting data points relating to its Early Decision and Early Action admits for its undergraduate Class of 2026.

Decisions for Tulane Early Decision applicants were released on November 22 and decisions for Early Action applicants will be released on Monday, December 20 at 5:00 p.m. EST. According to Owen Knight, Tulane’s Director of Admission Engagement, the university expects between fifty-five and fifty-eight percent of next year’s freshman class to be comprised of Early Decision students. Due to the fact that Tulane over-enrolled last year and saw a twenty-five percent increase in the percentage of students accepting the offer of admission over the previous year, Tulane will be admitting a jaw-dropping 1,650 fewer Early Action (EA) applicants this year. This will speed up a trend of EA at Tulane becoming hyper-selective, especially relative to how the admissions plan used to be at Tulane prior to Tulane bringing back ED a few years ago.

As a result, Tulane anticipates marginally more offers of admission for deferred students and Regular Decision applicants than in the past. The overall admission rate for Early Action applicants is just ten percent, which is half the EA admission rate in 2017.

Overall, Tulane is planning for its Class of 2026 freshman class to be roughly 1,750 students.

Forty-six percent of Tulane’s Early Action admitted students for the Class of 2026 identify as BIPOC, which is a 70% increase, over twenty-seven percent of students who identified as such in 2017.

Knight also notes that Early Decision II is currently available through January 12 for students who are starting a new application for admission or for students who have already applied Early Action. Students who have already applied may switch to EDII via their Green Wave portals.

What Needs to Change in College Admissions

Posted on June 3, 2021 by Patrick O'Connor 1 Comment

The ups and downs of the quarantine gave college admissions officers and school counselors a taste of application life to come, as the birth rate for high school graduates continues to slide, and the need to develop new approaches to recruit students increases. As the profession continues to try and improve college access, and knowing that small differences can make a big difference, here are some considerations for both sides of the desk to ponder this summer over a well-deserved glass of lemonade:

Colleges—move your deadline dates. November 1 (early applications), January 1 (regular applications), and May 1 (many deposits) are all big dates in the college application world—and they all fell on a Sunday or a holiday this year. I don’t understand this, since the admissions offices weren’t open, and the vast majority of high school seniors had no access to counselors or other application helpers the day of and before the deadlines.

This needs to change. Yes, students need to be responsible, and should learn to plan ahead—but perhaps that lesson is better applied to deadlines for things they’ve done before (like papers), not with things they are doing for the first time (like applying to college). The first Tuesday in November, the second Tuesday in January, and the first Tuesday in May would solve this problem nicely, increasing the quality and quantity of applications to boot. Georgia Tech made the move, and they get kaboodles of applications. It’s an easy, but important, change.

High Schools—stop working holidays. Moving the January 1 deadline to a date when high schools are in session is also overdue for school counselors, who have taken a serious shellacking this year with all the student mental health issues arising from COVID. School counselors have always been overworked, but never able to use the December holidays to recover, since they were expected to help their students make January 1 college deadlines.

It’s time to take a stand. Assuming the colleges move their deadlines, counselors need to learn to let go. Send a note to all senior families early in November, letting them know your vacation is—well, a vacation. If you really can’t let go of your students for that long—or if the colleges unwisely cling to January 1– set two days of vacation for online office hours, and take a breath all the other days. You have mastered online office hours this year. Let them be your friend.

Colleges—keep innovating. One (and perhaps the only) upside of the quarantine was the ability of college admissions offices to adapt major chunks of their traditional approach to recruitment. Test optional, drive-thru tours, and online high school visits suggested it might be OK for everyone to get their hopes up, that some real college admissions reform was in the air.

Yes. Well.

In a post-vaccine world, we see more signs of returning to “normal” than creating new normal. Reinventing the entire admissions process is no easy feat, to be sure, but how hard might it be for admissions offices to spend half a day this summer doing “What ifs” to one part of the application process? Do that for five years, and you have a new admissions paradigm, and a more accessible one—the thing you say you keep wanting.

High schools— mental health and college access aren’t either/or. I will legitimately blow my top if I read one more post from a high school counselor insisting that the increase in COVID-related mental health needs makes it impossible to do any effective college counseling.

School counseling as a profession has long been showing a mental health bias at the expense of quality college counseling, and this year just seems to have widened the gap. Counselor training programs plant the seeds of this bias— training programs devote about 7 classes to mental health training, and none to college counseling—and all of this must stop, if only because the dichotomy is a false one.

Discouraged, depressed high school students light up like a hilltop church on Christmas Eve when I tell them college gives them a fresh start to life and learning, proof enough that college counseling affects mental health. That, plus the American School Counselor Association says college counseling is part of the job. Counselors truly are overworked, so they can’t do everything they want in any part of counseling. That said, college can still be part of a key to a better self. More counselors need to see that, and act on it.

Everyone—stop beating up on the Ivies. The Ivies and their equally tough-to-get-into institutions largely decided to go test optional this year. For some reason, this gave a lot of students with B averages the hope that they too could pahk the cah in the yahd, now that they didn’t have to reveal their test scores.

So—more students applied to the Ivies this year than last year. The Ivies didn’t admit more students this year than last year. That means their admit rate had to go down, and more students were denied.

That isn’t news—it’s math. And if you want to blame the Ivies for encouraging students to apply who didn’t really stand a chance of getting in, you’re going to need to make a thousand more jackets for that club. If you think the Ivies take too few Pell-eligible students, say that. If you think they admit too many legacies, stay that. But don’t beat them up for proving the laws of basic ratios. Any other college in their shoes would have to do the same thing. (Besides, it’s the national media who has left our society with the impression that there are only 25 colleges in America.)

Everyone—about Kiddos. It’s no secret that college is largely a time of youth, especially with the expansion of adolescence into the early twenties and beyond. But college is also a time to help young people embrace the opportunities of adulthood, skills and attitudes that sometimes require setting the desires of self to one side.

This goal would be more easily achieved if we saw students—and if they saw themselves– as capable of embracing a larger sense of self by referring to them as students, not Kiddos. They don’t need to grow up in a hurry or, with the right kind of help, succumb to the media images of college choice as a high stakes pressure cooker. But they also need something more than just a pat on the head and a verbal affirmation that’s the equivalent of a lollipop. Let’s try calling them students.

Amherst Shares Latest Admissions Stats

Posted on January 19, 2021 by admissions.blog 14 Comments

Amherst College received 857 Early Decision (ED) applicants this admissions cycle, which represents a forty-three percent increase over last year. This led to a twenty-five percent ED admit rate, which is down from a thirty-two percent ED admit rate last year.

This news came from Cate Granger Zolkos, Amherst’s Dean of Admission. As a result of the application increase, Amherst expects forty-five percent of its Class of 2025 will be drawn from its ED admits (up from thirty-nine percent last year). Meanwhile, 13,930 students applied to Amherst Regular Decision (a thirty-one percent increase over last year).

In other news, Amherst has announced that for domestic Early Decision applicants this fall, a whopping forty-five percent applied without testing (test-optional) and a full thirty-nine percent of Amherst’s ED admits were test-optional. Among all Regular Decision applicants, forty-nine percent have applied test-optional. With the applications flooding in, Amherst will continue to be test-optional for high school seniors applying during the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 admissions cycles.

At some point before the 2023-2024 admissions cycle Amherst will evaluate whether the test-optional policy will remain in place permanently.

What to make of Tufts’ Early Decision Deadline Extension

Posted on November 17, 2020 by admissions.blog Leave a Comment

While occasionally colleges extend application deadlines in response to hurricanes or other natural disasters, Tufts’ announcement in October that it would extend its Early Decision I (EDI) deadline from November 1 to November 17 in response to COVID-19 and various natural disasters didn’t pass the smell test.

It’s one thing to be or appear charitable by giving struggling students a few extra days or a week to complete their applications; yet, giving every applicant seventeen extra days to submit applications EDI is an extreme act that reeked of desperation.

Now, we are getting Common App data that supports our suspicions.

Inside Higher Ed shared that Common Application colleges are seeing average application declines of eight percent this fall. Meanwhile applications for first-generation students and those eligible for fee waivers are down sixteen percent so far. A full sixty percent of Common App colleges are seeing application declines. In addition Common App colleges and universities in the Northeast and Midwest experienced the steepest declines in application volume – down a full fourteen percent compared to last year.

While we don’t yet know if Tufts is one of the schools with application declines, by pushing its EDI deadline out nearly three weeks the university is signaling that it at least wanted more EDI applications to review for some reason (it could be a dip in application numbers, some other internal application target not being met by late October, and/or just the desire to make more money – after all, Tufts does charge $75/application).

This was all expected and is one of the main reasons why colleges were so fast to go SAT- or ACT-optional for members of the high school class of 2021. Colleges rightly worried that pandemic closure-induced job/income losses and the ongoing pandemic itself would scare students away from wanting to live and learn in close quarters far from home. This is an acute worry at second tier or lower colleges that cost a pretty penny to attend. Interestingly, with so many colleges now SAT- and ACT-optional it is likely that the biggest name colleges are benefitting most from the test-optional trend while others like Tufts that have more limited name-brand appeal are more likely to be overlooked by students newly-emboldened to apply to reach colleges they would have never considered if their SAT or ACT scores were any good.

For instance, let’s say you are a straight A student with a 1010 on the SAT; in a typical year you would never apply to anything other than your state university an a few others with relatively low test score averages. This year, you say to yourself, “I might as well put in an app or two to Harvard and Yale since they won’t look at my scores.” Notice how Tufts (or other similar schools) was not mentioned in such a hypothetical student’s line of reasoning. That’s because most college applicants have never heard of Tufts. Those who have are also probably holding off on applying EDI to Tufts when the school also offers EDII. This is because many typical EDI Tufts applicants are now going to try and swing for the fences at Brown, Penn, Princeton, or Harvard. Tufts likely finds itself in a doughnut hole of a situation.

January 2021 Update: Tufts is thrilled with itself because overall it got thirty-five percent more applications this admissions cycle compared to last year. Yet, in Tufts’ self-congratulatory press release, Tufts attempts to memory hole the fact that pushing back its ED deadline nearly three weeks probably played at least a small role in the increase. The main driver, of course, was Tufts’s decision to go test-optional, which resulted in HALF of Tufts applicants this cycle opting not to submit ACT or SAT scores with their applications! It will be interesting to learn what percentage of those accepted ultimately did or did not submit their SAT or ACT scores. As things stand now, it’s pretty clear that Tufts simply wanted to drive up its perceived selectivity as much as possible by driving down its top line acceptance rate and used test-optional applicants to do so. Should Tufts ultimately accept a significant percentage of its Class of 2025 via the test-optional pathway, how selective can Tufts really be considered? Maybe its acceptance rate will plummet, but, objectively, it will no longer be a college that prizes academic excellence above many other factors. This is because assessing a student by his or her grades in high school as the only measure of academic achievement denies reality that is obvious to most astute observers: most American high schools have become environments of rampant grade inflation and short-term self-esteem boosting and very little more. While SAT and ACT scores are imperfect measures of academic excellence, they are a least objective standardized measures that allow colleges to compare what applicants know upon submitting their application regardless of what curriculum applicants experienced in high school. Test optional colleges may still reject more students than they accept, but what they are basing their admissions decisions on is more akin to what those holding a velvet rope at a night club base their admissions decisions on than any sort of academic achievement metric.