Admissions Blog

Northwestern Releases Regular Decisions, Class of 2027 Statistics

Posted on March 24, 2023 by Craig

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.

Rice admissions decisions released March 27

Posted on March 23, 2023 by admissions.blog

The wait is almost over for high school seniors who applied Regular Decision to Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Rice will release admission, scholarship, and financial aid decisions for each Regular Decision applicant in his or her Rice Admission Student Portal on Monday, March 27 after 5:00 p.m. Central Time.

Dr. Yvonne M. Romero da Silva, Rice’s Vice President for Enrollment, encourages every Regular Decisions applicant to log in to their portal ahead of Monday’s release to ensure ease of access, and if a student should have any problem logging in, he or she should contact the admissions office at [email protected] for assistance.

Rice University is a private research university located in Houston, Texas. It was founded in 1912 and has since become known for its strong focus on undergraduate education, innovative research, and world-class faculty. With an undergraduate enrollment of around 4,250 students, Rice University is a small, tight-knit community that offers a highly personalized educational experience. The university has consistently been ranked among the top 20 national universities by U.S. News & World Report and is known for its excellent programs in engineering, natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

The university’s campus spans 300 acres and features a mix of modern and historic buildings, including some designed by renowned architects such as Michael Graves and Philip Johnson. In addition to its academic programs, Rice University is home to a variety of research centers and institutes, including the Baker Institute for Public Policy, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, and the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology. The university is also home to numerous cultural and recreational facilities, such as the Moody Center for the Arts, the Rice Media Center, and the Rice University Art Gallery.

Good luck to those who’ve applied to Rice’s Class of 2027.

A Primer for College Admissions Decisions

Posted on March 2, 2022 by Patrick O'Connor

We’re about three weeks away from the height of the release of college admissions decisions, the time of year when students pull their hair out either waiting to hear or musing over what they’ve heard. Along with trying to ease student angst, college admissions veterans know they can expect an inbox full of articles featuring the following content:

Record High Applications at Highly Selective Schools
Highly Selective Schools Report New Lows in Admit Rates (yes, these two are related, but most Americans don’t understand this, thanks to the way we teach math in this country, so…)
Calls for Equity in Admissions Follow Record Application Year

We can expect these articles because they are written every year, partly to make an official record of what actually has happened, partly to supply some kind of solace to students who didn’t get the admissions news they had hoped (“See Son? It was harder than ever to get in”) or to fatten the praise of those who did (“Wow! I beat the odds in the Most. Competitive. Year. Ever!”)

To balance these “the sky is falling” articles, I write one that tries to keep everyone on an even keel, so they can provide some stability to the students and parents who are new at this, or who are doing it again, and forgot what it felt like the first time. Hardly anyone notices the piece I write—it’s apparently more fun to be out there on rocky seas than to be safe in the harbor—but in the interest of trying to offer some support, here we go:

Not all applications are created equal. A college that reports a 5 percent admission rate doesn’t mean a particular student’s odds of getting in are 5 percent; it means the college admits 5 out of every 100 applications it receives. Put another way, a student with a C average applying to Swarthmore doesn’t have the same “chance” of being admitted as a student with a 3.9. Juniors should keep this in mind.
Much of the college experience depends far more on what the student puts into the experience than where they experience it. A former student was admitted to a Seven Sisters college, which then proceeded to gap her in financial aid. She ended up at a public university, where she basically ran the Global Studies program where she earned a degree. This included fulfilling her desire to do a semester abroad in South Africa, even though her college didn’t offer study abroad there. She simply registered as a guest student at another college that did. Tell me she would have had any of those opportunities at the Seven Sisters school. Go ahead.
Notions of the need for change in the college admission process are overblown. It takes about 20 minutes to apply to most colleges, since they require neither essays nor teacher letters. Since that’s about the same amount of time it takes to get to another level in Mario Brothers 812, it’s pretty safe to say most students can complete this task without life-altering stress.
Notions of change in the college admission process are simplistic, Part I. Admissions observers had a field day when COVID drove many competitive colleges to go test optional, a change that was gaining steam even before 2019. Two years later, we now find a rise in “test optional strategies” from test prep advisors who will advise students on which tests to take, and which scores to send—all for a fee. Similarly, we see some competitive colleges admitting fewer—far fewer—test optional students than those who submit scores, but deciding not to report that to the major public, since the “test optional” moniker is so highly valued. The result? A change that was supposed to make applying to college easier has made it harder in many cases, except at colleges where the admit rates were generous to begin with—and those are the schools where applying takes 20 minutes, and application reform wasn’t necessary.
Notions of change in the college admissions process are simplistic, Part II. Undeterred by the lack of real parity brought by many test optional policies, many reform advocates are now turning to essays and teacher letters of recommendation as the next parts to go in the current process. This leads to two questions:
- If you take out all parts of the current application process (some are even saying grades shouldn’t have to be reported), what do you replace them with?
- Do you honestly think whatever you answered in the last question can’t also be gamed to favor the rich? Interviews? Community Service? Cake Baking? Put any life experience or skill in the mix of college applications, and in a year, a horde of tutors will crop up that will give an edge to students who can afford their services. That will be very hard to beat.
My annual plea for more counselor training in college counseling. If it’s safe to conclude that any admissions process will favor students who understand it, it’s reasonable to conclude it will favor any student who works with a counselor who understands it. So, instead of changing the admissions process, how about leveling the playing field by making sure all counselors receive deep training in college counseling? Less than 5 percent of all school counselor training programs devote any time to instruction in college counseling, and that sometimes only consists of how to register for the SAT. Private school college counselors have greater access to professional development that keeps their already keen college counseling skills sharp. Most public school counselors got their counselor training in a program that gave them no college counseling skills at all. Which group needs to be better trained in the first place?

That should be all you need to make it through the media madness of the next month. Release the hounds.

What Needs to Change in College Admissions

Posted on June 3, 2021 by Patrick O'Connor

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.

COVID Changed Admissions a Little. Let’s Change it More.

Posted on March 5, 2021 by Patrick O'Connor

This isn’t the week to be a high school student. Statewide assessment is going on across the country, and thanks to social distancing policies, at least some students are taking the ACT on gym bleachers, six feet apart, straddling a wooden plank across their legs and using it as a desk. Among other things, the results of this ACT will be used in some states to decide which students get merit scholarship money.

Students in Michigan are about a month away from likely doing the same thing. State officials reached out to the US Department of Education and asked for a waiver from the required testing in this year of COVID mayhem. Apparently the request got there when Betsy Devos was still in charge, because it was denied.

School counselors really thought we had won the day when over 1350 colleges decided to continue their test-optional admission policies for this year’s juniors—in fact, many colleges have extended this policy for an additional two years. This kind of extension takes a little bit of courage, since it was made before colleges finished the current admissions cycle. Either they’re hoping for the best, or they’re seeing what so many colleges have long known—testing doesn’t mean all that much, and once you no longer have it,

In our delirium, it seems we forgot to talk to government officials, who are asking for test results that are sure to disappoint. Early test results in the last year show student achievement is down. That may be for all kinds of reasons, but when you make a student take the ACT on their lap, it’s pretty likely that’s not going to show their best effort—so we can expect to see more of the same.

School counselors aren’t a greedy bunch by nature, but there are more than a few that look at the adoption of test optional policies and sigh. It was just a year ago when more than a few college admissions wonks—deans and directors included—were truly excited at the prospect of creating a brand new admissions system that was cleaner, fairer, and easier. Ample articles are out there showing how wealth skews every single tool used in the current system, from grades to test scores to essays to letters of recommendation to extra curriculars. When the COVID quarantine came along, veteran admission watchers thought “At last! Here’s the big thing that’s going to require us to rethink the whole process.”

That didn’t exactly happen. Since many of the changes affecting admissions also affected campus life and methods of instruction, college administrators were too concerned with keeping beds full and classrooms open to consider changing most admissions policies. Figuring out how to build a class without test scores proved to be challenging enough; changing anything else was perceived to be a dice roll no one could take right now, unless they were willing to risk the college’s entire future on it.

There’s still a lot to do to bring in this fall’s class, but it isn’t too early for colleges to hunker down now and think about The Big Move they didn’t have time for this year. Understanding that most admission changes are glacial, admission offices can use the lessons they learned from the quick change to test optional and build on them with a more strategic approach for other changes. This could lead to a new model of admission for this year’s high school sophomores. It’s already clear most colleges that went test-optional aren’t going to go back. Top that decision off with some strategic planning, and careful study of some schools who did make huge strides this year (I’m looking at you, UCLA), and there’s still a chance to either even the playing field of admission, or openly admit it isn’t even, and develop the protocols needed to create the exceptions that will make it more fair.

Meanwhile, if someone could just tell government policy makers why they went test optional, and why it makes sense for states to do so as well? They might as well make the students complete the tests with quill pens.

Amherst Shares Latest Admissions Stats

Posted on January 19, 2021 by admissions.blog

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.

Boston College Regular Decision Acceptance Rate Now 22%

Posted on March 16, 2020 by admissions.blog

Boston College will notify Regular Decision applicants of their admissions decisions via email on Thursday evening, March 19, 2020. Admitted students in the United States will be mailed acceptance packets in the days that follow. Admitted students with permanent addresses overseas, and those not earning admission, will receive email notifications only.

Boston College had 1,325 spots to fill from a Regular Decision applicant pool of 26,700. To hit its enrollment goals, BC produced a Regular Decision acceptance rate of twenty-two percent. The mean composite SAT for Regular Decision admits was 1467 and the mean composite ACT score was 34. Admitted students come from forty-nine U.S. states and two US territories and seventy-eight different countries.

Overall, Boston College received roughly 29,400 applications for 2,325 openings in the Class of 2024. One thousand of these spaces were filled via Early Decision, which resulted in an ED admissions rate of thirty-seven percent. BC switched from Early Action to Early Decision during this admissions cycle. Last year, BC’s overall acceptance rate (when it offered EA and RD) was twenty-seven percent.

Meanwhile, BC will offer 6,500 students a spot on it waiting list, which the university acknowledges, “feels large;” yet, BC felt it “necessary given the many uncertainties facing society this year.”