I find many of Michelle Kretzschmar's blog posts on DIYCollegeRankings.com interesting. She mostly likes to highlight schools where the four-year graduation rates are at least 50 percent and 50 percent of applicants get in.
However, in this particular post, she highlights the schools where LESS than 50 percent get in, which is, believe it or not, 146 colleges and universities. Here is what she says:
"The group that I think most people are interested in are the 146 colleges with acceptance rates less than 49% but have a graduation rate of 49% or better. That’s only nine percent of all public and private non-profit institutions. These are arguably the hardest colleges to get into. It includes 35 public institutions and 111 private. 56 are classified as Liberal Arts Colleges and 51 are Universities with very high research activity."
Read the full post, with admissions stats, here:
Now, mind you, this data is almost a year old, and probably reflects acceptance rates TWO years ago. In general, you have to reduce each acceptance rate by at LEAST two percent, and in some cases, much more; for example, Tulane's acceptance rate has gone from 20 percent to 13 percent in two years. Stanford's has gone from 6 percent to 4 percent and after this year, Stanford will STOP publishing acceptance rates, because so many people are angry about them. Expect the most elite schools to follow....
So why is this all happening? Please read this Quora post carefully. For a more detailed explanation, I HIGHLY recommend the book by Frank Bruni entitled, "Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be".
And what can we do about it? We can CONTROL the part of the process we can control, e.g. GPA, test scores, rigor of the curriculum, demonstrated interest, extracurricular activities, and visual curation. (Sophomores, if you don't know what all this means; don't worry; it's coming.) Juniors, you should know this stuff COLD by now. ALL of this comes together in the flawless applications and essays we will create that together tell a compelling STORY about why your student deserves admission to the schools he or she has chosen.
My students have received admissions offers from the vast majority of these schools. But your kids HAVE to stay the course...(Here's looking at you, juniors! :)