Acceptances & Denials

Just because a school is in your state (USM, UMO) or has historically been easy to get into (St. Michael's) is no guarantee! There are no guarantees. We are in a time of record numbers of students applying to college, and applicants apply to too many places, making it harder for everyone to get in to college!



Take a glance at April 2007 newspaper headlines (and know that in 2013 it's only worse!):

• Boston Globe reports "Suddenly, Many Colleges are Elite; Crush of Applicants Driving Up Rejections at other Mass. schools" on April 12, 2007. Northeastern accepted only 39% of its applicants, compared with 85% 12 years ago.


• Wall Street Journal reports "Colleges Reject Record Number of Applicants" on April 4, 2007.


• "A Great Year for Ivy League Schools, Not for Applicants" appeared in the April 4, 2007 edition of the NY Times. Here's a clip:
  
  
  
  • The brutally low acceptance rates this year were a result of an avalanche of applications to top schools, which college admissions officials attributed to three factors. First, a demographic bulge is working through the nation's population - the children of the baby boomers are graduating from high school in record numbers. The federal Department of Education projects that 3.2 million students will graduate from high school this spring, compared with 3.1 million last year and 2.4 million in 1993. (The statistics project that the number of high school graduates will peak in 2008.) Another factor is that more high school students are enrolling in college immediately after high school. The third trend driving the frantic competition is that the average college applicant applies to many more colleges than in past decades.