As UPrep’s director of college counseling, I am privy to the inside scoop about an incredible range of colleges that produce outstanding graduates. Yet, when some people think about the college admissions process, they are primarily focused on the hyperbole around acceptance rates and a small number of colleges they deem as being worthy of acclaim. Their attention, and understandably so, is often captured by news articles touting all-time low admission rates. Looking at you, Wall Street Journal: “Many top colleges report record-low acceptance rates.” While selectivity sells, the truth—the record levels of accessibility to college—does not.

Due to the academic and extracurricular foundation a UPrep education provides, we have decades’ worth of data demonstrating our students’ collegiate success at close to 400 different colleges and universities in 44 states and 10 countries. In the College Counseling Office, we understand that finding the best-fit college is a match to be made, not a prize to be won.

If I were ever crowned king of college admissions, here are a few of the more accurate headlines about the current college admission landscape that I would mandate during my reign.

Highly Selective vs. Highly Acceptive

In 2002, the eight members of the Ivy League plus MIT, Duke, the University of Chicago, and Stanford received about 175,000 applications. In 2023, they received more than 600,000 applications, with an almost equal number of spots in their class as in 2002. Yes, the application volume and competition has increased at about 100 of the 3,000 four-year colleges in the United States. And at this small group of colleges, acceptances are at record-low levels.

At the majority of colleges, however, the acceptance rate hovers at 70 percent.

Unfortunately, hard work alone does not guarantee admission to America’s most selective colleges. When all the applicants have worked hard, earned strong grades in rigorous classes, and are deserving of admission, smaller factors play a greater role in who gets admitted. These factors often include exceptional athletic or musical prowess, legacy status, or geographic diversity. Simply put, there is a traffic jam of applicants trying to gain admission into a small number of “highly selective” colleges, which is a term that was recently rebranded as “highly rejective.”

The Early Bird Gets the Worm

Many of the parents of the students with whom I work recall applying to two or three colleges. They usually applied in January and were notified of a decision by the end of March. At UPrep, a student typically applies to nine colleges. When college applications moved online, the average number of applications a student submitted increased. Gone were applications submitted with the help of clunky typewriters and correction tape and in their place were online applications that could be submitted to several colleges with the simple click of a mouse.

As a result, colleges needed to figure out a way to process this increased volume of applications. To cope with this quantity, they relied on promoting different application plans, many of which have early deadlines. The most popular of these plans is Early Action (EA), a process whereby a student can submit an application by a designated date (usually in November) and receive a decision one month later. The EA student, if admitted, is not bound to enroll and they can apply to other colleges via EA, too.

Students can also apply to one college through Early Decision (ED). An ED applicant applies to one college in November and is notified of their decision a month later. If the ED student is admitted, they must attend this college. A third process, the Regular Decision (RD) application process, entails a January application deadline, with a decision being rendered in late March.

Many colleges admit a greater percentage of their EA and ED applicants than their RD applicants. There are also several other types of application plans that are based on an institution’s geography. For example, Canadian universities typically have later application deadlines, but some schools in Europe have earlier dates. The greater array of application plans often makes applicants feel, as a student once told me, “like they are looking at the vast menu at The Cheesecake Factory!”

Channel Your Inner Shakespeare

My mother, a librarian, placed great emphasis on reading and writing. “Written communication,” she liked to say, “is a skill you must master in order to succeed in life.” It is also a skill college applicants must master in order to be successful when applying to college.

Most colleges have increased the number of essays a student must write to apply. At a crucial time in adolescent development, the essay allows students to reflect on who they are and who they want to become. This reflection exercise allows students to understand their strengths and the lessons they have learned. As a result, they are launched off to college with a strong sense of what they value.

Our students are sometimes shocked by how deep a response the essay questions demand.

For example, a college where our students often apply once asked students to share what was the best lesson they learned in life and why. I recall reading a student’s response to this prompt with the following line: “I did not want to be Jesus, but everyone voted
for me.”

He was chosen for the role of Jesus in a church play where he learned that titles—even when bestowed based on nothing more than chance—can be harmful. His friends began treating him more reverently, which he knew he had not earned. This experience made this young man a much more inclusive student leader at UPrep because he questioned authority based on title, not merit and work ethic.

Standardized Testing: To Submit or Not—That is the Question

Twenty years ago, almost every college required that students take the SAT or ACT as part of their admissions process. Today, the majority of colleges are test optional, meaning students do not need to submit standardized testing results as part of their application. Most colleges in America practice holistic review when they read an admissions application, which means they consider the whole applicant, rather than focusing on one factor.

There are exceptions to the test-optional policy. On one end of the spectrum, the University of California system, Reed College, and Washington State are test blind (test-free), which means they will not accept standardized test score submissions from any applicant. On the other end of the test optional spectrum are a small number of schools on the East Coast, including Dartmouth, Brown, the University of Florida, and Georgia Tech, where test scores are required.

It is not uncommon for students to submit their test scores to some colleges where their scores are at or above the mean and withhold their scores from the colleges where their scores are below the mean. We spend a lot of time in the College Counseling Office helping students discern which colleges they should send their scores to and which colleges they should apply to as test optional.

The Journey is the Destination

As the post-pandemic era has ushered in a wider range of testing policies, we know that test scores are only one aspect of a student’s college application. A strong academic record is far more important. Having high test scores does not ensure admission to competitive colleges—especially if the academic and co-curricular record of a student is not strong. Commitment to excellence in classes and one or two activities is far more likely to help a student gain admission than high test scores and average or below-average grades with scattered activities.

I recently reconnected with an alum who demonstrated this persistence and exceptional strength in a specific area while at UPrep. Their extracurricular throughline during high school was the Girl Scouts, where their culminating Gold Award project was about keeping kids safe online. They continued to work on this endeavor with their UPrep LaunchPad project, and they turned this work into a nationally recognized nonprofit. Due to this work, they were named as a Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient this fall.

To me, stories such as these are the most beautiful part of my job. I see students working toward their goals, and I witness students reflecting on what has shaped them. I am privy to hearing about our alumni who attend a wonderful range of colleges that produce outstanding graduates. Yes, it is a competitive time in college admissions at a small subset of schools, but our students all apply to a balanced list of colleges. This means they apply to schools they will gain admission to, schools they may attain admission to, and schools where it is much more difficult for anyone to be accepted.

Of course, college is not an intrinsic goal; it is merely a momentary achievement. Education represents a treasured opportunity. Keeping a sense of perspective about the great fortune our students have to attend college is important. Less than eight percent of the world’s citizens have college degrees. We are lucky to live in a nation with so many higher education opportunities for all, and that is the headline I want every publication to run.