College Acceptance Trends 2023
For more than a decade now we have known that schools like Yale, Stanford, and MIT have such low acceptance rates that even extremely accomplished students cannot assume they will be admitted. In this post-COVID, test-optional environment, I’ve been applying that concept to a much wider swath of schools than those, and I find myself saying this word a lot: “unpredictable.”
That is, “Outcomes at this school are unpredictable right now. This school deferred an unprecedented number of applicants this fall, and we don’t yet know how many of those students will ultimately be accepted this spring.” And I am not talking about Yale anymore. This is in reference to schools like Clemson, the University of Georgia, and the University of Virginia.
We are going to have a lot more data in a few more weeks as the remaining colleges release their regular deadline decisions for seniors graduating in the class of 2023, but in the meantime, let’s review some specific examples of the record number of deferrals we saw last fall from early action and how we see those playing out in terms of, yes, record-low acceptance rates this spring.
Is there a correlation between high deferral rates and low acceptance rates?
CLEMSON DEFERRAL & OUT OF STATE NUMBERS 2023
For the class of 2023, Clemson received 60,122 applications and of those accepted 22,879 applicants. Of the 4,494 freshmen who enrolled, 51% were in-state applicants. Of the 60,122 applications received, 26,000 were in the early round. Clemson deferred 17,000 of those 26,000 early applicants and rejected 500. Clemson issued final decisions in the regular admission round, and its overall acceptance rate has dropped to 36% from 2022’s 49% and 2021’s 62%.
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA (UGA) DEFERRAL NUMBERS 2023 AND OUT-OF-STATE ACCEPTANCE RATES
The University of Georgia more than doubled its early action pool of applicants in the last decade and increased in size by 21% in just the last year. For the class of 2023, UGA accepted 32% (or 8,253 of 26,001) of early applicants and deferred a whopping 44%. Georgia has one of the most transparent admissions offices (thank you, UGA), and it shared on March 17, 2023 that it admitted 15,340 applicants of the 43,700 total applicants (early admission and regular decision combined). UGA also shared a stat that many universities make difficult to find, and that is its out of state acceptance rate, which was 47.7% for in-state applicants and 25.8% for out-of-state and international applicants combined).
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA (UVA) DEFERRAL RATES AND OUT OF STATE ACCEPTANCE RATES 2023
The University of Virginia accepted only 12% of out-of-state students in the early action round, down from 18% the year before. It also had a 12% acceptance rate for out-of-state students in the regular decision round. Ultimately, UVA deferred 4,934 out-of-state applicants and admitted only 3.6% of those (180) (compared to the 8.9% of in-state deferred applicants who received an offer).
THE SHEER NUMBERS ARE OVERWHELMING, BUT THE STORY IS MORE COMPLEX.
Why are College Admissions now so “Unpredictable”?
Record numbers of applications: We are still in a post-covid application boom. Overall, applications through Common App have increased 30% from three years ago (the 2019-2020 cycle).
Students applying to more schools: The increase in overall applications is not just because more kids are applying to college (a good thing when we see an increase in first generation and other under-represented students applying); it’s because, in large part, the same kids are applying to more colleges (applications per student were up 8% in the three-year period).
Test optional movement: This “over applying” phenomenon is chronologically tied to the test optional movement, and I believe it is also causal. I see it in my own practice: schools that would have been unattainable on the numbers in a pre-covid/test required world are now theoretically reachable in a test optional world, starting in the 2020-2021 cycle. The 80% of colleges nationwide that required test scores pre-pandemic plummeted to 5%, and students started to apply to more and more schools. The test-optional/test blind movement is not going anywhere, and I believe it is a large reason for both the increase in applications and the lack of predictability for colleges and, accordingly, for students.
Protecting their yield: An increasing priority for schools is protecting their yield: the percent of students who accept an offer of admission. The higher their yield percent, the better for their rankings, reputation, and financial health. To illustrate this, Harvard’s and MIT’s yields hover around 85%, while Duke’s yield is about 56%. Due to the high stakes of yield protection, schools increasingly look beyond GPA and test scores to determine the likelihood the student will accept an offer. This includes evaluating a wide range of inputs such as weighing a student’s supplemental essays where they describe why the college is truly the right fit for them, tracking school visits, website clicks, and even turning to sophisticated data models that help predict whether a student with certain stats/income/geographic location will say “yes” regardless of that individual student’s behavior. In the sea of applications, we see yield protection play out when an overqualified student gets rejected from the same school at which her lower stats counterpart is accepted. Colleges are protecting their yield by rejecting or deferring students they think won’t ultimately enroll because their stats are too high.
THE BOTTOM LINE: MORE APPLICATIONS ARRIVING AT COLLEGES = MORE DEFERRALS AND (AT LEAST FOR NOW) FEWER ACCEPTANCES FOR STUDENTS.
We are watching and waiting for final admissions decisions for the Class of 2023, with an eye carefully trained on these schools:
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (USC) DEFERRAL AND ACCEPTANCE RATES 2023
Last year the University of Southern California accepted 12% of its 69,000 total applicants. In the fall of 2022 it saw an increase of 16% in applications overall, with 40,000 early applications and 80,000 regular decision applications for a first-year class of 3,400. USC deferred 94% of its early application pool.
AUBURN ACCEPTANCE RATES 2023
Auburn, whose Class of 2023 acceptance rate was only 44% in fall 2022 (with only 9% of that group students who did not supply test scores), when it typically has an overall acceptance rate around 70%. It reported an increase of 5% in its early applicant pool from the 2022 cohort.
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA ACCEPTANCE RATES 2023
The University of South Carolina had an acceptance rate of 62% in 2022. In 2023 it received a record-breaking 46,000 applications – a 32% increase from just three years ago. The university has not yet released data around EA or RD acceptance rates, but it is likely to track along with other popular southeastern colleges like Clemson and Auburn, and we anticipate a plummeting acceptance rate.
How do I build a college list that includes schools I can predict I will be admitted to?
There is hope! Along with overall acceptance rate, GPA, and test scores, use our CTK best practices as you build your college list:
Do not rely exclusively on schools whose acceptance rates have dropped precipitously in recent years - This includes schools like Clemson, Auburn, the University of South Carolina, the University of Georgia, and Tampa.
No matter how high achieving the student, do not assume acceptance to highly selective colleges - I never tell a student not to apply to a dream school. I do not play the game of only “permitting” my students to apply to schools where I am certain they will gain admission. I do counsel students to ensure they have enough schools on their lists that are predictable wins and that they would be happy to attend.
Know whether a school includes early decision in its offerings, as that heavily influences the regular decision pool - Many schools, including most public schools, do not even offer an early decision round and thus don’t play that particular game of admitting a large pool of students who are pre-committed. If Brandeis and the University of Maryland have an overall acceptance rate in the mid 30s%, but Brandeis accepts 56% of its students in a binding ED round, Maryland, which doesn’t offer ED, is a more predictable choice than Brandeis for the regular decision round. If you can make the financial and personal commitment to ED, use it strategically (in both round one and two, if necessary).
Focus on major - A computer science or engineering major cannot rely on overall acceptance rates. This fall I saw one of my highest stats students deferred from Purdue engineering when multiple students with much lower stats were accepted to other majors at Purdue. I had one of my highest-achieving students ever rejected from nearly all of the most selective schools for computer science when students in other majors gained acceptance to those same schools. That said, be cautious about applying to an “easy” major and then hoping to transfer. Many colleges make it nearly impossible to transfer between schools or even majors.
Pay attention to out-of-state acceptance rates - The University of Texas, University of North Carolina, University of Washington, University of Virginia, University of Georgia, University of Michigan, and University of Florida have admissions policies designed to heavily favor in-state applicants. Ascertain out-of-state acceptance rates– don’t take SCOIR or Naviance or Niche or any other secondary source data at face value. Dig into the school’s Common Data Set and its own web site to parse the real information you need: out-of-state acceptance rates.
Know your college admissions market - Are you an upper middle class student from New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, or California? Know that you will have a much lower acceptance likelihood than, for example, a student from a state like Nevada or Arkansas, or an under-resourced and high-achieving student. Adjust your expectations accordingly and don’t assume that an overall acceptance rate = your acceptance likelihood.
Learn which colleges track demonstrated interest - Back to yield protection: if a college tracks a student’s demonstrated interest (and not all do), play the game, and play it smart. Show up at college fairs, email admissions reps, sign up for optional interviews, click on email links, and, after you have applied, keep checking your portal and emails. Engage, engage, engage, and keep doing so all the way until you have an acceptance in hand.
