Heightened competition and dropping acceptance rates made college a concern for high school seniors. Photo credit: iStock.com
The class of 2024 faced record competition during this college admissions season as acceptance rates at top colleges continued to decline.
At the University of California, Berkeley, the acceptance rate fell from 17.5% in 2020 to 11.6% in 2024 – according to the UC system – continuing a gradual decline spanning at least three decades. Berkeley received 88,064 applications in 2020 and 125,910 in 2024.
Other selective UCs like UCLA and UC San Diego also have seen acceptance rates drop since 2020. And on the East Coast, many Ivy League schools saw competition steepen, like Yale, which received a record number of applications and saw its acceptance rate drop from 4.5% last year to 3.7% in 2024.
“It’s going to be competitive for students looking at highly selective schools,” college planning adviser Susanna Ordway said. “Now, those schools are getting more and more applications.”
The Common App, a non-profit organization that connects more than 1,000 colleges to applicants from around the world, reports that the overall number of applications is surging.
Its data shows the number of first-year applications on their platform surged nearly 7% from 5,264,766 applications in the 2019-20 admissions season to 7,327,247 in 2023-24. Applicants also are applying to more colleges on average, increasing from 5.23 colleges per applicant in 2019-20 to 5.70 per applicant this year.
Some class of 2024 students like Lachlan Guo said that heightened competition and dropping acceptance rates made college a bigger concern in high school.
“I was thinking a lot about college for most of high school,” said the graduate of Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough. “Now, you have to do so many things like extracurriculars and winning awards to even have a shot at the top schools.”
Guo said he applied to 33 colleges. He admits that he was a more extreme example because he had broad criteria for where he wanted to go, but he feels that applying to a lot of schools is becoming the norm.
“I wanted to shoot my shot,” Guo said. “You never know what could happen. This is the only chance you get to apply to college.”
Ordway said those top schools that students like Guo aimed for are often so competitive because they are on the best-ranked colleges lists, so more people apply to them. She said she sees selective schools become more competitive every time ranking lists come out.
“A lot of schools get more competitive because more people apply to them,” Ordway explained. “It’s kind of a vicious cycle. As colleges get more competitive, they become more popular and even more people end up applying to them.”
As a result, Ordway said the number of colleges students apply to has increased. Before, the average number she saw her clients apply to was five to seven. Now, it’s often as high as 12 to 15.
Ayesha Ahmed, a rising senior at Dublin High School, said she has a list of 20 colleges she plans to apply to in the fall.
“[Twenty colleges] gives me a good amount to give me a safety barrier, but more than that would be too expensive,” Ahmed said.
Alexander Choy, who graduated from California High School in May, only applied to seven colleges because he knew where he wanted to go. However, he said the cost of filling out those applications was still expensive. The UC application fee is $80, and the cost can be even higher at some private schools.
“A lot of people I talked to applied to at least 10 colleges to keep their options open,” Choy said.
Pressure can come from fellow students
Guo, Ahmed and Choy all said the most pressure to get into college came from fellow students. They said having outstanding extracurricular activities, weaving a story in essays and skipping grades in math felt like prerequisites to get accepted because of what their peers were doing.
“My parents are pretty lenient,” Choy said. “Most of the pressure I felt personally was from my own peers. When you’re selecting classes, everyone says they’re going to take this class or that class, so you feel like you have to take these classes or you’ll be left behind.”
Choy said he felt obligated to enroll in AP Calculus because he thought it was a hidden requirement to get into the college he wanted to attend.
Guo said he would frequently hear other students discussing college-related topics and comparing themselves to others. He added that social media also played a role in creating opportunities for students to feel pressured by seeing others’ success and achievements.
Ordway said she sometimes sees parents put pressure on their kids to get into college out of concern for their futures. Furthermore, she said there is also societal pressures for students to make it into top colleges.
“I think in our society, the norm is, if you go to college and get a degree, over time you will get a better job,” the adviser said. “I believe that is true over time, but now there are a lot more options.”
College costs on the upswing
Meanwhile, the cost of college continues to climb, partly due to inflation. Last year, the California State University Board of Trustees approved a plan to hike CSU tuition rates by 6% annually for the next five years beginning in 2024. According to Bankrate, the average cost of tuition, fees, room and board at four-year universities has risen nearly $20,000 since 1980 after accounting for inflation.
Guo will be attending UCLA in the fall. Even though it’s a public school and has lower tuition rates than a private school, he said the cost is still high, especially with potential graduate school factored into the mix.
“I’m pretty privileged in that my parents are paying for my tuition, but I want to go to medical school and I don’t know if they will pay for that,” Guo said.
The overhaul of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the form that the federal government uses to determine financial aid eligibility, also made applying for financial aid much more difficult this year. The updated form did not work, creating delays and frustration in the process.
By mid-April, fewer than 29.3% of high school seniors had completed the FAFSA compared to 2023. Students who were discouraged from filling out the FAFSA will not be able to qualify for financial aid, making paying for college even more insurmountable.
Choy said he felt the cost of college also impacts middle-class students, who do not qualify for financial aid or scholarships, but for whom the cost of college is a significant burden.
“I can technically afford college, so I don’t need a ton of financial aid, but it would be nice if I had that option,” Choy said.
Ordway stressed that most colleges are not nearly as selective as the highest ranked schools and that ranking is not as important as how well the college fits the student.
“It’s not about getting into a school,” Ordway said. “It’s about getting out with a diploma and with a degree in something the student wants to be successful in while at the school.”
Andrew Ma is a 2024 graduate of California High School in San Ramon.
