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Easier than you think

When her boyfriend in the movie “Legally Blonde” asks her how she got into Harvard Law School, Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) responds with characteristic buoyancy.

“What? Like, it’s hard?”

The line is meant to make Witherspoon’s iconic character seem oblivious. But while the odds of getting into Harvard Law School may, in fact, be less than 1 in 10, the truth is that undergraduate admission is generally much easier than people think.

It’s not just a pop-culture punch line that getting into college is hard. Admissions offices have depended on this widespread conviction to make it seem as if being accepted is like winning the Nobel Prize. But as the number of students continues to fall — down by 1.6 million since 2010, with another 13 percent decline predicted and fewer high school graduates choosing to go on to college — the law of demand and supply has shifted much of the power to consumers.

Unlike at Harvard Law School, 78 percent of first-year applicants for undergraduate admission to public and 70 percent to private colleges and universities, on average, get in, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC. That’s the most recent available figure, which is from the fall of 2022, and has been on an upward trend — up from 68 percent and 65 percent, respectively, 10 years earlier. Though they get a disproportionate amount of attention, only 33 colleges and universities admit 10 percent or fewer of undergraduate applicants.

Separate research by the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute finds that 87 percent of nonprofit four-year colleges take half or more of the students who applied to them, up from 80 percent about 10 years ago. The median acceptance rate at all bachelor’s degree-granting universities and colleges during that period rose by 7.6 percentage points.

Because so much attention is focused on the most selective universities and colleges, however, this message has been slow to get out. More than 40 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds wrongly think it’s harder to get into college than it was for people in their parents’ generation, a 2022 Pew Research Center survey found.

Meanwhile, in response to falling numbers of students, some colleges have responded with steps that make things harder for the typical student. Principal among these is early decision, a process that raises the odds of acceptance but locks in admitted students, who are typically compelled to take whatever amount of financial aid they’re offered. That makes it something many families can’t afford.

In general, however, the news is good for people who aspire to a higher education. And that’s not the only important secret to know about the college admissions game. Even at the most selective universities and colleges, there are tricks to getting in.

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The SAT and ACT may bring back stressful memories. But nowadays, many colleges, even private ones, have moved to test-optional admissions, including Duke, Pomona, and UChicago — members of Private College 529 Plan. When building a college list, consider how well each school’s admissions process aligns with your student.

Explore a prepaid 529 plan for private college.

A kinder, gentler process

Except at the most selective universities and colleges, admissions offices are becoming kinder and gentler. At private institutions, that’s largely happening because they need to keep tuition coming in; at public ones, it’s because lawmakers are increasingly concerned about the supply of workers in their states who have college degrees.

Rather than putting them through the anxiety-producing process of resume-building, including begging for recommendations and writing essays, a growing number of universities and colleges are accepting high school seniors who haven’t even applied, as long as they meet certain benchmarks. 

This approach, called direct admission, is so far available from public universities or systems in Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin. 

About 240 private colleges also offer direct admission to students who fill out the Common Application, a standardized application for admission accepted by more than 1,000 institutions in all.

Several states have further streamlined admissions by creating single applications that can be sent to several public universities and colleges at once, such as Illinois’ One Click College Admit.

Even where the old-fashioned ways of applying to college persist, they’re getting easier. Lower-income families can ask for application fees to be waived, for instance. That can add up, since simply applying to college typically costs from $50 to $90 per student, per school. 

Public universities and colleges in several states waive college application fees for everyone during designated periods in the fall, including in Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. (Minnesota’s free application week is in June and there is never an undergraduate application fee for enrollment-strapped public universities and colleges in Montana.) To avoid being put at a competitive disadvantage, many private colleges in those states have also started waiving the fee.

Not only are they inviting students to apply for free; a growing number of colleges will pay prospective applicants to come and visit, in the form of bonus scholarships. That’s not out of the goodness of their hearts; it’s because they know that students who visit a campus are twice as likely to enroll as those who don’t. Visiting a top-choice college is an advantage to prospective students, too, who can check out the fit and vibe and get a bump in the “demonstrated interest” score that admissions officers consider. And now it often comes with cash.

Also because their competitors are doing it, more than 2,000 colleges and universities have remained test optional, meaning students can but don’t have to submit their scores from admissions tests such as the SAT and ACT — a policy most institutions adopted during the pandemic. This doesn’t mean students shouldn’t take the tests, or submit them if they do well enough to give their candidacy a boost. To see and compare the test scores of admitted applicants at any college, use the federal government’s College Scorecard website.

Secrets of the admissions office

While free applications and scholarship offers for coming to campus may be nice, they don’t necessarily increase the chances of admission. But there are things that do.

One is the aforementioned early decision. Students who apply through early admission at the more than 300 colleges that offer it are as much as twice as likely to get in — an advantage research shows is getting even bigger. The downside: Applicants admitted this way are typically required to enroll and can’t negotiate for more financial aid, making it a challenging option for families that need help paying. And application deadlines are earlier — typically in the first weeks of November.

Most people don’t know about one particular group they’d be surprised to learn has an advantage in admission at many universities and colleges: men. That’s because far fewer men than women go on to pursue higher education so, to keep the genders balanced, some colleges — including many of the most selective — admit more male than female applicants. At the University of Miami, for example, men are 4 percentage points more likely to get in. Because acceptance rates are reported by gender, it’s possible to see if a particular institution tips the scales for men by looking it up on another federal government website, the College Navigator, and clicking on “admissions.”

Like it or not — especially when other groups no longer qualify for preferences — athletes and applicants connected to alumni, donors and others also get a leg up in the admissions process at many colleges and universities. Though the practice is widely criticized, so-called legacy candidates are as much as eight times more likely to be accepted, research has found.

And while they don’t promote it, many colleges and universities offer another option: conditional admission, in which students go somewhere else for their freshman year, then come back as sophomores. Like most of their other practices, this isn’t something institutions do for students’ sake; it’s because, on average, nearly 25 percent of first-year students drop out before their second year, leaving lots of sophomore seats and dorm rooms empty.

Next up: how to figure out what college will actually cost. 

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