Think getting into college is all but impossible?
Think again.
Sure, the most selective institutions still take only a tiny fraction of the people who apply to them. But at almost all the rest, the odds of getting in are good — and getting better.
That’s because enrollment in higher education is already down by more than 1.5 million since 2010. Now the number of 18-year-old prospective college students is projected to begin a long decline. And federal data show that today’s high school graduates are less likely to go straight to college than their predecessors were.
All of this means colleges and universities are having to admit larger proportions of their applicants, on average. Some are accepting high school seniors who haven’t even applied. They’re waiving application fees, helping admitted applicants nail down financial aid and sign up for classes and offering financial aid to students just for showing up for campus tours.
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Only 33 institutions in the country accept 10 percent or fewer of the people who apply to them, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC.
Almost all the rest took half or more of their applicants in 2022, the most recent year reported.
Seven in 10 applicants to private colleges get in, says NACAC — and nearly eight in 10 applicants to public universities.
Those numbers have been climbing. The median acceptance rate to bachelor’s degree-granting universities and colleges was 7.6 percentage points higher in 2022 than it was in 2012, an analysis by the American Enterprise Institute found. (Those federal admission figures, too, are the most recent available, and don’t include schools with open admission, which take 100 percent of applicants.)
Related: A trend colleges might not want applicants to notice: It’s becoming easier to get in
Colleges have long encouraged the perception that applicants are lucky to even be considered for admission. And it’s seemed to work. A sizable number of anxious young people seem not to realize the odds are actually in their favor.
Forty-five percent of 18- to 29-year-olds think it’s harder to get into college than it was for their parents’ generation, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center — when, on average, it’s easier. More than half say it’s more stressful than anything else they’ve done during their time in elementary, middle or high school, a separate NACAC survey shows.
In some states, however, students are being accepted without even having to apply — often to their own surprise.
Related: Colleges ease the dreaded admissions process as the supply of applicants declines
Public universities or systems in Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawai’i, Idaho, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin now offer various forms of what’s called direct admission, accepting students automatically if they meet certain high school benchmarks.
The California State University system has begun to automatically take any student who earns at least a C in a list of required high school courses.
Illinois has launched a one-click process that lets high school students send their transcripts instantly to 10 of the state’s 12 four-year public universities and all of its community colleges and — if their grades are above a certain cutoff — get back a guaranteed offer of admission.
A growing list of private colleges now do this, too, in collaboration with independent companies and the nonprofit Common Application.
As for standardized tests, more than 2,000 universities and colleges now make submitting the results of SAT and ACT scores optional.
Related: College admissions offices take on a new role: Coaxing accepted students to show up
NACAC is now also rolling out a program under which once-unapproachable admissions counselors help accepted students navigate the process of enrolling — figuring out financial aid, finding housing, registering for courses — which is almost as complex as applying.
“Everyone is on board to make it less complicated,” said Erwin Hesse, director of NACAC’s Center for Innovation in College Admission, “and to remove as many barriers as possible.”
Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, jmarcus@hechingerreport.org or jpm.82 on Signal.
This story about college admissions getting easier was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.
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