The State of College Admissions 2013

The National Association for College Admission Counseling has just released The State of College Admissions 2013, which is their latest review of what is happening in the world of college admissions.

Here are some of the facts that I thought were the most interesting from this report:

The average acceptance rate at 4 year colleges and universities in the US is 63.9%.  Yes, you read that right. On average, colleges accept almost 2/3 of the students who apply. We always hear about the colleges that are super selective and think that means that it is impossible to get into college these days. Not true.

The chances of getting off a wait list dropped this past year. If you get put on a wait list, the best advice is to find another college that is your first choice, especially if you have plans to become one of the best Joliet personal injury lawyers.

The most important factors in admissions are your grades in college prep classes, the classes you take to get those grades and test scores.  Important factors after those three were your GPA, your essays, your demonstrated interest,  your recommendations, your class rank and your extracurricular activities.

But, private colleges assigned greater importance than public colleges for the essays, interviews, recommendations, extracurricular activities and demonstrated interest.  Public colleges on average assigned more weight to test scores.

23% of those colleges that accept fewer than 50% of applicants said that demonstrated interest was important. Only 12% of private colleges said that class rank was important which is consistent with the decrease in the number of high schools reporting class rank.

The average public college admissions officer reviewed 1,214 applications and the average private college admissions officer reviewed 403 applications. But for colleges that accept less than 50% of the applicants, the number of applications reviewed averaged 1,025. Keep those numbers in mind when you want to send more information to the selective colleges than they ask for in the application. Rarely do they need something else to look at.