How Much Should you Worry about College Admission?
It's not uncommon to be worried about getting into college. In fact, worrying about college admission has become a national epidemic.
That's not surprising given all the articles about the increasing number of students applying to colleges.
It's true that applications are up, particularly at the most selective colleges. But that fact, taken alone, can be misleading. More important is the reality that only a small percentage of colleges and universities are highly selective.
Stanford, NYU, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and schools like them are denying more students than ever before.
Although such institutions typically receive applications from top students, their acceptance rates are extremely low. Recently, some top tier colleges and universities have admitted just eleven or twelve percent of their applicants.
Furthermore, it is not uncommon for first tier colleges to turn away valedictorians.
Students with perfect SAT scores are also frequently denied admission by the Ivies and similarly selective universities. And being being involved in lots of activities, despite what you may hear seldom carries much weight.
Most students, however, wind up applying to far less selective institutions. And, most of those institutions are more than happy to enroll students with a combination of good grades in a college prep curriculum and reasonably good standardized test scores.
No magic or superhuman achievements are required to get into a good college or university. Although Harvard may admit just nine or ten percent of its applicants, at most colleges the percentage is closer to seventy.
So, don't let high anxiety ruin your college search. If you apply to at least five colleges, including two safety schools; colleges where average freshman test scores and high school grade point averages are below yours, you have nothing to fear.
Daniel Kane is a veteran professional educator. He authored and maintains one website on online education another on online universities and scholarships, and nearly a dozen other higher education websites.
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