That's about right.This might be interesting here, with regard to how it has become harder and harder to earn admittance to top colleges. In the case of Princeton, which I used for illustrative purposes in a piece I wrote last year, I found that they offered admission to just 6.1 percent of their 31,056 applicants for the Class of '21. For comparison, the Class of 1964 came in on a 32.5 percent acceptance rate - five time higher (1,264 out of 3,883 who applied). A quarter century later, that rate had been cut in half, to 16.9 percent, when 2,214 applicants out of 12,482 were admitted to the Class of 1992.
Other bits about the Class of 2021:
- Just 9.4 percent came from independent boarding schools; 60.5 from public high schools.
- 17 percent are the first in their families to go to college.
- 49.6 of the class are men, compared with 100 percent of the Class of '64.
Schools use Naviance to see admission histories for their high school and particular colleges. If my son's school is any indication, it is tough for NJ kids to gain admission to Princeton. Fortunately, that was a school we dropped off our list. Son did not like the vibe there.