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The Landscape of Studying in the US Has Completely Changed!
- JC Guedon
- Jul 27
- 6 min read
In 2015, ten universities in the United States had acceptance rates below one in ten, including Stanford, Harvard, and other well-known, long-established prestigious institutions. Ten years later, that number nearly tripled to 28, and these newer universities even included some that had acceptance rates as high as one in four or more a decade earlier, studying in the US has completely changed!
This expansion of extremely high acceptance rates is one of the most important structural changes in college admissions in recent decades. Its impact extends far beyond whether or not a student is admitted; it has reshaped how students choose schools, how people view safety schools, and how institutions position themselves in an increasingly competitive market.
Today, let's take a ten-year look at how the US undergraduate application process has changed dramatically.
If you've been following US undergraduate applications for years, you've undoubtedly gotten the impression that universities are becoming increasingly difficult to get into. Many people instinctively attribute this to everyone being more outstanding, but if you look closely at the data, you'll find that things aren't that simple.
Statistics from College Transitions show a structural shift in the US college application landscape over the past decade. The average number of applications received by the nation's top 113 universities increased from approximately 20,900 to nearly 33,800 , a more than 60% increase in applicants. However, the actual number of places available increased by less than 10%. In other words, the problem isn't that schools have become more selective, but rather that the number of applicants has increased dramatically.
When the number of applicants (the denominator) expands rapidly while the number of places available (the numerator) remains relatively stable, the acceptance rate will naturally decline significantly. As a result, we see a clear phenomenon: the acceptance rates of more and more schools are declining rapidly, and the difficulty of applying has increased across the board.
The acceptance rates at these schools have dropped from an average of 27% to about 20% . This drop of six or seven percentage points may not seem like much at first glance, but in reality, it means that tens of thousands more rejection letters are sent out each year. And the students who received these rejection letters would likely have been admitted ten years ago.
More notably, this change is not evenly distributed, but rather concentrated in a group of already popular universities. This has directly given rise to a concept that has been frequently mentioned in recent years— the Sub-10% Club .
Sub-10% Club
The so-called Sub-10% Club refers to universities with undergraduate acceptance rates below 10% . Ten years ago, this category was very limited, basically including only a few of the top-tier institutions.
California Institute of Technology
Yale University
Harvard University
Stanford University
Columbia University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Brown University
United States Naval Academy
By 2024 , this "elite club" had grown to 28 institutions. The stories of these new members are quite interesting: some schools, such as Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania, were originally Ivy League schools with acceptance rates hovering around the 10% mark, but eventually broke through that threshold as the number of applicants surged.
Other institutions have made even more surprising changes: Northeastern University's acceptance rate is now only 5% , placing it among the universities with the lowest acceptance rates in the nation. Colby College, a small liberal arts college in rural Maine, has also seen its acceptance rate plummet from approximately 25% to 7% . Bowdoin College, Vanderbilt University, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, and Northwestern University have also joined this trend.
The newly added schools are as follows:
University of Chicago
Northeastern University
University of Pennsylvania
Dartmouth College
Vanderbilt University
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
Pomona College
Colby College
Bowdoin College
Swarthmore College
Rice University
Northwestern University
Williams College
University of California, Los Angeles
Amherst College
New York University
Barnard College
Cornell University
Schools like Northeastern University are particularly representative. Their acceptance rates are so low that they are close to those of traditional top universities, but their academic reputation has not reached the same level. This phenomenon of "misalignment between acceptance rate and academic status" shows that in the current application system, the acceptance rate is no longer just a reflection of academic thresholds, but increasingly reflects application strategies, market popularity, and the school's own admissions design. It really needs to be taken seriously!
Why are there more and more applicants?
First, there's the technological shift. With the widespread adoption of the Common Application , the cost of applying to college has been significantly reduced. Previously, students needed to prepare application materials separately for each school, a cumbersome and time-consuming process. Now, a single system allows for simultaneous submission of applications to multiple schools, and application materials can be reused to some extent across different institutions. In this context, applying to multiple schools requires virtually no additional cost, making "multiple applications" a common strategy.
Secondly, there's the policy change. Following the pandemic, many schools adopted a test-optional policy, meaning they no longer require standardized test scores. This change significantly lowered the psychological barrier to application, allowing students who previously gave up due to unsatisfactory grades to now try applying to higher-level schools.
Specific school examples can illustrate the point more clearly. For instance, the number of applicants to New York University has increased from around 60,000 ten years ago to over 110,000 today. This school has always been highly attractive to Chinese students, not only because of its academic strength but also because of its location in New York, a global resource center, offering abundant internship and employment opportunities.
A similar situation exists at Northeastern University, which has established a distinct advantage in career orientation by emphasizing its Co-op paid internship program, attracting a large number of students hoping to advance their careers through studying abroad. Among Chinese students, it is often seen as a high-value option, a perception that further drives the growth in applications.
Meanwhile, prestigious public universities like the University of California, Los Angeles , continue to attract a large number of international applicants due to their location, climate, and overall strength. These, along with schools like the University of Southern California and Boston University , which boast significant advantages in academic programs, city resources, and alumni networks, collectively form a group of rapidly growing and highly sought-after destinations.
These schools share a common characteristic: they are not only good schools, but also schools with clear development paths, offering definite returns in terms of employment or career development after graduation. It is this positive expectation that leads applicants to continuously flock to these schools, further intensifying the competition.
Studying in the US Has Completely Changed, How can I still find a place to go to school?
Against this backdrop, the importance of application strategy itself has been significantly amplified. The most direct change is that the concept of "safety schools" is gradually losing its original meaning. In the past, a school with an acceptance rate of around 30% was usually considered a relatively safe choice, but after the surge in applications, the acceptance rate of such schools has often dropped to between 10% and 20% . For international students, the actual difficulty of admission is even higher, which means that many options that were once considered safe are no longer truly safe.
At the same time, the acceptance rate itself has become less of a reliable indicator of difficulty. Because a large number of applications are trial applications, some schools' application pools contain a significant proportion of applicants who do not possess genuine competitiveness, which can amplify the appearance of a declining acceptance rate. Therefore, simply comparing the difficulty of schools using 5% and 15% is often misleading.
For Chinese students, this system adds further complexity. On the one hand, the number of international student places is already limited; on the other hand, Chinese applicants often have similar backgrounds, such as being concentrated in STEM or business fields, and possessing similar academic structures and competition experiences, making differentiation more difficult and further increasing the uncertainty of admissions.
On a psychological level, this change has also had a significant impact. When a student applies to twenty or more schools at the same time, receiving a large number of rejection letters has become almost the norm. However, these rejections do not necessarily indicate a lack of ability, but are more a result of systemic changes.
From a broader perspective, the US college application process is gradually shifting from a primarily ability-based selection model to a complex system involving strategic choices, information assessment, and psychological maneuvering. For applicants, especially Chinese students, simply relying on improved grades or background is no longer sufficient to navigate this change. More importantly, it's about understanding the evolving rules and making more forward-thinking choices to differentiate oneself, while maintaining a positive attitude towards potentially less-than-ideal outcomes.
In short, you will definitely be able to go to school!
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