Record Highs, Record Lows

Institutions are announcing their admissions data, and it’s another year of record highs and lows.

The NYTimes reports that 7 out of 8 Ivy League schools are reporting lower acceptance rates. Here they are with their admit rates (updated March 29, 2013):

• Brown: 9.16%
• Columbia: 6.89%
• Cornell: 15.15%
• Dartmouth: 10.05%
• Harvard: 5.79%
• Princeton: 7.29%
• U. of Pennsylvania: 12.10%
• Yale: 6.72%

The list goes on, in no particular order:

• Stanford reviewed applications from the largest pool in its history.
• MIT reports their lowest acceptance rate ever.
• Duke says this was the most competitive admissions year.
• Preliminary data from Barnard also suggests a record high number of applicants.
• Northeastern University received more applications than ever before --
• As did Emory University’s College of Arts and Sciences…
• Ohio State
• Johns Hopkins (continuing an 11-year trend)
• RPI
• Boston University (up 20% from last year to 51,197 applicants)
• NYU

And that's just to name a few. Last November, InsideHigherEd reported on this continuing trend of more applicants for fewer spots at colleges across the nation.

With these record highs and lows revealing themselves in the form of acceptance and rejection letters and emails, what does this say about the current state of higher education?