Was your college application rejected?

According to statistics released by the U.S. Department of Education, many well-known colleges and universities – even the Ivy League schools – get rejected by students whose applications were accepted. The public never hears about these statistics but colleges continue to crow about record numbers of applications.

For the school year beginning in 2014 U.S. Department of Education records show the following institutions were rejected by a surprising number of applicants, each of whom had received a “welcome to our university” acceptance letter.

Percent admitted
who did NOT enroll:
Yale   30%
Princeton   34%
Penn   35%
Columbia   38%
Brown   41%
Cornell   47%
Dartmouth   48%
Michigan   59%
Southern California   67%
Babson   69%
Miami (Ohio)   78%
Tulane   80%

Most people will be curious about the rejection rate by students who have been admitted to MIT, Harvard and Stanford but choose not to attend. These numbers are 18%, 19% and 22%, respectively, for the school year starting 2014.

The moral of the story is also something the media never conveys. Far too many prospective college students apply to too many schools. They do this because they think they must in order to be assured of attending a “good school,” or they fear they will be rejected. So if your application was rejected by a college or university you might delight in learning how many students rejected that school. You can find out by going to http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator , type in the name of the school, and go to the admissions section. Have fun. Or at least get some satisfaction.

If you’re still looking for that ideal college you may want to visit http://www.bestvaluecolleges.org where you’ll find good, reasonably priced but often overlooked schools.

Contact Information

Joseph Schmoke

President

University Research & Review LLC

(1) 561-594-1110

js@urandr.org