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Ratings Aren’t Always Reality
Choose a school that best fits YOUR needs…not theirs.
by Daniel Yoo
Over the last decade, colleges have become extremely selective. Stanford University had an acceptance rate of 22.1 percent in 1992, but fast forward 29 years, Stanford University has a 4.7 percent acceptance rate in 2021. Every year more students apply to prestigious universities and fewer get accepted, a positive trend among most prestigious universities.
Students nowadays are so encapsulated in prestige and rankings that they go through college admissions in the worst way possible, blindly using US news to make their college list and applying to colleges purely off their rank. There are two reasons why this tactic for finding and applying to colleges is completely impractical: your factors and the factors used in the ranking matrix differ.
The needs and wants for YOU in a college are different among every single applicant. You may not realize but you have to be realistic with college admissions, you have to consider the intangibles: costs, out-of-state status, and distance. College is not just a one-level pony, getting into the school is not the only thing to worry about. Also, it is important to look deeper than just the rankings because each school is not equal, each school can have strengths and weaknesses in different areas. Some schools might…
