Each year millions of young adults apply to college and social media picks up on the shift the schools show the public, and it appears that it’s getting even more difficult for students to be accepted. Is this true? Is college indeed becoming more difficult than ever before.

There’s no argument that our parents, uncles and aunts would probably not have been accepted to their alma mater nowadays. This all of a sudden competitiveness has to do with colleges raising the bar of SAT/ACT scores and fewer students getting accepted by colleges. But the question is why has it become extremely difficult to be admitted into college?

As said before the statistics of acceptance rates demonstrate just how difficult the act of being admitted into college is on a world wide spectrum. In this moment in time it’s not enough to just have great test scores as shown in this excerpt from College Solutions “Stanford rejected more than 96% of its applicants, and many of them had perfect SAT or ACT scores”. Having the great test scores and great grades will only get you considered because colleges will mostly look at the extra things you did on the side to seal the deal. Because, if you think about it there will always be a valedictorian and salutatorian, a football captain and countless National Honor Inductees. So it’s becoming difficult for students to set themselves apart. 

When you think about it there’s countless reasons for the rise in competitiveness in college admissions. Even though the number of students that graduate yearly either hasn’t changed one bit or has slightly decreased, it’s become more competitive because nowadays more students apply to four year colleges. Due to our ever growing economy more than 67% of students want to get a college education. 

So is it really more competitive to get into college? No because while there has been an obvious increase in students applying to college, 76% of students are accepted by their first choice college (UCLA).