Why You Were Rejected
Introduction
The fat and thin envelopes arrived this week, and parents didn't need anyone to tell them that it's harder for their children to get into selective schools.
But The Choice blog at The Times has the hard numbers. Stanford, for example, received 34,348 applications and accepted only 7.07 percent of those applicants. The rate was 26 percent a quarter-century ago and 62 percent 50 years ago. U.C.L.A. had a total of 61,513 applications this year, and accepted 15,551 students.
What do these numbers tell us about the competition among students today, or about higher education in general?
