THE CHANGING NATURE OF COLLEGE

The constantly changing landscape of college admissions is building higher stakes than ever. Academic and extracurricular achievements across 4 years of high school lead up to the college application process, a crucial point in a student’s academic career.

However, college admissions have become strikingly more competitive in the last few years. Some schools have been hit by this change greater than others. The University of Georgia accepted 41% of their applicants in 2022, down from 54% in 2016. This is not an uncommon occurrence; There has been a pattern of acceptance rates drop- ping from percentages around 50% to sub-30%s and lower within a short time period. recent decades. This is largely due to the increase of applicants compared to prior years. While graduating class numbers have remained reasonably consistent, the amount of applications submitted to colleges has increased 150% in the past 20 years. For last year’s graduating class of 2022, the number of CommonApp applications skyrocketed 10% from the previous year, which was already 10% more than the year before.

As more students are choosing to apply to college, acceptance rates are being driven down. Meanwhile, this increased selectivity is caus