Colby College drops below 8% (7.44%) for the first time in history!
The Class of 2026 at Colby college was announced.
1258 applicants made it through the most competitive pool at Colby in history. The average SAT was 1500 and the average ACT was 34. 40% were persons of color and 14% were Int'l students
Last year the admit rate was 8.07% with 1279/15857 making the cut.
If you blink your eyes and open them up to 2 cycles back this was Dartmouth territory. Clearly there is now a paradigm shift where top LACs are now thriving in the 6%-8% admit range. Within a cycle or two, I believe all Ivys except for Cornell, will be in the 3-5% range.
So all you 9th, 10th and 11th graders think twice about what Test Optional really means. It's just another way to differentiate yourself so you stand a chance before the doors get impossible tight to squeeze through. Standardized tests might be optional like the Optional Harvard Supplemental essay, but everyone does them.
i got in as an international student! didn't expect it at all. i think colby cares about yield rate a lot and puts in a ton of effort in creating a class. a bunch of students i know who have really high stats got waitlisted and i think it was because colby thought they were going to somewhere else eventually.
Am also an international student thinking of applying education.
Can I get any of your handles to dm
This is just my opinion and I have done no research, but I believe "test optional" allows schools to pick who they want for other reasons (legacy students, students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, bipoc, etc.) and to make their school seem more competitive (ex. a school says they have an average SAT score of 1500 when in reality only 50% of admitted students submitted SAT scores and the other 50% likely had lower scores, I mean they would submit them I presume if they were a 1500? I believe these colleges are becoming more competitive because more people are applying to a lot of schools (so yield rates will drop) that is a trend I have been seeing.
Top Schools were giving preferential treatment to ALDCs and Hook applicants decades before "Test Optional" came about 2 years ago, so agree to disagree with your comment. Historically all Ivys, Elites and Top LACs had recruited athletes, legacies, development candidates and children of faculty plus affirmative action applicants/low income/first gen as well. There are no new types of admits because of Test Optional. If anything, it's a double edged sword. On one hand, those unable to take the tests for legitimate reasons have an "out" and on the other hand those that put in the time and effort to excel at them get a "bump" because top colleges acknowledge those that submit high test scores.
While it's true that SAT/ACT scores are going up because they only consider the scores of applicants who submit and not those that do not submit, clear evidence shows that all top schools admit more students that submit test scores than not. This clearly indicates it is a "BOOST" to your admissions if one is successful at mastering either the ACT or SAT.
At Top colleges, yields are going up not down. I do not agree with this hypothesis because the opposite has been true. Harvard has record yields of 85%+, same with Stanford and all the Ivys, all their yield rates are up. Even Boston University has yield rate problem because more admits matriculated than they expected. Now their admit rates are going to plummet because of yield rates going up. It's going to be like 12% from 18% in one cycle. Remember yield rate = matriculation/admit pool. Just because more people are applying doesn't have anything to do with the math formula. e.g Columbia had 60551 applications, 2358 admits, 1569 enrolled = yield rate of 67%. So if they get 65000 apps this year & admit +/-2358, the only reason yield would drop is if fewer people enroll. But since more people applied, more people want to go right? So that's not really going to happen.
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