My 2 cents for the Class of 2028 based on these 3 hypercompetive admissions cycles

My 2 cents for the Class of 2028 based on these 3 hyper-competitive admissions cycles

All of you 9th-11th graders have watched 3 uber-competitive admissions cycles so here are my takeaways for the next season that begins exactly 153 days from now.

-Trend 1: The temperature of most T100 colleges is going up to high !HEAT! with a strong chance of rejection. So far we have witnessed an unprecedented drop in acceptance rates across the board for not only Ivys, Elites, and Top LACs but many 2nd and 3rd-tier colleges as well. Some of the noteworthy movers and shakers IMO is Holy Cross with a 21% acceptance rate which means it's twice as hard to get in now compared to 2021. Vandy, JHU, Colby, and NYU are also game changers with super low admit rates. Brown was close to 8% 4 years ago and now that is an NYU admit rate. Caltech and MIT were 7% about 4 years ago and now it's harder to get into Vandy, JHU, and Colby College. So if you come from a family with older siblings where there is like 5 or 6 years of age difference. Their college admissions journey looked way easier than what you have to face in the upcoming admissions cycle. If it is not intuitive to you why this is happening, I'll break it down for you in a simple explanation. With COVID-19 ending, there are fewer VISA and travel restrictions so there is pent-up demand from International applicants from all over the world wanting to attend top American universities. And with more wealth flowing in America, more and more affluent families want their kids to go to the best colleges as well. And lastly, DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusions, Access) initiatives are super strong at all T100 colleges so they want to accept more marginalized low-income and first-generation students. MORE applications for the same number of seats across the board means that acceptance rates in general go down. And this will be the trend for the Class of 2028 as well. Like the HYPE sneaker market, the best colleges continue to get a lot of applications. Last year, Columbia University was the subject of a US NEWS and World Report rankings scandal. They overstated how many tenured professors they had and understated how few students they had per class. US News hammered them down from the #2 spot to number #18 which is what their ranking was in 1988 or something of your parent's era. For sure, I thought fewer people would apply because of the negative publicity and lower clout factor but I was wrong. Their total applications were down only 5.5% to 57129. Harvard applications were down 7% to 56937. And their admits rates were 3.93 and 3.41% respectively. So what this tells me is that rankings only factor in a little bit in an applicant's decision to apply or not. Top Ivys have been around for 200-400 years so their brands have a lot of history and have been battle-tested in the public eye for a very long time.

Trend 2: The applicant pool is getting more and more competitive putting a stranglehold on your average Valdictorian who used to be shoo-in on paper just 5-10 years ago. When you have more information to analyze, you have better facts and figures to build a strategy on. Now that we have 3 big cycles of Pandemic College Admissions data to digest, most people in the college admissions business know what counts and doesn't count. And rather than it getting more simplified, it's getting more complicated. So college admissions consultants, HS counselors, students, and parents know more today than they did 3 cycles back. What is clear is that having great stats alone like grades, course rigor, and test scores is not enough to get into a great college. You need killer essays, amazing ECs, glowing recommendations, inspiring add'l portfolios, and evidence of intellectual vitality or proof you have an innate love of learning. While I suspect CHAT GTP will help some people with their essays, for the most part, there is no amount of technology that will convince college admissions officers to give you the Golden Ticket if you don't read like a genuine, good human with great values. The last bit has to do with my concept of your "narrative runway". Think of your "narrative runway" as every data point you include on your college applications between 9th-12th grade. The problem 90% of applicants face is that they didn't know until it's too late that they have to express some talent, skill, or defining moment in their life that makes them unique and special. This is definitely a problem created by those who have had access to privilege or they just are super smart and know a lot of things and can figure it out before everyone else does. So applicants who attend highly endowed private day and boarding schools have a huge edge over almost everyone else in the pool by a factor of somewhere between 15-30 to 1. And that's because these students have been working on their "narrative runway" from the time they started pre-school. For 14 years, their parents, teachers, tutor, instructors, coaches, and consultants, have been strategizing every waking moment of their kids' life so that by the time they get accepted into a Spence, Dalton, Choate, Exeter, Deerfield, they ARE already the TOP 10% of the 8th-grade pool. And what these schools do for 4 years is to help them create a custom "narrative runway" that makes sure they have a great combination of volunteerism, activism, athleticism, talents, expository and creative writing ability, and the confidence to use their own voice when defending their narrative. So this puts a huge amount of pressure on the college admissions process, especially EA and ED applications. Why? EA/ED tremendously favors recruited athletes, legacies, development candidates (super rich donors), VIP applicants, and children of faculty or staff. Top colleges typically fill between 40-60% of their admissions seats with EA/ED and unfortunately, hooked applicants account for about 2/3rd of the seats given. Why? The seats go to applicants with preferential standing and these kids have a better "narrative runway" than almost everyone else applying from public schools. So unless you are clever to figure out that you need to have this work/play/sleep/self-care balance that results in great ECs, community service, and evidence of your love of learning, you are going to suffer the consequences of a tough pool of applicants.

-Trend 3: I think more and more people around the world realize that getting into some of these colleges is a "rigged" system and are figuring out how to move on with their lives in a positive way that is an excellent example for others. What all colleges do not share openly is what they are really looking for in a college applicant. Why? Because it's not in their best interest. What is in their best interest is to be kind to everyone, be positive to everyone, and encourage as many people to apply as possible. No college is going to give you the inside scoop on what the real institutional criteria is for each incoming class and share that kind of transparency with the public. That would be wonderful but it's not going to happen. Could you imagine Harvard explaining why each of the 1942 applicants was admitted? Or a summary that looks like this: For the class of 2026 we accepted 200 recruited athletes for our various mainstream and obscure sports, 400 legacies, 35 development applicants who pledge a total of $250MM to the university, 65 children of faculty, and 42 VIPs that has some connection with the Board of Trustees or the President or Deans of the School. We accepted 600 Asians, the most ever because Affirmative Action is being debated in the Supreme Court and we need to be on the right side of history before it happens. But we also hedged ourselves by admitting close to 600 low-income students who we are giving a full ride. College admissions are like applying to a 3-Ring Circus. If the Circus needs 10 strong men, 30 acrobats, and 15 trapeze performers and you are Clown, you are out of luck. Maybe Brown or Yale need more Clowns this year. So the takeaway is to make sure you include some safety and target schools that you would be happy at and apply to them as well as your reach ones. These days you need a Plan B, Plan C, and Plan D. Shot-gunning all the T30 schools is not a good plan because they all have acceptance rates between 3-10%. That's like rolling a 10-sided to 33-sided dice 30 times hoping you will get into one of them. Those odds are terrible and more likely than not, unless you have a high-quality "narrative runway" you will be rejected by most or all of them. So whatever your college list looks like, add a couple of "sure things" so you won't be gutted because the Class of 2028 is going to be more brutal than ever.