Webinar Transcript: 2024 Admissions Trends: What’s Changed?
Elton Lin
(This is a transcript of a webinar from June 2024, a recording of which you can find on our YouTube channel.)
Elton Lin: Good evening everybody! Let me arrange my screen a little bit before we get started. Excited to have everybody on… I'm excited to share more about what we're learning about the college admissions landscape, including trends that we're seeing from this past cycle. Actually, I think the greater bracket of time is really from 2020 to now, so I think there's a lot of interesting things to share! Excited to do so.
If you would be so kind as to go on to the comment section or the chat section and share with us where you are calling in from… we are always excited to have people from all over the U.S. Granted, it is 10 pm East Coast time, so we appreciate our East Coasters who are joining in with us…
[Some webinar attendees share their locations, including Florida, New Jersey, Virginia, California, and even Hong Kong.]
All over the place! Super excited to have everybody join in with us.
I want to do a quick intro of my partner-in-crime, Anthony Su, who is our Operations Manager and just an all-around good guy. You may have met him if you've joined in on a free consultation. Anthony is gonna jump back in with us when we do our Q&A time at the end, so I just want all of you to get a good look at Anthony…
Anthony Su (he/him): Just to let everyone know: yeah, there's the Q&A box, and feel free to use chat as well—you can put your questions there. If there's anything super urgent, I'll let Elton know, but otherwise, we'll save it all for the end to do Q&A. We'll probably save 15-20 minutes to go over some of the questions.
Elton Lin: Absolutely. I'd encourage you to use the Q&A box so that Anthony's not chasing questions in the chat. The Q&A box is ready for you at any time! Go ahead and post there, and I will do my best to try to give as much time at the end to cover questions. I know there's going to be a lot of specific questions—a lot of particulars—as it relates to your child's college admissions journey. Happy to get to as many of those as possible, and once again, super excited to have everybody from all over the world join us for our College Admissions Trends for 2024 webinar today…
Let me do a quick intro of myself.
My name is Elton Lin, I'm the CEO and founder of ILUMIN Education. I've been doing private college advising for—actually, almost 13 years… started ILUMIN Education in 2014, so we’re celebrating our 10 year anniversary—super excited! Anthony, we should do something for our 10 year anniversary.
But with that being said, we’ve worked with a lot of students over the years—have had students admitted to every top 50 school, including every Ivy League. We work with a little bit over 300 students per year, submit almost 2,000 apps per year, so we see a lot of results, just within our small grouping of students. Not only that, but we're tapped into a national network of college advisers who are both sharing insights and results, and better understanding what the landscape is looking like. So we see quite a bit! We’re happy to share all of our learnings, and do the best that we can to help you be as prepared as possible.
Let me share a little bit about what we're going to do today!
Topics for tonight
Most critical trends for 2024-25
How to respond to trends
Student examples
Questions
Elton Lin: Number one: I’m going to share some of the most critical trends for the forthcoming 2024-25 admissions cycle, and I'm going to share a little bit about how to respond to those trends, and a few student examples interspersed in between. And then we're going to do some Q&A.
But I want to get started with my own college journey, because my sense is that, as we go into a lot of the data and information today, there is going to be a feeling that you need to get everything right. And I just want to share with you and especially because—[laughs] mindful that I have my cousin who's joining us too, so he may know the story.
But when I started college at UC Davis in 1991, and was a civil engineering major… I just did not know whether I really made the right major choice, even at that time. As you can probably imagine I'm not doing civil engineering currently, to the remiss of my family. I didn't know—I mean, UC Davis was really one of the only options I had to attend university. Probably didn't apply to enough schools, probably didn't apply to the right major… and then by the time I got to my second quarter at UC Davis, I was on academic probation. So I was all C's, and a D in multivariable calculus.
And I remember UC Davis sending a letter home to my parents, and my mom opened up the letter saying that I was on academic probation and she cried. I remember that moment very vividly. And you know no one likes to break their mothers’ hearts. It was really a little bit of a wake up call for me… I got my act together, got my GPA back up, worked a lot harder.
But you know, I often find, especially being a college advisor, that there’s—I love the details, I’m into the data, I love the trends—but there is room to veer off course, and there is room to make mistakes. I, without hesitation, don’t regret being an engineering major, even though I'm not an engineer currently. Being an engineering major taught me how to study and learn, and taught me how to take my education more seriously. I loved UC Davis, even though I don’t know what other choices I would have had. And it was an extremely formative time.
And so with that being said, a lot of life is really about learning to manage the ups and downs, and oftentimes, learning to deal with mistakes and things that veer off course. So part of this journey is learning how to do that. I have seen a lot of students who have a ton of confidence in their resilience, and as I talk with more students and work with more students, I'm always very encouraged and impressed by the resilience capability, and ability to recover, that students have. That's part of their growth as well, and it was a major part of my growth. So as we get into this data, as we get into all the trends, and this feeling of needing to be able to get everything right, let me remind you that it’s gonna be okay, and there is room to veer off track, and there is room to recover, and there is room to make mistakes.
With that being said, I absolutely want to equip you to the best that I can, share what insights we have. So let's get on with it, shall we?
What are the current trends in college admissions?
Elton Lin: All right, what are some current trends in college admissions today? I’m going to share three tonight, and we’ll dig into the first one right now.
Trend #1: Applications are UP ↑
Elton Lin: The first one is that applications are up in total number… I feel like you probably understand where that's coming from already, but just to kind of give you a sense of where that is going…
Applications UP - Admit Rates DOWN
Almost 30% increase since 2020
+10% increase in public schools
+5% increase in private schools
81% came from target/safety schools
Elton Lin: There's been almost a 30% increase since 2020… in particular, a 10% increase in public schools, over a 5% increase in private schools, and 81% of that total increase is largely towards schools that have like around a 50 to 60 to 70% admit rate. You can essentially make some inferences, and I'll come to that in a moment, but that's where that number is coming from.
| School | Admit Rate 2020 | Admit Rate 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Harvard | 4.92% | 3.59% |
| Yale | 6.53% | 3.73% |
| MIT | 7.41% | 4.52% |
| Dartmouth | 8.80% | 5.32% |
| Rice | 7.70% | 7.51% |
| NYU | 15.30% | 8.00% |
| UCLA | 14.00% | 8.25% |
| USC | 15.83% | 9.20% |
| Univ of Washington | 51% | 10.00% |
| UT Austin | 32% | 11.00% |
Elton Lin: Maybe to give you a quick glimpse… applications are up, which invariably means admit rates are down, because if the pool is going up, and the same amount of spaces are there or the number of spaces aren’t growing with the pool, then the admit rate is going to go down.
So you can get a glimpse here: Harvard has become extremely impossible to extremely, extremely impossible, and you can kind of skim your way down this chart, but let me kind of highlight the bottom half here, in particular a school like NYU.
This is where—even working in college advising for 10+ years, even… I can remember a day when NYU was a safety/target for a lot of students—seeing NYU become a single digit admit rate, seeing USC become a single digit admit rate, to me almost is kind of… it's crazy, to be frank, you know? So the NYUs, the UCLAs, the USCs… and let me also highlight specifically the University of Washington, UT Austin, what we would consider flagship public schools. Oftentimes, maybe a top third applicant from a particular state might assume that they have access to their flagship public school, and yet the admit rates for these schools are dropping like rocks as well, unfortunately.
So why is this the case?
Applications UP - WHY?
Mostly from minorities/under-rep
Average apps submitted: 5 to 7
“Harder to get in! I’ll submit more!”
Most growth towards in-state publics
Rise of college post-pandemic
Elton Lin: Firstly, number one—let me justify this, and let me put some context to it—is that the majority of the increase in the number of applications, and maybe new applicants, is coming from minorities and underrepresented students. Now this is not necessarily a long conversation about the Supreme Court decision about affirmative action, but for some reason—and we can get into this another time—but once the Supreme Court decided to withdraw affirmative action, there was a spike in the number of minorities and underrepresented students applying in school. We can you know get into that another time, but a good number of those new students were minorities and underrepresented students.
The average number of apps submitted increased to up to seven apps per student—and our students, to be frank with you, our students are often submitting anywhere between 10 to 13 applications, with one of those applications being the University of California application. So our students are getting anywhere between 15 to 18 results.
So students, generally speaking, are applying to more schools, and the response, the motivation is because: “It's just so much harder to get into the top schools that I just don't feel safe and I have to apply to more schools!” And they're submitting more applications.
A lot of this growth is going towards in-state publics.So this is also—being in California, a lot of our students are applying into the UC system—but whether you're in New York applying to SUNY schools, or in Texas applying to more UT schools, more of the growth is going towards in-state publics, and trying to cover your bases with regards to making sure you get into a good school.
And certainly there's been a rise of college post-pandemic, where from 2020 to 2022, students were not going out of state as much, there was a drop off in the number of students who were just, in total, going to college… that recovery has come back. And there are more and more students who are sort of making their way towards a normal application cycle.
What does this mean?
Target schools are now reaches
Cannot count on safety schools
Cannot count on top in-state public schools
Elton Lin: So what does this mean? Target schools are now reaches, which—going back to what I was mentioning about the NYU, USC, University of Washington—those schools, which some students were considering as target schools… they're just no longer target schools, and you have to treat them as reaches.
You cannot always count on your safety schools, and I didn’t plan to talk about yield protection—but maybe some of you have heard of this topic—there's a lot of safety schools that are not admitting students because they, in some sense, may be overqualified, or there's enough data to show that that student is unlikely to come [if accepted]. So you cannot always count on your safety schools, and you cannot always count on top in-state public schools.
So it's just making the entire college list generation process very unstable and uncertain, and the only thing that students do in response to this is just apply to more schools, which is only kind of fueling the instability. This is unfortunately the case right now.
What does this mean?
Apply to MORE safety schools
Do your research on colleges! There are GOOD schools out there!
Apply to BOTH public and (safety) private schools! Privates are more likely to provide scholarship funding to reduce costs!
Elton Lin: But then what do you do? What do we do in response to all this that is happening?
Certainly you can consider applying to more safety schools. And I mean, I'm not talking about, you know, applying to—there's only a certain number of schools you can apply to on one Common App account—but [firstly], including a few more safety schools in your list to make sure that you have covered your bases, and then also, secondly, doing some research doing research on more colleges. I often find that many students’ families parents really only have, like, seven colleges in their head, and then they want to go to those seven colleges—and certainly some of those are Ivy League schools, but there are plenty of amazing universities out there, and it's good to do some research and better understand what your options are.
And then thirdly is to apply to both public and private schools—and private schools that are likely in your safety, maybe more likely target range, because the truth is that privates are more able to provide scholarship funding to reduce cost. And I think often times parents come in and there is this feeling that “if I don't get into a Harvard or Stanford, then I'm just going to go to my in-state public school and keep costs down.” And the reality is that the in-state public schools are becoming more uncertain and unstable with regards to their admissions predictive behavior.
But then secondly, private schools—especially those that may be where you're more in a safer range—are more able to use money to try to attract you to come. I have a student, maybe a couple years back, who was admitted to UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside, but was given around almost $20,000 to go to Occidental, which is a liberal arts college in Los Angeles. And their goal is premed, life science, biology, and Occidental actually has a very strong medical school matriculation rate. So a high percentage of Oxy students who apply to med school end up getting admitted and going. And so if I’m considering, you know, $20,000 from Oxy, which brings it closer to what a normal UC, state public school, total cost would be, and my options were Occidental versus UC Santa Cruz—I mean, I would heavily consider Occidental, because you’re getting a private school education for close to the same price as you would with a public UC.
So this is where I'm always encouraging families: apply to both publics and privates, especially safety, likely target private schools; compare the offers at the end; and then make your decision later. Don’t be so closed off about just only applying to the top schools and then your in-state publics.
Trend #2: College Major Matters
Elton Lin: All right, second trend we have going on is: college major does matter. So your college major matters.
Let me share a little bit of data with you.
Bachelor Degrees Conferred 2022
| Agriculture and natural resources | 40,675 | Health professions | 263,765 |
| Architecture and related services | 9,462 | Homeland security, law enforcement | 56,901 |
| Area, ethnic, cultural studies | 6,658 | Legal professions and studies | 4,444 |
| Biological and biomedical sciences | 131,462 | Mathematics and statistics | 26,212 |
| Business | 375,418 | Parks/rec, leisure, fitness, kinesiology | 52,776 |
| Communication, journalism | 86,043 | Philosophy and religious studies | 11,230 |
| Computer and information sciences | 108,503 | Physical sciences | 28,301 |
| Education | 89,410 | Psychology | 129,609 |
| Engineering | 123,017 | Public administration/social services | 33,429 |
| English language and literature | 33,429 | Social sciences and history | 151,109 |
| Family, consumer, human sciences | 20,630 | Theology and religious vocations | 6,394 |
| Foreign languages | 13,912 | Visual and performing arts | 90,241 |
Elton Lin: This is coming specifically from the Department of Education, National Center for Statistics. And if you just do a quick scan of this screen, it's very obvious that your STEM majors dominate the number of degrees being conferred in 2022. So you know, whether it's bio, health professions, business, computer science—108,000, which, for what it's worth, whether it seems low or seems high, I'll show you from the next slide, but—STEM majors dominate.
Bachelor Degrees 2012 vs 2022
| Biological and biomedical sciences | 100,397 | 131,462 | +40% |
| Business | 360,887 | 375,418 | +5% |
| Computer and information sciences | 50,961 | 108,503 | +113% |
| Engineering | 85,987 | 123,017 | +43% |
| Health professions | 180,437 | 263,765 | +46% |
| Psychology | 114,446 | 129,609 | +13% |
| Social sciences and history | 177,767 | 151,109 | -15% |
| English language and literature | 52,401 | 33,429 | -36% |
| Foreign languages | 21,647 | 13,912 | -36% |
Elton Lin: To show you some 10 year difference from 2012 to 2022, you can see the growth of bio, business, engineering, health professions, psychology. Then you can see the growth from computer science and all the derivative computer science programs—it’s more than double. You can see the decline in social sciences and history, English language, foreign languages, and you can already kind of get a sense that if you’re just applying into computer science and related majors similar to computer science, it’s going to be a little bit dicey.
Most Popular Majors 2023
Most In-Demand Majors
Nursing
Computer science
Business
Accounting
Physical therapy
Math and statistics
Information science
Finance
Psychology
Marketing
**Source: Indeed
Top Majors Based on Salary
Computer science
Electrical engineering
Mechanical engineering
Chemical engineering
Industrial engineering
Information technology
Civil engineering
Statistics
Nursing
Management Info Systems
**Source: Glass Door
Elton Lin: So maybe to share with you a couple other bits from Glass Door and Indeed—top majors based on salary, most in-demand majors—it’s very much painting a very similar picture with regards to STEM, math, science, health, nursing in particular—nursing’s never going out of style, so I think it’s great, by the way—but you can kind of get a sense of where these lists are going.
What does this mean?
In-demand majors are more are more selective
Choice of major may make college a “reach”
Strong grades with many AP’s is not enough
Resumés need to support your interest in higher demand majors
Elton Lin: What does this mean? It means that the in-demand majors are going to be more selective, and where that's going to lead is that the choice of major may make a college a reach where, prior to that, you may think it's a target—but choosing a particular major will make that college a reach.
I’d like to get into some data to be specific, but strong grades with many APs is not enough, resumés need to support your interest in higher demand majors.
Our team was at the UC Counselor Conference last fall, and they were actually—the UC admissions people were trying to convince counselors to dissuade students who are not committed, who are not really clearly demonstrating their interest, in applying to computer science, to not apply to computer science… So when you think about the total influx of students who are applying to computer science, especially for the more selective majors—computer science, bio, business, et cetera, your resumé really needs to support it, because there's too many students, too few spots.
Maybe a quick case study on UC Santa Barbara…
Case Study - UC Santa Barbara
Overall acceptance rate: 26%
90 majors
~125,000 applicants (2022)
~10,000 (8%) applied to Computer Science
~8,000 of those 10,000 had 4.0 or higher UC GPA
~800 were accepted
Computer Science acceptance rate: 6.4%
Elton Lin: Overall acceptance rate of 26%—I think this is actually 2023, so probably a hair lower for this coming year. Ninety majors, 125,000 applicants, 10,000 applied to computer science—8,000 of those 10,000 had a 4.0 UC GPA or higher—and only 800 were admitted into the CS program, which makes the computer science admit rate, effective admit rate, a 6.4% as compared to the 26% admit rate for the entire school. So choosing computer science is already sort of putting you into a spot, if you will, and—maybe to give you another quick data chart here…
CS Admit Rates — Univ of California
| Campus | CS |
|---|---|
| UC Berkeley | 2.9%-L&S EECS-4.5% |
| UC Davis | No data but <20% |
| UC Irvine | 5.8% |
| UCLA | 3.8% |
| UC Merced | 85% |
| UC Riverside | 36% |
| UC San Diego | No data but <10% |
| UC Santa Barbara | No data Historically 5-6% |
| UC Santa Cruz | 60% |
Note: Admissions Year 2022
UCSC and UCR CS admit rates have also gone down since 2022.
Elton Lin: CS admit rates for the broad University of California campuses… for UC Berkeley, you’re talking about a 2.9%, at UC Irvine almost 6%... I mean, it may be encouraging that at UC Riverside and UC Santa Cruz it’s 36% and 60%, but this is 2022. And there’s no doubt—I have an intern who is actually at UC Santa Cruz who’s a computer science major, and she got in in 2021—super fortunate, she’s super glad she got into Santa Cruz in 2021 because they’re limiting the students who are not within the major that take computer science classes at UC Santa Cruz. So there’s already impaction happening at UC Santa Cruz, and invariably that admit rate is not 60% now.
But with that being said, this is—it’s tougher and tougher if you’re selecting a more selective major, and in this case I’m using CS as an example.
What do I do?
Consider other majors (or other routes)
Apply to more target and safety schools
Build a resume that clearly communicates the student’s interest in major
Elton Lin: So what do I do? What are suggestions on how to approach this?
I think first things first—I mean, you can certainly consider other majors, and this is where there are more and more schools that are considering… that are sort of branching off other majors that may be related. And I’ll give you some examples of what those majors are: there’s applied math, there is cognitive science, there is data science, there’s other things going on. But this also may be where—if you actually genuinely have other interests—it may be a good opportunity to explore those, explore those other interests, and in so doing, if you really want to, say, do computer science or do some other major, you can always minor or double major once you get there.
But one idea, in order to maybe… escape the kind of… 6.4% versus the 26%, is to consider other majors.
Apply to more target and safety schools, which is perhaps one of the enduring suggestions for this presentation today.
And then maybe thirdly is to build a resume that clearly communicates the student’s interest in that major. So again, considering the fact that there are a lot of students applying: wanting to make sure that the student is ready for that particular major, and committed to studying that particular area, can only really be figured out by what you do outside the class.
Certainly it can be ascertained by the classes you take, but it needs to be supported by a resume that is strongly in the direction of that particular major. So build a resume that clearly communicates the student’s interest in a major.
Alternative Majors
Computer Science: applied math, humanities major with CS minor, business analytics, cybersecurity, statistics, cognitive science
Biology: gerontology, biological anthropology, human/child development, nutrition/dietetics, public health, environmental science
Business: communications, public relations, economics, international relations/global studies, applied math/statistics
Note: Pre-med students do NOT need to be science majors. Consider other majors (or other routes)
Elton Lin: So let me give you a couple of alternative majors.
This is not an exhaustive list, there's more that we can discuss certainly, but for computer science: there's applied math… you can certainly do, as I alluded to before, a humanities major with a CS minor… assuming that your interests are genuinely headed towards humanities, then considering that route, I think, is a good preparation for the future to be frank… business analytics, cybersecurity, statistics, cognitive science (which is a combination of psychology, linguistics, and computer science, which are essentially the fundamental disciplines of machine learning, human-computer interaction, and a lot of what’s happening on the technology development scope for the coming decade.
Biology, there’s a couple of different majors here… business can be a lot of different things as well!
And I just also want to point out this bottom note, because I find that I end up saying this quite a bit, but pre-med students, students who are attending to apply to med school after their undergraduate degree is done, do not need to be science majors.
I have a student who was a music major at the University of Michigan, certainly because he’s interested in music and is a violin performer, but opted to apply to med school—just took a small host of science courses that prepare for the MCAT—and he’s going through the application process right now as we speak.
The reality is that you don’t need to be a science major. You can be any number of majors. And in fact there is a bit of preference, or looking out for other students who have different backgrounds, in the scope of a med school application process. So you’re not at a disadvantage if you are not a science major when applying to med school.
Alternative Majors
Electrical/Mechanical Engineering: environmental, aerospace, materials, nuclear, industrial
Neuroscience + Psychology: sociology, anthropology, human ecology, urban studies, American/ethnic studies, linguistics
Less competitive majors: foreign languages, English, history, philosophy, comparative literature, classics, geology, geography
Elton Lin: So maybe a couple other items: if you're [interested in] electrical, mechanical engineering, there's some engineering options… neuroscience and psychology, which is getting exceedingly popular right now in light of technology that is going in that direction… there’s some different majors. So these are some alternatives… happy for you to take a picture of [the slide].
Alternative Majors
More colleges offering a CS x “other major” program
Most notable example: University of Illinois
Computer Science Programs
Computer Science: 7.5%
Computer Science + X Programs: 19.6%
Elton Lin: Maybe something else to point out that we have been seeing more over the course of the past three or four years are the “CS plus” majors that are popping up at different universities—Northeastern is one—but the most pronounced one is the CS + X majors, the CS plus other major programs that are at University of Illinois. So we see this as a trend happening across different universities across the United States.
And if you look at the specific admit rates for computer science programs at UIUC, University of Illinois—if you apply into UIUC for straight computer science in the engineering school, it’s a 7.5% admit rate, but the computer science + X programs are a 19.6% admit rate. So it’s a little bit of a—I don’t want to call it a hack, but… and maybe to give you a look at some of the different CS plus programs, CS X programs:
Alternative Majors
CS X Majors at UIUC
College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Computer Science + Animal Sciences
Computer Science + Crop Sciences
College of Education
Computer Science + Education
The Grainger College of Engineering
Computer Science + Bioengineering
Computer Science + Physics
College of Fine and Applied Arts
Computer Science + Music
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Computer Science + Anthropology
Computer Science + Astronomy
Computer Science + Chemistry
Computer Science + Economics
Computer Science + Geography & Geographic Information Science
Computer Science + Linguistics
Computer Science + Philosophy
College of Media
Computer Science + Advertising
Elton Lin: If a student has genuine interest in computer science plus econ, or computer science plus philosophy—it's an ideal case for a student who's maybe not just pure computer science, who has other interests, and they can look to UIUC to combine those interests and create a college curriculum experience that really addresses what their educational goals and needs are.
So I see this happening more and more across the United States at different universities… that universities are doing to help receive the larger influx of CS students that are coming their way.
When considering different majors…
Don’t randomly choose - admissions can detect majors that don’t match
Find a thread in your application to follow a major
Volunteering w/ climate change NGO + working at farmers market = environmental sciences
Tutoring at-risk students + volunteering at food bank = sociology
Community action + strong in sciences + loves art = urban design
Consider major + minor combinations
Major in philosophy + minor in computer science = artificial intelligence
Elton Lin: All right, maybe a couple quick things: when considering different majors, don’t randomly choose.
We have a Rice and Brown admissions person on our advisory team, and he was telling me that, you know, when they were reading apps for Rice one time, he—it’s very obvious when there’s a student who has a lot of robotics, computer science, and then their declared major was Asian studies.
And it’s one of those things where they automatically know that. The application is—it’s disingenuous… it’s a turnoff, right? So you can’t just go in one direction and then pick a major that is less applied for. So don’t randomly choose. Admissions can detect majors that don’t match.
And then, you know, think about—when you think about crafting your resume journey, your activity journey, think about: how do you connect different activities that sort of paint a story?
And so: volunteering with a climate NGO, working in a farmers market, potentially might equal environmental science. There's a couple examples here, but think about how your interests and your particular activities… what type of story it paints, and how it might connect to a particular major that might fit you well.
Student Case Study
Student A: Computer Science
3.8 UW GPA, 1500 SAT, 11 APs
3 large leadership roles
2 award-winning science fair projects
1 internship
2 research summer programs
Results
Accepted: Purdue
Waitlisted: UCB, UCSD, UCI, UCSC, UM, BU
Rejected: UCLA, UCD, UCSB, UW
Attending: Purdue
Elton Lin: Let me share another quick example here… and I’m, again, trying to race through so we can save time for questions… but this is one of our students applying into computer science, 3.8 unweighted GPA, 1500 on SAT, 11 APs. Not bad, obviously! And you can get a glimpse of their resume: three large leadership roles, won two fairly significant awards, both at the regional and state level with their Intel Science Fair, had a good internship, couple of research summer programs… and applied to these schools. Yellow is waitlisted, red is rejected, and green is admitted.
So this student was admitted to Purdue, and is attending Purdue—by the way, fantastic choice to go to Purdue to study computer science, one of the best CS programs in the U.S. But this is sort of—and this specific example is two years ago, and to be frank with you, I think it has gotten even more tight.
With that being said, just to compare with you…
Student Case Study
Student A: Environmental Science
3.7 UW GPA, 1480 SAT, 7 APs
2 small leadership roles
no relevant awards
1 internship
1 research summer program
Results
Accepted: UCB, UCI, UCSC, UW, BU
Waitlisted: UCSD, UM
Rejected: UCLA, UCD, UCSB
Attending: UC Berkeley
Elton Lin: One of our students who applied into environmental science: 3.7 unweighted, 1480… maybe less robust resume… and overall a decent student, but definitely one solid step down from the computer science student… admitted to Berkeley, admitted to UCI (UC Irvine), Santa Cruz, University of Washington, Boston University, and is attending UC Berkeley.
So major does matter! And it does impact the college list. That’s the truth.
Trend #3: Colleges Using Early Decision
Elton Lin: All right! Last trend that we’re going to share: colleges using early decision. And this is something that I think—this is not so much a trend that’s emerging from 2023, 2024—it’s a trend that has been going on, I would say, from 2020 up until now.
What is Early Decision?
Early Decision (ED) and ED II
Students may only apply to one college on the ED (or ED II) plan
Deadlines: ED November (December); ED II January (February)
Potential results:
Accepted: student must attend based on ED agreement
Deferred: student moved to regular deadline and released from ED agreement. Student may apply to another college’s ED II program.
Rejected: student may not reapply on the regular deadline. Student may apply to another college’s ED II program.
Elton Lin: And so just to give you a quick explanation of what is early decision.
Early decision, essentially, is the program—if you apply to a school that is using an early decision program, and you are applying to that school under the ED program—if you are admitted, then you have to go.
So maybe a couple of specific students may only apply to one college on an ED plan, so ED or ED II—the deadline is normally November, and January for ED II. I can get into some of the specifics on maybe ED I and ED II on the Q&A, but essentially, if you apply under ED and you’re admitted, you’ve got to go. And then normally what happens is that either you’re accepted—then you’ve got to go. If you’re deferred… oftentimes schools will push the student at the early deadline to the regular deadline, and essentially what they’re saying is that “we’ll just tell you later, we’re going to decide at another time.” Or they may reject that student at the early round, and students may not apply to that school again under the regular deadline.
So those are normally the three results that happen on an early decision.
Why Do Colleges Like ED?
Yield
Colleges don’t like guess work!
Fit
Colleges want to accept students who want to attend!
ED is the ultimate form of demonstrated interest.
Competition
Colleges want to snag the applicants who will meet their institutional priorities (e.g. first gen, rural, low income, underrepresented, majors with fewer applicants).
Elton Lin: Why do colleges like ED?
Number one, it takes the guesswork out of whether a student will come. You could imagine it’s super confusing on the student and family side with regards to which schools you apply for and whether they’ll let you in—and then on the university side, you can imagine you’re getting all these students who are applying… if I admit you, how do I know you’re going to come?
So colleges don’t like the guesswork, and if a student is applying early decision, and they know that they’re going to be coming, there is definitely a tendency, or a veering, towards wanting to admit more of those students because it’s more of a sure thing for them.
So colleges also want to accept students who want to attend. ED is the ultimate form of demonstrated interest—so ED is the ultimate form of a student saying, “you’re the school I want to be at, you’re the school that I love, and I’m coming your way if you let me in.”
And colleges want to snag applicants who will meet their institutional priorities. I feel like this is an entire—this can't be underscored enough that oftentimes, institutional priorities govern the admissions behavior of the university more than any other factor. And so whether, you know, they want to admit more first generation students, more rural students, more students from certain states that don't send enough of those students, low-income, underrepresented—whatever the case may be, oftentimes institutional priorities influence the behavior more than we think it does.
And in so doing, oftentimes colleges admit some of those priorities, a lot of those priorities, via early decision.
Admitting Higher % via ED (2023)
Elton Lin: All right, maybe just as a quick chart: this is not so much for you to memorize the percent difference between early decision versus regular decision for Duke, but more just to give you a quick visual that if you’re applying early decision for certain schools, the admit rate can be significantly higher.
If you look at Tulane—which I think is kind of ridiculous—this was two years ago’s data that Tulane has forthcoming made some adjustments to, but you can see that if you’re applying under early decision, the admit rate is indeed higher.
But I do want to make a note that if you’re a 2.5 [GPA] student applying early decision to Northwestern, just because the higher—you know, “I’m just going to apply ED, expecting that ED is going to get me in!” If you’re a 2.5, likely you’re just going to get rejected, because you’re so far out of the particular bracket that early decision is not going to help you. So you need to be within the bracket, and then ED can be an advantage for you.
Admitting More via ED (2022)
Elton Lin: I do want to share this, because I think it's actually pretty important as well. This, essentially, is the percent of… the percent of the freshman class schools are filling on the ED round. So between 2018 and 2022, schools are filling more of the freshman class on ED.
So if you take a quick scan, Tulane from 28% to 68%, WashU St. Louis from 43% to 62%, Johns Hopkins even from 46% to 60%—so schools are filling their class on the ED round more and more now.
I feel like that has leveled off a little bit, so it’s not going to skyrocket up to 80%, but what I’m saying is that this has been happening over the course of the last, you know, last five or six years more and more. And so the advantage of applying ED is ever more present in this chart.
Who Should Apply ED?
Students who…
Are done with standardized testing!
Are in a financial position to use the ED option
Have a first choice college (no regrets)
Are at or above the 75th percentile for admits to the college
The early pool is the most competitive pool; students with less competitive profiles will likely not benefit from ED
Are able to abide by the ED Agreement
Elton Lin: All right, so who should apply early decision?
Students who are done with standardized testing: so you don't need to take a test in the fall of your senior year to see what score you get before you apply to early decision, because most of the time, ED deadline is November 1st.
If you’re in a financial position to use the ED option: because you will not see your financial aid package—especially this past year with the FAFSA fiasco, which we’re not going to go into this coming presentation—for certain, this past year you wouldn’t, but in almost every other year, you’re not going to see your financial package prior to getting a decision. So you should have some clarity on your financial position prior to submitting an ED application.
Have a first choice college: there’s got to be a school that you really love and want to go to no matter what.
Then you’re also ideally at or above the 75th percentile for admits to college: so ideally you're in the—at least in the top third, this is the top 25%. But at least in the top third of the applicant pool so that, when using ED, it pushes you across the board, pushes you across the finish line, so to speak.
So if you’re essentially—again, I use the kind of extreme example of the 2.5 [GPA]—if you’re sort of farther out of the range, ED is less and less of an advantage to you. The early pool is the most competitive pool. Students with less competitive profiles will likely not benefit from early decision.
So you have to kind of look at where your bracket of school is, where your stats fit within that bracket, see which schools allow and take ED applications, and then consider your ED options from that point.
What do I do?
Consider early decision IF it’s appropriate for you (finances + fit)
Strategize on potentially using both ED1 and ED2
Elton Lin: So what do I do?
Some things that you can consider doing is: consider early decision, if it’s appropriate for you, which is including finances and fit; and then strategize on potentially using both ED1 and ED2. So oftentimes what we’ve done, especially when coaching our students on their college list, is that you can potentially use ED twice in [an application] season.
So ED1 is a November 1 deadline, ED2 normally is a January 1 deadline. And what ends up happening is that you can apply to one school in ED1. You will hear the result on December 15th, around December 15th, and let’s just say—heaven forbid—you don’t get into that school; you get rejected. You can consider applying early decision 2 to another school at the January 1st deadline.
I have a student who applied to Pomona College on ED1—was not admitted unfortunately, heard about it December 15th—was disappointed, took a day to grieve, and then the next day we decided very quickly: we’re going to do the University of Chicago on ED2, and thankfully was admitted to University of Chicago on ED2. So essentially what you’re doing is that you’re giving yourself two shots, two ED opportunities in one cycle.
Planning this out and thinking through which schools are a priority for you—this is also why we try to start the college list discussion very early on with our students, and have ample time for strategy over the summer, so that we can consider—and even if we decide that ED is not a good option for the family, that’s totally fine! But it’s good to think through early and then develop a plan that you can execute over the course of the fall.
All right!
Trends for 2023:
Applications are UP ↑
College Majors Matter
Colleges Using Early Decision
Elton Lin: So trends for 2023: application numbers are up; college majors matter, no question; then colleges are using early decision.
Don’t forget!
Apply to more safety schools
Build a major-focused resume
Consider ED if it’s right for you
It’s OK to change plans
Elton Lin: Maybe a couple of things… don’t forget: apply to more safety schools; build a major-focused resume; consider ED if it’s right for you.
And I do want to hearken back to my story from the beginning, [which] is that it’s okay to change plans. Don’t feel like you’ve got to get everything right. And oftentimes students will change their minds on majors, and you won’t necessarily know until you get there, so make the best choice that you can, and then it’s right—and life—to make some adjustments along the way. So no worries whatsoever.
Other considerations:
Focus on real interests and genuinely helping people
Letters of recommendations
“Demonstrated interest” towards target + safety schools
Elton Lin: I do want to leave you with a couple of considerations. And I realized when I did this slide that this could be its own presentation!
But we see a lot of students, we see a lot of resumes, and it’s easy to see when somebody is building a resume sort of artificially. So I know I mentioned earlier, “build a resume that really fits with the major,” but if students are genuinely pursuing their interests, and really doing things that bring them joy, and they have some demonstrated level of aptitude and ability in that area: that’s great! Then continue going down that route, and your resume will reflect you in a very genuine way.
I oftentimes tell students: focus on your real interest, and also focus on genuinely helping people. And I say that because I think sometimes—there’s always—I see a lot of projects, I see a lot of things on paper, and the reality is that oftentimes, there’s a pursuit to build a resume. But let me encourage you to pursue—to genuinely help people. Number one, it’s more fulfilling and more purposeful, and number two, I do want to say that if you end up getting a letter of rec from the people you help, that letter of rec is going to be more genuine.
I know I kind of backdoored that next point here, but: pursue your real interests, and then focus on genuinely helping people.
The letters of rec portion, as I mentioned already, is going to matter more… and this is where, when you get a lot of students with a lot of inflated resumes and applications, admissions officers are going to rely more on rec letters to really differentiate between one student and the next.
So: be genuine, help people… do so in the classroom as well, and your teachers will see it. Focus in on the real things, and your rec letters will be better. That’s a byproduct of that.
Demonstrated interest—this term, demonstrated interest, essentially, in a nutshell, means that—it is things that you do to demonstrate your interest to that particular college. Not every school measures demonstrated interest—Stanford doesn’t measure demonstrated interest… Harvard, Yale… don’t worry about the Ivy Leagues… but many other schools, whether in small or large measure, [are] measuring demonstrated interest.
So that includes visiting a school, jumping into an online information session, visiting an admissions rep at a college fair. Those are examples of demonstrated interest. Let me encourage you that it may be helpful to demonstrate your interest toward your target and safety schools.
This is where, again, when you’re talking about, like, the University of Washington—which, generally, speaking, is not measuring demonstrated interest—but when you’re thinking about schools that you thought would be more likely to admit you… their applicant pools are ballooning, and they also have to differentiate which students are more likely to come. So let me encourage you to maybe consider demonstrating some of that interest towards your safety and target schools.
That may invariably help you focus down your list a little bit more, because you cannot demonstrate interest to 50 schools! You have to really understand which schools are your priorities and then focus on where you do that.
Questions!
Thank You!
Elton Lin
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Elton Lin: All right! I want to make sure there is enough time for questions. I’m going to invite Anthony back in—and appreciate all of you hanging on with me through all of our information.
But Anthony, do we have any questions, or are we just gonna sign off? What do you think?
Anthony Su: Oh, we have a ton of questions, and I’m sure that, now that we’ve in the Q&A, they’re going to ask more now.
A question regarding—I guess this is the part when you were talking about admit rates within the UC system, and you’re looking at a place like UDub, the question around CSU: if we think that admit rates are likely to fall for places like Cal Poly, San Jose State, San Diego State.
Elton Lin: Yeah! That data is out there, actually, for more impacted majors… but at Cal Poly…
What’s kind of different about Cal Poly is that it’s just because a popular school, and rightfully so—I mean, there’s a lot of Cal Poly alumni coming back into Silicon Valley, they’re easy to hire, there’s a good track record for Cal Poly grads—so I mean, specifically at Cal Poly, it’s going to be more difficult to get into over time, there’s no question. So that admit rate has dropped for sure. And if you talk about computer science, that admit rate has dropped like a rock, even more so.
At San Jose State—because I can imagine this is a Bay Area person asking a question—the CS major has always been impacted at San Jose State. So there’s no question that, specifically the majors—maybe for the school as a whole, the overall admit rate may be not dropping like a rock—but the CS programs, for certain, within these schools are dropping, no question.
Anthony Su: Sounds good.
A question around ED1 and ED2, since most of the stats that we presented won’t disaggregate between early decision 1 and early decision two… but there was just a question of what we would think the admit rate would be there, and if we think—and this is another thing of more schools are doing ED2 now, so—how critical is ED2 in an early decision plan?
Elton Lin: If the question is asking, “is there a difference between the percentage of admit rate for ED1 and ED2?”—that information is not out there. I mean, we can make flamboyant guesses about what that might be! I’m happy to make some flamboyant guesses offline. But that data is actually not out there, so I don’t want to overstate it.
But how important is it to have both an ED1 and ED2 strategy? I think it’s helpful to think about it. So I feel like—among the things that students have in their power, it’s the early decision choice. That’s the one thing that you have in your hand, and so being able to employ it as many times as you can—again, provided that you have financial and academic fit with a school—I think if you can use it twice, you should use it twice, and give it your best shot.
Anthony Su: And then another question about—since we talked around picking the right major—I think this question was specifically about wanting to go towards an undergraduate business program, but wanting to pick something more specific, like entrepreneurship, and wondering if that is actually an advantage since it’s more specific, or if potentially that would still be impacted for that type of program.
Elton Lin: Yeah, that’s a great question. It actually depends on the school you’re applying to. So for example, what makes most business majors… I would say—an example would be like a Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, or a Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, right? So this is where—these schools have proper undergraduate business schools, and then under the rubric of the business school, there may be a general business major, an entrepreneurship major, a marketing major, a finance major.
So if you’re applying to a business major that’s still under the rubric of the undergraduate business school, normally the admit rates are not that different. So I wouldn’t: “oh, I’m just doing entrepreneurship, hopefully it’s a much higher admit rate!”
If that’s not the case, and it’s not within [something] like a Haas School of Business, and you’re just applying into the College of Arts and Sciences, or Letters and Sciences in the UC system, and there are other business-related majors, then I wouldn’t say the admit rate is going to be much higher, but it’s likely that the admit rate is not the same, and not as selective.
Anthony Su: We didn’t touch on early action, but I guess there's a question of how we think early action fits into these trends, and if students should probably apply to more schools in that direction.
Elton Lin: Yeah, early action data has not changed that much, in the sense of your likelihood of being admitted. So even 10 years ago, early action—I mean, there may be some outlier individual schools that have really high early action admit rates, but it’s very much an outlier. And so most of the time, early action is not a significant benefit to a student’s admit chances.
But for me personally, I like my students to apply to as many early deadline schools as possible, in part, in large part because you get some of your results early—even on your safety schools, you get some of those results early in December, you get into a few schools on the early round, you feel good, and I tell you: man, managing the emotional and mental battle throughout the college admissions process is super important. I don’t mean to make a lot of it—it’s super important. So that’s why I really try to encourage students: apply to safety schools on the early round—even on the early action round, so it’s not binding—get the result early, have a few schools in your back pocket, and just go into your winter, Christmas break feeling a little better.
So that’s normally what I would do with an EA, early action, as it relates to an ED.
Anthony Su: A question around demonstrated interest, since we were talking about that being a little bit more important. The question was basically: what can the students do for public schools, or schools that have said that they won’t consider demonstrated interest?
Elton Lin: For the schools that say they don’t consider demonstrating interests… and the way to find this out is that you can search the school’s Common Data Set, so if you just search “Cornell Common Data Set”, you’ll get a chart that describes what they measure in an application review, and they will list off whether they are measuring a student’s interest in that school.
So there’s going to be a lot of schools that say they don’t, and you have to take their word for it when they say they don’t, but maybe this is one of these kind of flamboyant discussions or guesses… it’s not a guess so much as to say that the environment is also challenging for colleges to understand how to build their class.
So when every university pool is enlarging, getting bigger, it makes it more difficult for them to predict how that class, that pool, will respond when they admit them.
I’m not saying any one particular school is measuring a lot more than the other—this is not that webinar. But I’m very confident that a lot of schools are paying attention. Now, are they paying attention a little bit, paying attention a lot? That depends on the school. But schools are paying attention.
Anthony Su: I’ll do one last question, just about the acceptance rate via major. The parent was basically asking if there’s a resource that we can offer for that.
I don’t believe that that’s available for every school… was there a place, Elton, that you would recommend for checking that out?
Elton Lin: I’m sorry, the sound actually blanked out on me, so I kind of missed the first few seconds of that.
Anthony Su: You’re all good! The question was around, “is there a central place that we can look for acceptance rate by major?”
Elton Lin: Oh, there is no central place, unfortunately. The UC system is a little bit more transparent. Not every school is transparent.
You can actually search Common Data Set and even on collegedata.com, which houses (hopefully) the most updated Common Data Set for every university. There is some admit rate data there, but there is not a great central place for it. And I know, because we tried building something, and it’s actually way more difficult than it seems—and then on top of that fact, if you’re looking at average data, national average data, it’s super unhelpful.
So you have to look at school-specific admit rate data. For example, your specific high school… a lot of schools are using platforms like Naviance or Scoir. You need to go onto the Naviance or Scoir platform of your particular high school, look at, say, “what’s the admit rate for the University of Virginia for my particular school?”, and then compare that admit—take a look at the percent of students from that high school being admitted to that school, and throw out the national admit rate. So look for your school-specific admit rate, that’s the most important.
Anthony Su: That’s all we got time for today!
There’s still tons and tons of questions; I’m really sorry we can’t get to everything, but please, definitely, if you have any other questions or if you want to bug us on a particular topic that you want a webinar about, please scan the free consultation. Just let us know what you want to hear more about, or anything that you’re curious about this process for some of our upcoming students.
Elton Lin: Anthony, is there one more really provocative question that’s on there?
Anthony Su: All right, you want provocative? [They laugh.] So this is a question about early action, likely around—they’re likely hinting at restrictive early action. “I’ve heard that for Ivies, one shouldn’t do early action, especially when there’s early decision… given that it is seemingly reserved for athletes, legacy, other special cases”—referring to the early action. So do you want to comment on that?
Elton Lin: Yeah, I mean, I had a line in there that says, “institutional priorities drive the admissions behavior more than anything else.” So let me emphasize that. There’s where it’s at. I don’t want to profile the audience, Anthony, but…
Anthony Su: Can you clarify institutional priorities, just in case people don’t—
Elton Lin: Yeah, so: every year—and those institutional priorities will also change, by the way, on a year-to-year basis—but a university may set a priority to admit more first generation students, more students from states that they get fewer applicants from, like a North Dakota or a South Dakota… there definitely are legacy and athletes all in there as well.
Those priorities oftentimes are heavily weighted in the early rounds, on an REA or an EA… even though I feel that for safety schools: apply to as many EA schools as you can, even on an early run. I still feel like… get it in early, and get the results early. But yes, for a Stanford REA or a Harvard REA, it’s not gonna matter much.
Anthony Su: Perfect! Thank you
Elton Lin: Not that provocative, right?
Anthon Su: Not too provocative?
Elton Lin: Not too provocative.
Anthony Su: I guess final question: “Will recording be available?”
Yes. I’ll be able to send it all out to everyone—I think I have everyone’s email who joined—we’ll be sending out a recording so you can come back, look at the slides, if there was something that you wanted to look at, or look at the sources, things like that.
Elton Lin: All right. Hey! Super thanks, everyone, for hanging out with us this evening, whether you’re on the East Coast, international, or even on the West Coast. And excited to have you join us for the next one! We have more webinars coming up with more super helpful information, but reach out any time—free consultation on the scan—and you’ll get to meet Anthony, and that’ll be well worth it.
All right! Good night, everybody. Take care! Many thanks!
Anthony Su: Thanks so much! Bye.