What the 2020 Acceptance Rates Tell Us About The College Admissions Trends During COVID

college admissions Sep 10, 2021

It’s that time of the year again. If you are a student who applied to college this admissions cycle, you are surely spending these last couple of weeks anxiously checking your emails and clicking links in various portals to hopefully find good news. Most colleges are done sending out their letters and acceptance rates have started to be released! Unsurprisingly, the top schools have continued to be incredibly competitive, while other colleges that have previously been considered target options are more selective than ever. 

If you are not waiting, you may have gotten your decisions, or you’re preparing to take on the process and want to know how tough the admissions landscape currently looks. 

I have compiled some stats in this blog and analyzed this year’s trends.

In short, the COVID-19 has not be forgiving to our students. 

The Break Down of the 2020 cCollege Acceptance Rates

The table below outlines the 2020 college acceptance rates for the top national universities and liberal arts colleges that have been publicized so far, arranged in order of most selective to least selective this year. Of course, this is not the full picture and more updates will be made as results keep coming out. 

School
2020 Acceptance Rate
Harvard University
4.9%
Princeton University
5.6%
Columbia University
6.1%
University of Chicago
6.2%
Yale University
6.5%
Brown University
6.9%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
7.3%
Duke University
7.7%
University of Pennsylvania
8.1%
Bowdoin College
8.3%
Dartmouth College
8.8%
Johns Hopkins University
8.8%
Swarthmore College
8.8%
Northwestern University
9%
Vanderbilt University
9%
Colby College
9.4%
Rice University
10%
Barnard College
10.9%
Amherst College
12%
Washington University in St. Louis
13%
New York University
15%
Georgetown University
15%
Tufts University
15%
University of Southern California
16%
University of Notre Dame
16.5%
Boston University
18.5%
Northeastern University
19%
Wellesley College
19%
Wesleyan University
19.8%
Georgia Institute of Technology
20%
University of Virginia
20.6% (in-state: 33%, out-of-state: 15%)
Emory University
20.7%
Boston College
24%
University of Florida
29%
Villanova University
29%
Macalester College
37%
University of Georgia
46%
 

Continuing the pattern of their shocking results from last year, Colby College, Duke University, and Boston University are all institutions that have kept up their competitive streaks. Barnard College—which is ranked number 25 on the US News list of liberal arts colleges—is a big surprise this year with its admit rate of 10.9%. This number has even surpassed the rate at Amherst College, which is ranked the second-best liberal arts school! 

The top schools are celebrating diversity in their new classes. Princeton announced that 17% of the admitted students are first-generation, while 61% of admits are students of color. At Harvard, 30% of accepted applicants identify as black or Latino shaping more of the fate of affirmative action, while 25% are Asian American. Women make up 52% of Harvard’s Class of 2024 and 20% of the admits qualified for federal Pell grants for low-income students. At Tufts, 50.1% of admitted US students are people of color, while the number of first-generation students admitted increased by 30%. 

Cornell University has joined Stanford University in the list of colleges which will no longer publicize their acceptance rates. But, both of these universities are consistently selective (last year Cornell admitted 10.6% of students, while Stanford accepted 4.7% of applicants in 2018) and you can bet that this year is no different. 

Pomona College currently states that it admitted 745 students without revealing the number of applications received. Considering last year 726 applicants were accepted and the acceptance rate was 7%, we can presume that this year’s data is similar.

You might be wondering how these numbers compare to last years. The following table highlights how some of the most competitive schools fared this year alongside how selective they were in 2019. 

School
2020 Acceptance Rate
2019 Acceptance Rate
Harvard University
4.9%
4.5%
Princeton University
5.6%
5.8%
Columbia University
6.1%
5.1%
Yale University
6.5%
5.9%
Brown University
6.9%
6.6%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
7.3%
6.6%
Duke University
7.7%
7.7%
University of Pennsylvania
8.1%
7.4%
Bowdoin College
8.3%
8.9%
Dartmouth College
8.8%
7.9%
Johns Hopkins University
8.8%
7.7%
Swarthmore College
8.8%
8.7%
Northwestern University
9%
9%
Vanderbilt University
9%
9.1%
Colby College
9.4%
9.5%
Rice University
10%
9%
Barnard College
10.9%
13.7%
Amherst College
12%
13%

We heard it through the grape vines that despite all the promises of “test-blind admissions,” schools did accept students with scores and hight scores at that, not diverting from the past year’s tradition. Ivies and highest tier schools, are not much different than what we have seen from previous years. Some of the changes are comparatively insignificant, such as Brown’s going up to 6.9% from 6.6%, or Harvard changing to 4.9% from 4.6%. There is a slight rise in the acceptance rate at Columbia going up to 6.1% from 5.1%, MIT moving to 7.3% from 6.6%, and Yale’s change from 6.5% to 5.9%. And since the opening of the Paul Murray and Benjamin Franklin colleges, Yale had been on its fourth year of expanding its freshman class size, therefore showing consistently promising growth. 

The current CORONA pandemic status is what has everyone watching thee scores closely. Many students, particularly international admits, may not be able to travel if the social distancing protocols continue through the fall. Colleges want to maintain a high yield rate and ensure that they are still able to fill as many spots as they had originally allotted for while planning for all outcomes. For instance, Harvard has expressed openly there being uncertainty in the admissions office when it came to planning yield and the role the virus played in the drop in selectivity. The school has particularly expressed concern about the possibility of admitted students not being able to travel or move across the country during this chaotic time.  

Colleges that brought big surprises in acceptance rates last year, such as Duke University, Boston University, and Colby College maintained similar numbers, demonstrating that admission at these institutions will stay competitive as interest in these schools continues to grow.

For more info about colleges you can reach out to VoicED.
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