Over the past few years, Boston schools have hit a new high when it comes to admissions. Name the college and there was an applicant increase.
For the 2013-2014 school year, Boston University applications increased by 20.6 percent, Babson College by 18.45 percent and Harvard by 16 percent, boston.com reported.
One of the few schools that did not outperform was Boston College, whose number of applications decreased by 26 percent in 2013, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
However, Northeastern University is on the road to increased applications. Between 2012 and 2013, the number of applicants grew by over 3,000 students. This year, the applicant pool jumped up over another 2,000 applicants, according to Northeastern’s institutional accomplishments webpage.
The increase in the number of applications has raised the academic prestige as well. On the Northeastern website, the school boasts that the average 2014 undergraduate applicant had a 4.1 GPA combined with a score of 1421 out of 1600 on the SATs.
Attending a college that prides itself on new applicants that appear borderline-genius on paper is not only tough for future candidates, but also for the students that were already accepted. As a university braces itself for an influx of differently-paced academics, those that are two, three or even four years into college are left behind.
For some, it could be a sigh of relief that they were accepted into a school whose academic standards have dramatically risen over the years. For others, it may feel like the beginnings of being cast out of a community made up of test scores and homework grades.
And for those that are now in elementary and middle school, the college search is unimaginable.
In 2013, Northeastern received 47,364 applications for 2,800 open seats. This year, Northeastern received 49,822 applications for the same number of seats, according to the school’s admissions site.
If the pattern continues steadily, an eighth grader today will compete against just under 60,000 other applicants when applying to Northeastern. If the rise is exponential, future students might compete against hundreds of thousands of peers.
For students already in school, this is not a worry. But for future generations, it is. In a country that is known for encouraging higher education for all genders, races and heritages, the school system is receiving the chance to be picky.
This may not have an impact on future students, but there is a large possibility that it will influence students negatively. Kids may not see the benefit of attending college if it means first being judged from a piece of paper along with high expectations.
Schools need to start promoting intelligence, rather than defining it.
Photo courtesy Jenni C, Creative Commons.
