相信大多数打算留美的学子都有常春藤名校情节。在过去的一年，绝大多数常春藤名校的录取率都创下历史新低。通用申请表的出现则助推了这波申请浪潮。录取率的逐年下降虽并不能完全说明进美国名校的困难程度也在相应地增加，但申请人数确实在逐年上涨，如何在成千上万的申请人当中脱颖而出也越来越考验每个申请人 的独特性。
Gaining entry into an Ivy League school is getting tougher every year. The prestigious group of eight colleges and universities recently made their admissions decisions, and all but one decreased their already low acceptance rates.
Harvard University was the most selective of the bunch, accepting a record-low 5.8% of its 33,531 applicants. It was followed by Yale University, which admitted 6.72% of its record-high 29,610 applicants, and Columbia University, which dropped its acceptance rate from 7.4% last year to 6.89% this year.
A larger applicant pool helped fuel increased selectivity. Cornell University received a record 40,006 applications and accepted 15.2% of them — down from 16.2% last year. The University of Pennsylvania saw applications inch up from 31,218 to 31,280 this year, and admitted 12.1%. Brown University saw applications dip very slightly, but still accepted just 9.2% of applicants. Princeton University, which has seen a 93.5% increase in applications in the past nine years, accepted just 7.29% of this year’s 26,498 applicants. Princeton says its acceptance rate was down from 7.86% last year because it overenrolled the current freshman class by about 50 students and is compensating by accepting 18 fewer students each year for the next three years. Dartmouth College was the only member to increase its rate of admission, which rose slightly from 9.8% last year to 10.05%. Taken together, the Ivy League received 247,283 applications and admitted 23,010 prospective students, making for a collective acceptance rate of 9.3%.Even more selective than the Ivy schools was Stanford University, which has developed a reputation for minting technology entrepreneurs.
For many of these schools the ever lower acceptance rates are the result of bulging application pools. According to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, the number of high school graduates in the U.S. steadily increased for 15 years before peaking at 3.4 million graduates in 2010–11. But there are still some 3.2 million students graduating each year, and they’re applying to colleges alongside high school seniors from around the world. And all those students are applying to more colleges than ever, thanks in large part to the Common App, a single application and essay that is accepted at 488 schools, including the vast majority of selective schools. According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, 79% of students in 2011 applied to three or more colleges, up from 67% in 2000. “More people are applying for the same small number of elite colleges than there ever have been — there are a gazillion applications for every spot,” says Rachel Toor, an author, college-admissions counselor and former Duke University admissions officer. “Even when you tell them only 6% get in, they still think, maybe I’ll be the one. Mostly, they’re not.”
Though prestigious schools get thousands more applications than they could ever accept, they don’t exactly discourage the interest. “Everyone wants to keep their admit rate low because that makes you more selective, which gives you a higher place on the college rankings,” Toor says. “People in admissions say they don’t pay attention to rankings, but of course they do.”
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