As a junior in high school, I have started to think about college admissions and where I want to go. I have spent countless hours googling different universities and colleges regarding their admissions rate, average test scores, application requirements, and more.
In the past few decades, university admissions rates have decreased nationwide. Part of this issue comes from the fact that there are simply just more applicants every year. In the Fall 2024 Admission cycle, the Common App saw about seven million applications sent to 834 institutions. This was a 7% increase from the previous cycle and a 28% increase from the 2019-2020 cycle. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, they received 65,933 applications, a record.
As institutions gain more applications, their admission requirements get stricter. If they were to admit everyone who had above a 3.5 GPA, they would be admitting too many people. So, there is a valid reason for colleges to be stricter about who they accept. However, the main issue that incoming college freshmen face is that these institutions are getting too unrealistic.
In the 1990s, the University of Wisconsin-Madison had an average SAT score of 1079 (equivalent to a 21 on the ACT). Today, the average SAT score at Madison is 1440 (32 ACT). This is also seen at other top universities in the United States, such as Harvard and Stanford. In the 90s, their average SAT scores were 1360 (29 ACT) and 1330 (29 ACT), respectively. Today, the averages are 1550 (35 ACT) and 1540 (35 ACT). This trend can also be seen paralleled in the average GPAs. The average GPA for incoming freshmen at Madison is around 3.9. In the 90s, it was about 3.5.
Universities and colleges around the United States want their applicants to be near perfect to receive an acceptance letter from them. They also want you to have good and interesting extracurriculars that require a lot of time and effort, which not every student has the capacity for.
As I have become more aware of what schools require for admission, I have started to wonder if what I am doing will be good enough to get accepted into UW-Madison. This is a common experience among high school juniors and seniors. Should I take on more leadership roles? Do I need to volunteer more? The stress of thinking that you are not enough for your dream school causes a lot of high schoolers to overwork themselves.
When my dad applied to UW-Madison in 1995, he had a 3.6 GPA, got a 28 on the ACT, and his only extracurricular was football. He was in the top 10% of his class, out-of-state, and had 1 AP test credit. I know many people who applied to Madison this year with extracurriculars, grades, and test scores considered suitable for the university who did not get accepted when they applied early action.
I have a 4.0 GPA, am involved in numerous clubs and activities in and outside of school, and take various AP courses. Yet, I still worry that what I am doing is not enough to get into some of my top schools when, 30 years ago, I would have been an outstanding applicant. Now, I am just considered average. I constantly feel like I need to do more to boost my college application and make it stand out to have a better chance to get in.
Universities should want you to show that you are an outstanding student with good grades and scores who is involved in your school and community, but they also want to see your personality in your essays. What a lot of them don’t understand is that people dedicate themselves to school work and extracurriculars and don’t have time to do things that actually interest them.
I understand that universities and colleges can not accept everyone, and they need to have standards that students have to meet. Still, those standards should not require students to overwork themselves to try and become the unachievable perfect students that colleges now want them to be.
