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University Numbers and Costs
While some small liberal arts colleges have closed in the past few years major highly selective universities have dropped their admit rates.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford had admit rates below 10% for the class that entered last fall. Some other admit rates from across the country for the class of 2015 were:
Julliard 8%
Carnegie-Mellon
30.4 %
Univ. of Virginia
32.3%
Univ. of Southern California
23%
Georgia Tech
47.5%
Notre Dame
24.2%
UCLA
25.3%
Boston College
27.9%
For the class that has just applied some universities have already announced application numbers and estimated admit rates.
Again, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford all had admit rates below 10%. USC, Vanderbilt and Northwestern will have admit rates in the high teens. USC is using the common application for the first time and has had 45,000 applications for the freshmen class.
Private colleges now have "Cost of Attendance" numbers that are rising each year, with some exceptions. It is not unusual for certain colleges to have COA at $55,000 per year. Due to generous merit scholarships or financial aid policies it may cost a family less to send a student to a private university than to a flagship state university. Certain ivies provide huge financial aid packages for students who have very low family incomes and few or no financial assets. Some colleges now post a financial aid calculator on their websites. A parent can use this tool to receive a rough estimate of the aid package.
I have seen posted on a college admissions/information website students who applied to 19 colleges. The most I have seen was 22 colleges! Some high schools now refuse to send out more than a limited number of transcripts. There are stories of high schools where the students have a bulletin board where they post letters of regret from selective colleges.
Despite all this application worry, most students do not apply to 15 colleges and the vast majority of U.S. students attend college within 250 miles of their hometown.
The NYTimes has a weekly article called "The Choice". It has many statistics and lists the applicant numbers from last year for about 100 colleges/universities. The articles follow a few students through the application process and posts their final choices.
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