College admissions is as competitive as it will ever be, and we continue to see admissions rates at elite institutions continue to drop every year. In fact, Stanford recently stopped reporting their acceptance rates so as to detract attention away from the incredibly stiff competition as the highest achieving students across the country vie for a spot at one of these elite institutions  (though we suspect they dropped to below 3% acceptance rate). Princeton and Harvard are hovering around 4-5%, while schools such as Yale and Columbia are roughly at 6% acceptance rates.

And even if you are one of those high octane students who have the most stellar academic and extracurricular profile, it doesn’t mean you’ll get in. As we’ve always said, the college applications is the most important aspect of this process, and we’ve seen strong students who get rejected from every top university they applied to, while weaker students were able to get in.