As the U.S. population grows while the class size of Ivy League schools hardly changes, inevitably the bar for admission to those schools is raised.
...The quality of Ivy-rejected candidates continues to improve, which is great news for Flagship State University.
And given that the admissions arms race is so toxic, and the winners often so significantly damaged by the process, it's time for a radical re-think on whether an Ivy education is still desirable, by either prospective students or hiring employers.
I'm not sure if the term "raise the bar" is appropriate, and I have similar feelings about the quality of rejected applicants improving. Those terms are conceptually so broad, and yet the criteria they apply to are, in practice, so narrow: high grades and high SAT scores. I'm not convinced that many of these kids are really participating meaningfully in all those extracurricular activities, and I wonder how many are only signing up to check a box ("fencing looks good on college apps; FFA, not so much").
As a group, these kids strike me as being groomed for Ivy League admissions more than anything else. I'm not saying they aren't intelligent and hard-working, because they are. But they're still groomed, and the arms race for college admissions doesn't leave a lot of room for failure, exploration, or taking meaningful risks (as in, the kinds of risks that can help you grow as a person but might bring your GPA down out of the stratosphere).
You're assuming that all Ivy rejects played the game, but didn't advance to the final round, where they would still lose, because the only way to win is to not play the game. But what percentage of Ivy rejects never played to begin with? The ones who had less-than-perfect but still excellent SAT scores based on minimal test prep? The ones who lacked the breadth of extracurriculars because they explored the ones they had deeply?
One reason why the elite institutions are rejecting applicants at such elevated rates is because, thanks to the common application, it's nothing but a mouse click to "let's just see what they say."
Heck, back in the ancient days where a college app had to be delivered by an automobile, I sent one such application out. It'd be even easier to send a hundred such out today.
Of course, some of those "for the lulz" Harvard applicants get accepted, and faced with the reality of actually going to Harvard, are tempted to dive into financial oblivion.
