Thursday, 4:30 PM
Colleges becoming more selective
By James Vaznis, GLOBE STAFF
Many Massachusetts colleges that have long accepted students unlikely to make the cut for an Ivy League school are sending record numbers of rejection letters this year.
The Bay State schools are becoming more selective because their applicant pools, like those at the elite colleges, are swelling from a population boom of high school-aged students. And the caliber of the applicants for schools such as Boston College, Northeastern and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is rising as Ivy League schools have become ever more competitive.
BC accepted only 27 percent of its 28,800 applicants this year, compared with 39 percent a decade ago when roughly 12,000 fewer students applied.
UMass, Amherst accepted 60 percent of 28,000 applicants, compared with 73 percent of 18,000 applicants 10 years ago.
And Northeastern University said yes to only 39 percent of its 30,000 applicants, compared with 85 percent 12 years ago.
More students are not only graduating from high school: A greater percentage is applying to college. And, students, worried about being turned down, are sending applications to a larger number of schools, further intensifying the competition.
"It’s brutal," said Mark Murray, 17, a junior at Shrewsbury High School, as he stood among thousands of students at a college fair this week in Boston. "It’s like you can’t do enough to get into a good school."
