One of the hardest universities to get into, Harvard, just got even harder. Harvard College has just released its admission statistics for the class of 2025, which reveals that just 1,968 applicants have been offered places, from a pool of more than 57,000 — which works out to an acceptance rate of just 3.4%. That's the lowest acceptance rate in Harvard's history.
The increase in applications is partly down to the removal of mandatory standardized testing (the SAT and ACT). The Wall Street Journal reports that over 1,600 four-year colleges did not require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores, leading to an increase in applications.
While the 2020 numbers might be exaggerated because of the testing changes, it's certainly true that acceptance rates at highly-selective institutions have been going down. Rightly or wrongly a (good) college or university education has become a pre-requisite for many jobs and industries, and competition for places has only become more intense — and a lot more expensive.
