US University Admissions Trends 2024

The high number of Millennial and Gen Z applicants made the Fall 2024 admission cycle quite competitive for top-ranked US universities. So, just high grades/GPA and high SAT/ACT test scores weren't enough. In fact, SAT/ACT scores seemed, strangely, to matter less than having many good AP or IB scores, like more than 5 AP/IB scores and having as many as 10. This may be because SAT/ACT scores were almost all optional. Also too, this year, students' acceptances weren't as clear cut: In previous years, a student's university list would have a clear line in the middle, below which were acceptances and above which were denials. This year, there were surprising acceptances at higher ranked universities--above that "line"--while lower ranked universities had some denials: For example, one student was accepted to UC Berkeley but was waitlisted to UCLA, and denied to Michigan Ann Arbor. Another was accepted to Columbia, but was denied to UPenn, accepted to Johns Hopkins, but denied to U of Chicago. These uneven acceptances had almost never happened in years before but were true for about 30% of student applications. With the lingering effects of the bad economy during the Covid years, top public universities were very selective in admissions, so UC Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan Ann Arbor, U of Virginia were extremely competitive, and the same for equally ranked public universities compared to the more expensive private universities.