Page 27 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 2 Winter 2014

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to the undergraduate program that would be the least
financial burden. Once I realized that attending a name
school wasn’t as important as I thought it was, I started
to really enjoy my time at Pitt and think it is an excellent
university.”
Molly Becker ’13 thought she would go to Notre Dame,
the alma mater of her parents, and gained acceptance to
an Ivy League college and a scholarship to Davidson in
North Carolina, but decided on the University of Chicago
because of the core classes it requires in a student’s first
two years.
“There is an incalculable amount of pressure on these
kids,” says Kevin Becker, Molly’s
dad. “It is a needlessly defining
process. St. Paul’s is not a prelude
to an Ivy League education. This
is the best possible education you
can get in high school, and that’s
what we care about. Having a col-
lege strategy as opposed to a wish
list allows students [like Molly] to
isolate the things they want.”
In a 1986 report from then-
Director of College Advising
Roberta Tenney, she shared with
Rector Kelly Clark the alarming
rise in applications to the most
competitive colleges. Harvard’s
applicant pool had risen 23.27
percent since 1975; Yale’s by
25.83 percent; Princeton’s by 26.08
percent; and Brown’s had skyrock-
eted by 58.73 percent in 11 years.
“The upward swing in applicant
numbers demonstrates one reason
for the increased competitiveness
and stress experienced by young
people as a result of the college
admissions process,” Tenney wrote.
However, none of the schools to
which Tenney referred received
more than 14,000 applications. The
year before Tenney’s letter, in 1985,
Yale became the first college to boast
an acceptance rate under 20 per-
cent, according to Pratt. Now there
are well over 30 colleges with num-
bers that low. In 2013, Harvard’s
acceptance rate reached an all-
time low of 5.8 percent. Vanderbilt,
which had an admit rate above 40
percent a decade ago, was at 12
percent in 2013, with a tripling
of applications in that time span.
In 2013, Stanford took 2,210 (5.69%)
of a record 38,828 applicants.
Columbia accepted 2,311 (6.89%) of its 33,531 hopefuls.
Dartmouth 2,252 (10.05%) of 22,416; and Williams said
yes to 1,157 (16.88%) of 6,853 prospective students.
Other reported acceptance statistics for the Class
of 2017 include Claremont McKenna (11.71%); Duke
(12%); Penn (12%); Pomona (12.89%); Amherst (13.67%);
Swarthmore (14.05%); Pitzer (14.54%); Georgetown
(16.6%); Williams (16.88%); Middlebury (19.21%); and
Wesleyan (19.37%).
Northeastern University, once a commuter school
with an acceptance rate of nearly 90 percent, now
hovers around the 30-percent mark. In a college trivia
game designed by Pratt and his
colleagues to help educate stu-
dents about the range of options
available to them, an answer to
one of the questions reveals that
Northeastern, not one of its more
vaunted nearby sibling schools,
two years ago received the most
applications for admission of any
private college in the country.
For the Class of 2017, North-
eastern received a record 47,322
applications to fill a freshman
class of 2,800 students. The uni-
versity reported on its website
last spring that the average GPA
in the 2013 applicant pool was a
3.8. Applicants represented 143
countries, and more than half of
hopefuls were from outside its
traditional pool of New England.
Northeastern has long been
known for its cooperative learn-
ing program, which incorporates
real-life work experience with
classroom study. Part of the in-
crease in applications, the univer-
sity explains, is its vast offerings
for foreign study.
“Students participate in exper-
iential-​​learning programs, in-
cluding study abroad, co-​op,
and research on all seven conti-
nents and in 92 countries – a 130-
percent increase since 2006,”
Northeastern reported on its
website last March.
In 1986, Tenney calculated
two-year matriculations of SPS
Sixth Formers to what were rated
the 26 most competitive colleges
of the era. In 1985, 80.6 percent
of the form enrolled at those
two-dozen-plus colleges. The
“I was thinking,
‘I just did four
years at
St. Paul’s; I can’t
go to a lesser
college. What
will my teachers
and parents
think?’ And that
was wrong.”