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Students (or their parents) often express shock and dismay when they or another academic superstar they know is not admitted to an elite university. Stellar high school GPA and top test scores are no longer the “golden admissions tickets” they were perceived to be in years past. A generation ago, high grades and standardized test scores did not automatically translate to admission to an elite college, but they were much rarer and certainly helped students stand out in the admissions process. Back in those days, universities received far fewer applications, and the number of students with top grades and test scores was significantly lower than it is today.
In 1993, for example Yale University received 10,705 applications and admitted 23.9% of its applicants. In 2023, by contrast, Yale received 52,250 applications, and its admit rate dropped to 4.35%. Similarly, Northwestern University received 13,987 applications in 2001, when its admit rate was 34.2%. In 2023, Northwestern received 52,225 applications and posted an admit rate of 7%. The decline in admit rates has been even more dramatic at the University of Southern California, which had an admit rate of 45% in the late 1990s. In 2023, USC received 80,790 applications and admitted just 9.9% of its applicants.
In today’s swollen applicant pools, a student with top grades and scores is just one of many with similar statistics. Students have not gotten inherently smarter. The rise in academic metrics is attributable, in part, to rampant, well-documented grade inflation. Between 1998 and 2016, the average high school GPA rose from 3.27 to 3.38 while the proportion of students with A averages increased from 38.9% in 1998 to 47% in 2016. This means that nearly half of a graduating class has an A average, resulting in GPAs that are barely distinguishable from one another. Studies have also found that grade inflation is correlated with affluence, leading students from better-resourced high schools to have similarly high GPAs—ones that often eclipse those of their peers from lower-resourced schools.
Grade inflation has continued to climb since 2016, and the problem has worsened since the pandemic, potentially due to the challenges presented by school closures and disrupted learning. A study released by the ACT testing organization in May 2022 found that the number of test-takers with an A average surpassed the number of students with a B average in 2016, and the number of A students has continued to overshadow the number of B students ever since. Notably, the ACT study included non-college bound students whose high schools required them to test.
On top of grade inflation, standardized test scores are on the rise. Between 2015 and 2019, the number of perfect scores on the ACT more than doubled in the United States, and the 2019 figure was six times higher than it was in 2011. In the class that graduated high school in 2020, the last year in which the vast majority of U.S. colleges required applicants to submit standardized test scores, 5,579 students earned a perfect 36 on the ACT. That means that if Harvard University were to admit students based on a single admissions test, which it would never do, it could fill its incoming first-year class of approximately 2,000 students more than twice over exclusively with students who earned a perfect 36 on the ACT.
The prevalence of high grades and scores explains why students with top academic statistics, without more, do not waltz into elite colleges in today’s competitive admissions climate. Admissions decisions are not based solely on academic metrics, which, in turn, are not the differentiators they once were. For many students (particularly those without a “hook” that satisfies one or more institutional priorities), top grades and scores are almost a threshold for mere consideration by highly-selective universities. Amidst the thousands of applicants with similarly impressive academic credentials, admissions officers look to other application components—such as extracurricular involvement, essays, and recommendation letters—to differentiate amongst the masses of academically talented students. Stated another way, top grades and scores serve as a foot in the proverbial door; then, students must find other, more unique ways to prop it open.
