For a very long time, public universities were considered the safe option in admissions. Sure, Harvard has always been rather competitive, but your local flagship state school can give you a great education too, and its acceptance rate is far higher. Recently, however, this no longer seems to be the case, with acceptance rates at top public colleges dropping precipitously at universities across the country. Why is this happening, and how is it impacting different schools? In this article, we’re going to go back through many years of admissions data at top public universities to look at how admissions has changed for them, and what these changes mean for students like you. We’ll give an analysis of each school, and then take a look at overall trends. We won’t be able to look at every public college of course, so we’re going to focus on a number of top options.
A Note on Data and Statistics
All of this data comes from the Common Data Set, a set of statistics released by colleges each year, which is then used by the various ranking organizations to calculate their rankings. Schools make this public on their websites as well, and this is a great source of information about colleges, and one we use often.
Different colleges keep different archives of the Common Data Set. Because this is determined by the individual college, we have different amounts of data for different schools. We can still use this to find individual trends, but that’s the reason why stats are different across different schools.
Finally, public colleges have very different acceptance rates for in-state versus out-of-state applicants. While this is sometimes broken down in their releases, it usually isn’t in the Common Data Set. For that reason, the data we will be presenting is aggregated; note that if you are an out-of-state student (or especially an international student), applying to one of these colleges may be much harder, while an in-state student may find an easier time.
Acceptance Rates at the University of Michigan
UMich is one of the top ranked public schools in the country, and is especially well-regarded for its business and engineering programs. Luckily for us, the university also provides a very long archive of their admissions statistics, so we are able to examine how things have progressed from the year 2000 up to now.
Of note, though not shown on this chart, is that for much of its history, UMich received slightly more male than female applicants, and admitted slightly more female than male applicants. After the pandemic, UMichigan began receiving notably more applications from female applicants, with female applicants still getting admitted more often. It is slightly easier to get admitted as a female applicant, but not significantly so.
This chart is interesting for several reasons. The first is the fluctuations in application numbers and acceptance rate before 2011, where there were some overall increases in how competitive the school was, but not anything steady or prolonged. After this, however, UMichigan began getting more competitive and never looked back.
Even in years when applicant numbers stayed relatively consistent, the acceptance rate often declined slightly. This is a sign of an increasing yield rate at Michigan, where more of the students admitted chose to attend. State schools often have lower yield rates than top private schools, but their yields have been increasing, as more students select these schools as a top choice in place of private colleges.
The startling decline in acceptances after the Covid pandemic mirrors what we have seen at private colleges, with more students than ever before applying to Michigan in 2024. Whether this is an anomaly or the beginning of a new trend remains to be seen, but this has clearly become an extremely competitive school.
Acceptance Rates at UCLA
UCLA, sadly, provides slightly less data than Michigan, having only offered up archives of Common Data Sets up to 2017. This is still better than Berkeley (whose data only covers the past three years), but still not the full picture we love to see. Still, data is data, so here’s what admissions trends have looked like at UCLA over that timeframe:
One interesting piece of data which did not make it onto this chart is that UCLA has seen significantly more female applicants than male applicants for the entire period from which we have data. The acceptance rates across genders seem to correlate well with application rates, though they aren’t fully static; there seems to be no major gender advantage for applicants.
While this is less data to work with, we can see a clear change in pre-Covid and post-Covid admissions trends. UCLA was never exactly easy to get into in this timeframe, but after Covid, acceptance rates dropped below 10%, equally competitive to some of the top private universities.
Now, over the past few years, things seem to be leveling off. Whether or not this is because UCLA is scraping the limits of what can be done in college admissions remains to be seen, but we certainly believe this is the case. They are one of the top schools in terms of number of applicants, and we must assume there is an upper bound somewhere. Whether or not we have found it yet, though, remains to be seen.
Acceptance Rates at Georgia Tech
Georgia Tech is another great public university, though with a slightly different reputation. While UMichigan and UCLA are both seen as great schools all around, Georgia Tech is most well known for its engineering program. It is, of course, a great school in other departments as well, but it is engineering where it truly shines. Luckily, they also give us a good amount of data to work with, with admissions data available back to 2003-04. Let’s see what that looks like:
Notable is that the gender ratio of applicants to Georgia Tech is one of the most skewed we’ve seen, with often twice as many men applying than women. More men are admitted than women, but not at commensurate rates; it is more likely for female applicants to get accepted than their male counterparts. This has remained the case for the entire period of time covered by this data.
This is an interesting set of data, because it is so clearly divided into halves. Prior to 2013, the admissions rate fluctuated a good deal, and did show some declines, but it was well over 50%. After 2015, it was below 50%, and fell regularly every year since. There were still a few minor fluctuations, though this came during the completely normal time of the Covid pandemic.
This two year period is interesting, as there is a more than 20% drop in acceptance rate. What caused this exactly? This is uncertain from the data; all we have here are numbers. But this clearly was not changed by any inherent difference in the university; Georgia Tech was a great school before this drop, and remained one afterwards. Whatever changed was completely outside the nature of the university itself.
This is something that you can assume with every university, but rarely is the shift as stark and fast as happened at Georgia Tech. These schools are constantly updating and improving themselves, but it is not this that drives this change in application rates. It is a factor, sure, but merely one of many.
Acceptance Rates at UT Austin
As the best public university in Texas, we find ourselves discussing UT Austin quite a bit. Its admissions trends are interesting as well, and luckily for our purposes, they have archives of the Common Data Set reaching back to the 2000-01 admissions cycle. A major differentiator for them is their guaranteed admissions for in-state students who meet certain cutoffs, which does interesting things to this data:
When comparing this chart to others, it is remarkable how consistent UT Austin’s acceptance rate is year-to-year. There are declines over time, and a few sudden jumps, but not nearly to the same level as most universities. This is because 75% of each incoming class at UT Austin is automatically accepted.
Thus, UT Austin always accepts a certain percentage of the students who apply. These are excellent students, but this does skew their admissions statistics noticeably. For most of the colleges we have examined, the number of students admitted is constant; a university only has so many seats, and this doesn’t change much year-to-year. For UT Austin, the number of students accepted increases in step with the number of applicants, because there are certain applicants they have to accept.
This cushions the acceptance rate significantly more than at other universities, and we have seen UT Austin change their parameters for who qualifies for automatic admission over time as these application numbers continue to increase. We’re seeing another such shift soon, which is unsurprising, as the application rates to UT Austin continue to rise.
Acceptance Rates at UNC Chapel Hill
UNC Chapel Hill doesn’t practice automatic admissions, but they do heavily favor in-state students over their out-of-state counterparts. Most state schools do this, but it is interesting to see what this looks like in a mid-sized state like North Carolina versus a massive one like Texas or California. Luckily, UNC Chapel Hill has a very long archive of Common Data Sets available, so we can look at how their acceptance rates have varied over time.
This is an interesting set of data, as it shows a slow and steady decline in acceptance rates as application numbers increase. It is uncertain why there are spikes in applications in certain years, as apart from Covid, many do not seem to correlate with other major events in the country at the time; the financial crash in 2008, for example, has no appreciable impact on admissions numbers.
Looking at trends as a whole, it is staggering how much application rates have grown, especially in recent years. While there was gradual growth between 2000 and 2012, the growth really took off afterwards. We aren’t sure, why this is, but it is a trend we see among many other colleges; the big difference is when this inflexion point occurred.
Acceptance Rates Over Time at Public Colleges
This is a small selection of public colleges, of which there are thousands across the country. This does give a good set of data to work from though, and allows us to draw some conclusions. The first is that colleges in larger states do see slightly higher application rates than those in smaller states, but this is rather unsurprising. Public colleges primarily draw applicants from in-state, and larger states simply have a larger pool to work with.
The other thing to note is that public colleges became hyper competitive later than their private counterparts. Harvard and Yale have had incredibly low acceptance rates for twenty years now, but most public colleges were far more reasonable until recently. We do wish UCLA released more historical admissions data, as they are the most competitive public university, but every other school we looked at here, all great programs, had acceptance rates in the 60% range at the start of data collection.
As private colleges grew more competitive, students who originally would have attended one instead were drawn to state schools. Not quite as prestigious, perhaps, but still offering the same kind of great opportunities. At the same time, the growth in the number of students applying to college at all saw many more students applying to these schools. After all, if you’re in Texas, why not apply to UT Austin?
Every public college we examined here saw a major spike in applicants after the Covid pandemic. It remains to be seen if this is temporary, or a sign of a new normal for admissions. That said, the overall trend for all of these schools is that admissions gets more competitive over time, so for now we’re going to guess that these very low acceptance rates are here to stay.
Final Thoughts
Top public universities are quickly becoming as competitive as top private colleges used to be, and many of these schools have not been backups for a while now. This is a dramatic shift, as many of these excellent schools were formally the standard backups for students applying to Harvard or Yale. This is especially shocking to many parents we work with, who remember their own college applications, and are amazed at how the landscape has shifted.
We hope this article has given you a sense of how admissions works at some of these top public colleges, and why and how their admissions rates have declined over time. Each college is unique, with different individual factors, but the overall trends are undeniable. If you are looking for expert guidance on your path to college, or want help navigating an increasingly competitive admissions landscape, then schedule a free consultation with us today. We have a long experience working with students of all backgrounds, and are always happy to hear from you.
