College is one of the best places to learn about yourself, the world and those around you. It’s where many people envision themselves in the future. As many seniors await college decisions, it’s juniors who are unaware of what colleges are expecting of incoming freshmen. During this school year, the college class of 2029 have almost finished their application process, which brings into the picture the significant amount of applications that schools are receiving this year. The class of 2029 is expected to have 3.9 million students across the entire country.
Due to a birth spike in 2007, the amount of people in the high school class of 2025 applying to colleges increased greatly. Consequently, college acceptance rates for the 2025 application season have been on a significant downfall, making schools more competitive to get into. For Maryland high school students, the school that almost every senior automatically applies to is the University of Maryland, but for the class of 2025, there was a curveball thrown their way.
In previous years, UMD was a school that most people viewed as a safety, having an in-state acceptance rate of 52% in 2022 and higher prior to that. For class of 2025, that rate decreased by 8% making it significantly harder to be accepted.
As the world has been readjusting following the Covid pandemic back in 2020, many schools are going back to requiring students to submit their SAT or ACT test scores as part of their application. Even with the flexibility of test optional applications, students who submit their college applications with relatively high scores were still faced with the disappointment of being rejected from some of their applied schools, including UMD.
The number of applicants keeps increasing year to year, with over 60,000 people applying last year for the fall of 2024. With colleges receiving more and more applicants, this also results in more people getting rejected from schools.
“For some schools the odds for kids getting in is smaller because so many kids are applying,” college and career coordinator Gayle Evans said. “Students used to apply to five to 10 schools, now students are applying to 10-20. My advice is that kids should apply to all the schools they want to apply to and never tell them to not apply and they should go where they can. Applying to college now is so much harder than it was a few years ago since so many students are applying.”
In general, when applying to colleges, it is common for students to apply to multiple different schools. Most of the time, students apply to schools based on interest, while other times students apply to schools based on their confidence in acceptance.
As the acceptance rate at the University of Maryland has shown a significant decrease, many of the students who were rejected from there were able to get accepted into either equally good or even more competitive schools.
“I wasn’t that surprised [that I got rejected], but it is a bit disappointing,” senior Weining Shi said. “[I got into] UVA, Wisconsin, UT Austin, Michigan [and more].”
Each school has their own process of how they prefer future students to apply, resulting in different experiences for each school. Some people have an easy experience when it comes to applying to colleges because they have stable support systems or generally are faced with an easy application process. But even though most schools have an easy application process, it doesn’t give you a guaranteed spot in the school.
“My admissions process was pretty easy, I used a college counselor who gave me a bunch of colleges that I can get into and helped me write my essay and it was great and because of that I got accepted to most of my colleges besides UMD,” senior Gabriel Dirker said.
Applying to colleges can be very stressful and overwhelming for many students. People are faced with the responsibility of choosing which schools they want to consider spending the next couple of years of their life, which can be scary and nerve racking. Sometimes, these stressful decisions can be easier for certain people, such as those who have had their eyes set on a certain college.
“I was definitely surprised about the outcome of the school. Growing up a UMD fan, it was a huge concern that I would get rejected from my dream school,” senior Dylan Hager said. “Thankfully it worked out. I was one of my only friends that got in. All that means is the average stats to get in and the overall rigor for the school I’m committed to is higher, which I would say is a huge win.”
Having a dream school can benefit your experience by making it easier to commit to a school once getting accepted, but there is also a downside. If you don’t get accepted to your dream college, the results could crush your hopes for the future, leading to a road of disappointment.
“I just feel like college admissions overall is a super random process, and we go with what we get. Not having a dream school might help better because the disappointment wouldn’t be that huge,” Shi said.
