This year, the University received 29,400 applications, a 5 percent increase from the year before, which experienced a 27 percent increase from the year before that. As the recollection of an application sans supplement fades from the collective memory of high schoolers nationwide, more and more qualified, competitive students are applying. The University is crawling out of the dark hole of the admissions season in which the supplement was introduced.
The current sophomore class at Boston College was the first that was required to write a 400-word supplementary essay as part of their application to the University. For that class—the class of 2017—the University experienced a 28 percent drop in applications, as students encountered an additional essay and many, subsequently, opted out of applying. There was a record high number of applications in 2012, at about 34,000, but that number dropped to just under 24,500 when the supplementary essay was included.
The acceptance rate for the class of 2019 is 28 percent, which represents a 6 percent drop from last year’s acceptance rate. This serves to make the University more competitive, which is a self-perpetuating trend: as more qualified students see the more competitive rates of acceptance, they could be induced to apply. Thus, each year, the class of freshmen will theoretically grow stronger academically than the year before.
There is no clear reason that the admissions process became dramatically more competitive this year, but perhaps the efforts of the BC marketing team are partially responsible. The University puts in a lot of effort into making campus beautiful and a desirable place to be, and those efforts seem to be paying off—at least so far as the numbers go.
Featured Image by Margaux Eckert / Heights Photo Staff
so excited to join the class of BC2019!