re: Auburn's acceptance rate for 2023 was 44%

I strongly recommend reading the Wall Street Journal article linked earlier. Here's another (should be free-access) link:

LINK

In the last 15 years, Auburn has gone from being middle-of-the-pack in terms of expenses paid by students to the fourth-most-expensive public university in the country. According to the story, much of that money has funded building programs, athletics, and administrative salaries.

A couple of notable paragraphs:

The school’s student body is unusually well-heeled for a public school. Only 11% of full-time freshmen received federal Pell Grants, reserved for low-income students, in 2021-22. That’s one of the lowest percentages of any public U.S. university and also the vast majority of private colleges.

Auburn also ranks among the most expensive public schools for poor families, who attend some state schools for almost nothing. Auburn freshmen from families earning under $30,000 annually owed an average $17,481 in total costs after scholarships in 2021-22, federal data show.

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I’ll never get the “my school is better than yours” chest bumping. I graduated from LSU (not a great school in the big scheme of things) in Engineering. I now work with several Georgia Tech grads, Ohio ST grads, etc. making the same money with just as many opportunities. No one cares who graduated from where.

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Almost everyone that graduated from SEC schools agree with you. There just seems to be grads of one or two SEC schools that think their shite don't stink and will crow about their place in the made up bullshite standings year after year. Most of the time they start these threads as a "gotcha" to another rival school. But in the end basically all of us work together and make similar amount of money in the same field as everyone else does. So these stupid threads are more annoying than anything. I don't even know why I continue to post in them. I guess I fall for the bait everytime.

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I’ll never get the “my school is better than yours” chest bumping.

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Yes, it’s pretty dumb inside the SEC. Aside from maybe Vandy.

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So all of these schools now use the "common app", yet only Auburn is reporting record numbers of applications and halving their acceptance rate? If they joined the "common app" in 2020/21, then why are dramatic changes being reported for 2023 and not 2021/22? Again, something is wrong with these reported numbers. Period. It is evident and plainly so. I am not sure why this is so difficult to understand.

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Other schools also reported somewhat similar effects years ago (+12% increase in immediate applications on avg) However, Auburn decided to join very late and there is a growing trend among hs students to apply to dozens of schools nowadays (post-covid). Basically, you have several effects happening now. The common app effect played out over years in higher education. However, since AU joined very late in a post-covid world, this effect seems more extreme now.

The Rise of Common App and the Fall of Acceptance Rates

LINK

Example:

Applications to the University of Chicago Rise 42%;

Comment section:” I don’t think this really means too much about Chicago being ‘hot’. Instead, my guess is this is the direct result of them switching over to the common application, where students can apply without going through Chicago’s previously cumbersome application.”

LINK

LSU is the safety school of the SEC.

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only qualification there is you breath

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you breath

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breath

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