Dive Brief:

• Contrary to a misconception created by the admission rates reported by elite colleges and universities, a well-qualified high school student has an 80% chance of getting admitted to a top school, according to Parchment.com.
• Parchment calculated the success rate by looking at students who scored at least 1300 on the SAT, or an equivalent score on the ACT, and the 113 most selective schools identified by Barron’s Profiles of Colleges.
• The overall acceptance rate for the 113 schools was 32%, but 51% for the applicants scoring 1300 or better on their SATs, the New York Times reported.

Dive Insight:

This is a good point to be made with panicky college applicants and their parents who are cranking out more and more applications every year. Because the top students in the Parchment calculations applied to 2.6 schools each, on average, their odds of being accepted to at least one of the 113 elite schools were increased to the 80% figure. Stanford University’s overall acceptance rate for the Class of 2018 was 5.07%, its lowest ever.