An outfit called Business Student actually crunched the numbers for the top 51 schools and found their acceptance rates dropped from one-third to one-quarter of applications. “Our Senior Staff at BusinessStudent.com conducted a study to analyze admissions rates from top schools from 2006 and compare them to twelve years later in 2018,” the group claims. “We restricted our analysis to just the top schools in the United States a decade ago (the top 51 according to US News back then) to see how their admissions rates changed.”
“Yes, it’s much harder to get into a top school today than it was in 2006 and admissions rates have plummeted across the board. The school that’s had the sharpest drop in acceptance rates is the University of Chicago, followed by Northwestern and Duke. Of the 51 schools we looked at, 48 schools were more difficult to get into, but two actually had higher admissions rates.”
