Myth: UW-Madison has raised its admissions criteria in recent years.

Not exactly. The bar applicants need to clear to be admitted to UW-Madison is unmistakably higher than in years past, but the university didn’t put it there. A crush of applications did.

In 2007, UW-Madison received 24,521 applications for freshman admission, the highest number in history. That number bested the previous high of 22,816 set in 2006, which broke the record of 21,682 set in 2005. Applications are up 88 percent since 1985, and they’ve jumped 37 percent since 2000 alone.

The number of places available to those applicants, on the other hand, isn’t growing. Every year, after considering factors such as advising capacity, housing availability, and space in required courses, UW-Madison sets a target for freshmen enrollment. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, that number sits at around 5,600, meaning more students are applying for the same number of spots. When that happens, standards are bound to rise — and so they have. In 1985, the average freshman who enrolled at UW-Madison ranked in the seventy-ninth percentile of his or her class and got a 24 on the ACT. By 2007, those averages had climbed to a percentile rank of 89.4 and a 28 ACT score. (All enrollment figures for 2007 are projections; final university counts were not available when On Wisconsin went to press.) And while in 1985 UW-Madison admitted about 83 percent of those who applied for spots in the freshman class, in 2007 its acceptance rate was just 56 percent.

“It’s not like we’re sitting here every year saying, ‘How can we increase our standards and make people really irritated with us?’ ” says Kelly Olson ’99, an assistant director of freshman recruitment. “It’s totally out of our control.”

What’s behind the surge in applications? For one thing, more students are heading to college now than in the past. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that 3.3 million students will graduate from high school in 2008, up from 2.6 million in 1997. And more than 60 percent of these students plan to go to college, compared to slightly less than half of the class of 1974.

Moreover, the difficulty of getting into — and paying for — America’s top universities is creating a trickle-down effect for many states’ flagship universities. When considering applying to Big State U or Harvard, where only about one in ten applicants is admitted and the tab for four years of tuition is nearly $150,000, more top students are choosing Big State U. “Costs have spiraled so unbelievably that these big public universities look like great bargains, and people are thrilled to go there,” says New Trier’s Jim Conroy. He counts UW-Madison among a group of “seven or eight flagship universities that have gotten really tough to get into. Students who were accepted even four or five years ago aren’t going to get in today.”

But perhaps the biggest factor in the flood of applications is the ease of filling out applications online. Universities have put application forms, recommendations, recruiting guides, and even campus video tours on the Internet, making it far easier for students to research and apply to a boundless array of schools. While past generations applied to two or three colleges, now five, six, or seven is the norm. More than 25 percent of students admitted in 2005 had filled out more than five applications, according to the Cooperative Institutional Research Program.

And this raises a fascinating aspect of the admissions game. When universities admit students, they know some of them will ultimately opt to enroll elsewhere, so they offer admission to far more students than they actually have room for. It’s like inviting three hundred people to a reception knowing the hall holds only two hundred: you’re gambling that some won’t accept the offer. With students fanning out more applications, admissions officials have had to readjust their estimates about how many students they need to admit to fill their classes. In recent years, for instance, UW-Madison has admitted more than 13,000 students — more than the total number who applied in 1985. So even as it’s gotten more competitive, UW-Madison is admitting more students than ever before.

Next myth » The UW turns away students with perfect GPAs.

• Introduction
• Myth: It’s a secretive process.
• Myth: A formula determines whether students are admitted or denied.
• Myth: UW-Madison has raised its admissions criteria in recent years.
• Myth: The UW turns away students with perfect GPAs.
• Myth: Some students get special treatment in the admissions process.
• Myth: It’s impossible for regular students to get in anymore.
• Myth: No one reads personal statements.
• Myth: It pays to apply early.
• Myth: Minority students get in with lower grades than some white students who are rejected.
• Myth: UW-Madison caps the number of students who can be admitted from one high school.
• Myth: Back in the day, UW-Madison let everybody in.
• Myth: Applicants from outside Wisconsin are taking up spots that could go to state residents.
• Myth: Connections with important people can get you in.
• Myth: Alumni can get their kids in if they pull the right strings.
• Myth: Being postponed is the same as being on a wait list.
• Myth: An A is always better than a B.
• Myth: One grumpy admissions counselor can doom an application.
• Myth: Admissions counselors like rejecting people.
• Myth: My son or daughter isn’t emotionally ready to be turned down by the university.
• Myth: It’s a perfect system.