By Molly LaPoint

Heights Staff

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Published: Thursday, April 8, 2010

This year, Boston College saw a 2 percent increase in applicants for the class of 2014, while the acceptance rate increased by 1 percent.

Overall, there were 29,900 applicants for the class of 2014, compared with 29,300 last year. However, despite the greater number of applicants, the acceptance rate increased from 30 to 31 percent. This is because the quality of the applicant pool is rising, said John Mahoney, director of undergraduate admission.

“The quality of the applicants is up significantly,” Mahoney said. “That’s a good news-bad news scenario. It means we’re attracting better and better students and admitting stronger students, but the stronger students have more opportunities.”

Because the students have stronger credentials, many opt to attend other institutions. Out of the 9,000 accepted students, about 2,250 are expected to enroll. “[BC applicants] are being accepted to schools like Georgetown, Notre Dame, the Ivies, Duke, and Stanford,” Mahoney said. “Students applying to BC have a rich array of choices in the quality of the institutions they’re accepted to and the merit scholarships they receive. The quality of admitted student is high, so the yield is a challenge for us.”

Additionally, applications to the Lynch School of Education were up 17 percent, while the number of Carroll School of Management applicants decreased by 9 percent. “I think it has a lot to do with the state of the economy,” Mahoney said. “The financial service economy has been consolidating, so it’s tougher and tougher to land jobs in financial services.”

Since the early 1990s, the number of high school seniors increased steadily until last year, resulting in a dramatic increase in applications. In 1992 there were 2.4 million high school seniors, and the number peaked at 3.3 million in 2009. The number is expected to remain at about three million a year for the next decade. The University has received approximately the same number of applicants for the past few years. “We’ve settled into a niche of about 29,900 and we will remain in this vicinity,” Mahoney said.

The increase in applications was also caused by other factors. “Societally, people believe that a college education is something that you should have more so than in the past,” said Jim Stager, director of school counseling at St. John’s Preparatory School in Danvers. “The jobs available are much more technical, much more advanced, and you increasingly need a college education.”

Additionally, the slight drop in the number of graduating seniors compared with last year may not affect the number of applicants individual universities receive in the coming years, due to the fact that students are applying to more schools.

“There’s supposed to start being less [high school] seniors, so the competition should be getting easier because there will be more or less the same number of schools but fewer applicants,” said Shawn Ahern, director of guidance at Boston College High School. “However, kids are applying to more schools, so applicant numbers could continue to increase.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1276368&forum_id=1#14650021)