The College You Got Into Would Reject You Today

Mistake number two on my list of the 12 deadliest college planning mistakes is the one almost every parent makes without noticing.

You assume it works the way it worked when you applied.

It doesn't. Not remotely.

I graduated high school outside Boston. Back then Northeastern admitted 90% of the people who applied. Nine zero. It was the school you landed at when the other doors closed.

Northeastern's admit rate today is around seven percent.

Same school. Same name on the sweatshirt. Completely different institution to get into.

Now go run that exercise on your own list. The safety school you're penciling in because your neighbor's kid got in a decade ago may not be a safety anymore. It may not even be a target.

That's the trap. Not that parents are lazy. Parents are working incredibly hard off a map that expired.

Here's the rest of what moved while nobody sent out a memo.

Admit rates at the selective schools are at all time lows. A lot of colleges now cost north of $100,000 a year all in, once you count everything and not just the sticker tuition. Student debt keeps climbing and defaults with it.

Graduating in four years is no longer the default. Most kids switch majors at least once, and every switch has a price tag measured in semesters.

And here's the one that almost never gets reported. Something like half of graduates are underemployed two years after they finish. Underemployed doesn't mean unemployed. It means working a job that never required the degree in the first place.

Then there's this. Most employers say college grads show up unprepared for the workforce.

Sit with that combination for a second. Record prices. Record difficulty getting in. And a meaningful chunk of the output that employers say isn't ready.

I'm not telling you this to be bleak. I'm telling you because you cannot plan against a landscape you think you already understand.

Every one of those shifts happened after most of today's parents went through it themselves. Which means the instincts you're bringing to this, the schools you think are reaches, the ones you think are locks, the assumption that the degree sorts itself out on the other end, all of it was calibrated on a system that no longer exists.

Your instincts aren't wrong because you're careless. They're wrong because they're old.

So before you build a college list, update the map. Look up the current admit rate at every school on it. Not the one you remember. The one from this year.

Some of them are going to surprise you.

Onward.

-Andy "Nine Zero" Lockwood

P.S. Mistake number three is the one that explains why kids with great grades and great scores get turned down anyway, and it's coming next week. If you'd rather have the whole picture now instead of a piece at a time, the Lockwood Inner Circle is where we hand families the actual tools and let you listen in on what we tell our private 1:1 college advisory clients. A dollar gets you in: lockwoodinnercircle.com