On Jan 31., the University of Maryland College Park released decisions for early action applicants. With over 65,000 students across the country and 306 from this school vying for a spot in the Forbes-designated Public Ivy, there was a wide range of reactions, from joy to disappointment and even indifference. Nevertheless, the class of 2029 results made one thing clear: UMD is only becoming more and more selective.
Last year, for the class of 2028, the overall acceptance rate for UMD fell below 45% for the first time, reaching approximately 42-44%. This school’s acceptance rate, fortunately for last year’s graduates, stayed above this value. Last year, “we ended up with around 150 acceptances…So we ended up around 50%. So we beat the University of Maryland total, and it seems like we’re always going to be just a little bit above,” college and career counselor Jennifer Macdonald said.
This year, however, both UMD’s overall acceptance rate and this school’s acceptance rate plummeted. With 306 early applicants at this school, 184 students opened their portal to a rejection, bringing this school’s acceptance rate down to approximately 40%. UMD’s overall acceptance rate for the class of 2029 also shot down to around 33-35%, a full 10% drop from last year. “[Our acceptance is] less than last year, but also the same amount that Maryland went down; we followed it. We stayed in line with them. So, our 40% is, to me, similar to last year’s 50% based on the difference between their yield and ours,” Macdonald said.
Among others, this drop in acceptance rate is primarily attributed to two factors: an increase in UMD’s yield rate and the 2007 birth spike. Yield rate refers to the percentage of students who enroll after being offered admission. “One of the things the University of Maryland told us about when we went to their biannual counselor conference this past fall was that, overall, they seemed to have received more people who took them up on their offer of admission last year than they were anticipating,” MacDonald said. “The fallout was going to be then that, in order to keep their numbers in sync, they’re going to have to be more conservative [for the class of 2029].”
Moreover, the 2007 baby boom likely contributed to the decreased acceptance rate, according to Macdonald. The CDC found that, in 2007, the United States had a birth rate of 69.5 births per 1,000 women aged 15–44, which was the highest rate since 1990. There were 4,316,233 births recorded in the United States, the highest ever. “They really, I think, had to be careful about what the yield would be for [the class of 2029]. I think that plays into our overall results,” Macdonald said.
Among students who were accepted to UMD, many received admission to one of UMD’s 29 living-learning programs (LLPs), residential communities where students live together and connect over shared interests and academic goals. Five students received admission to Carillon Communities, 32 to College Park Scholars and 12 to the Honors College. “I remember I had to open [my decision] in my car after practice. At first, I skimmed over the scholars program part and was happy to get in. After reading more carefully, I felt a shock that quickly turned into an even greater excitement,” senior Rebecca Gao, who was admitted into College Park Scholars, said.
In addition to LLPs, two students were accepted to the program BioFIRE, and 17 students were accepted to FIRE. FIRE stands for the First Year Innovation and Research Experience, which provides freshmen with the opportunity to engage in faculty-mentored research. “I’m really excited to get involved with research on campus so early, especially since UMD is known for being a top-tier research university,” senior Aanya Kapoor, who was admitted to FIRE, said.
Of the 122 acceptances, 37 students were not accepted to any program, which Macdonald notes is more than last year. “Last year, my experience was if you were admitted, you were in some sort of program. There was no one who was admitted and was not in a program. That is not true this year at all. So it feels like to me that it must be a change on the Maryland side, not on the student side,” Macdonald said.
Students had mixed reactions to their decisions. Senior Branden Estrada, for instance, felt relatively indifferent about his rejection. “You know when someone passes away? But you don’t know them? Let’s say like a celebrity but you don’t really watch any of their stuff? You’re like ‘oh no way’ and then kind of move on with your life. It was kind of like that,” Estrada said.
Other students had a stronger reaction to their UMD decision. “I thought I was going to get in, like I kind of expected it. But when I didn’t get in, I was at first a little disappointed, and then I realized I didn’t care so I moved on pretty quickly,” an anonymous senior who did not get in said.
Outside of traditional acceptances, UMD offers Fall Connections (FC), a fall semester program that provides spring-admitted freshmen with the opportunity to take up to 17 credits that begin to fulfill UMD undergraduate requirements to get on track to graduate in four years. This year, 17 students were admitted to FC, while 33 students were spring admits last year. “I think some people have seen it in the past as less than a full admittance. And I think that that is absolutely 100% false. You move into the dorms in the fall, you start taking classes in the fall and there’s a cohort and extra support,” Macdonald said. “I will say, especially to anyone who received it this year who maybe feels some kind of way about it, University of Maryland has said that because everything is so competitive, freshman connection is now the people who would have gotten accepted regular.”
When examining the admitted students’ data, Macdonald noticed that there was less of a clear GPA cut-off, whereas last year’s admitted students had a rough cut-off of 4.68 weighted, barring exceptions. “Last year, most of the students who received a GPA above around 4.7. got in, and if you fell below that, you likely didn’t get in; this year, there’s no clear number. This year, we definitely have kids with very high GPAs who did not get on. Legitimate 4.0s did not get in,” Macdonald said.
Based on this trend, Macdonald deduced that UMD likely weighed the student’s course load more heavily this year alongside GPA. “If I had to guess, and this is purely speculative, is that the level of rigor needs to be high enough, like rigor in terms of what classes are you choosing and how well are you doing in them and if you are declaring a major, how well do they accentuate that major,” Macdonald said.
Unlike other flagship state schools restricted by state legislation, such as the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the University of Texas Austin, UMD is not required to accept a certain percentage of in-state students. As a result, the in-state and out-of-state acceptance rates are fairly similar. “The admit rate is about the same, but in terms of raw numbers, like the proportion, it looks like more out-of-state get offers, but that’s because of the lower overall yield. In-state students are more likely to accept their spot compared to out-of-state students,” Macdonald said.
Macdonald reassures students who were hoping, even expecting, an acceptance but were met with rejection. “I know it’s hard to sit with the rejection, especially when you know that you’ve worked so hard for four years to put yourself in the best place and especially if you’ve looked at our results from like last year and the year before, and you know that you’re a competitive applicant based on those results. But I would say that I think there’s a lot of factors contributing to why the results came out the way they did,” Macdonald said.
