Getting into college is getting easier — so why are elite admissions getting fiercer?

Issue ① What is shaking is not student numbers — it is trust in the education

On June 11, 2026, this is the gist of the letter that Chancellor J. Michael Haynie of Syracuse, a prestigious private university in the U.S., sent to faculty and staff:

• Due to a budget deficit caused by missing the fall 2026 freshman enrollment target, roughly 20% of all programs (93 programs) were eliminated in April — 55 of which had zero enrolled students

Demographics are only the backdrop. The number of births in the U.S. peaked in 2007 and has fallen since, and that generation is just now reaching college age. But what really matters is something else: this shock is not hitting every university equally.

Top-tier schools like Harvard and Yale are fine. The ones collapsing are the universities that failed to prove the worth of their education. Schools with high tuition dependence and weak differentiation are the first to shake. The real cause is not that there are fewer students — it is that the smaller pool of students could not find a reason to say, "this is where I need to learn."

Attempts to fill empty seats with international students have also hit a wall. Tighter visa policies caused new international enrollment to plunge in fall 2025, and the share of international students among freshmen fell from 12% to 5% in just two years. Importing students from outside, it turns out, cannot paper over the fundamental question of educational value.

If the population shrinks, does a diploma lose its value? Korea shows the exact opposite

Korea's population decline is far steeper than America's. The 2024 total fertility rate was 0.75, and regional universities are collapsing fast. Up to this point, a crash in the value of a degree feels like common sense. But the reality is the exact opposite.

The number of colleges you can get into just by showing up has grown — but competition for a good education has only gotten hotter. The med-school frenzy and the rush to SKY are the proof. In the 2025 academic year, when medical school seats expanded, the number of suneung (CSAT) test-takers hit a 21-year high (about 520,000), and the share of repeat test-takers reached 31%. SKY engineering students retaking the exam to aim for medical school has become an everyday story.

The key: the more common a college degree becomes, the more decisively, and paradoxically, what kind of education you received becomes the differentiator. The key that opens the door to good jobs is shifting from the "name" to the quality and expertise of the education that name guarantees.

Why does the best education get more competitive? The flight to quality

In the U.S., this phenomenon is playing out even more dramatically. Even as the population shrinks, Ivy League acceptance rates set record lows every year. For the Class of 2029, Columbia was at 4.29%, Yale 4.59%, MIT 4.52% — mostly single digits — and Common App applications surpassed roughly ten million (10.19 million) for the first time ever.

Applications did not rise evenly across all universities. The polarization is unmistakable: applications are concentrating on the places that offer a better education — the so-called flight to quality. Economist Nathan Grawe projected that even as overall demand for college shrinks, demand for the most selective universities will actually grow. As parents' educational attainment and capacity to invest in education rise, the population that wants a properly good education is itself growing.

Why elite universities? It is not merely because of the "signal" a diploma sends. It is because the depth of teaching, the network that continues after graduation, and the real outcomes all of it produces are different. As the population shrinks, families' choices tilt toward the best education available, and competition intensifies. Korea's med-school/SKY rush and America's Ivy rush are, in the end, two faces of the same desire for the best education.

Issue ② The SAT returns — the last Ivy's decision

On June 12, 2026, Columbia University announced it will once again require SAT/ACT scores for undergraduate admissions.

• Effective from: the 2027–28 admissions cycle (applications from August 2027).
• Grace period: the upcoming 2026–27 cycle stays test-optional → the intent is to give applicants time to prepare.
• What it means: Columbia thereby becomes the last Ivy League school to return to requiring tests. A faculty review concluded that test scores are "a useful indicator of a student's likelihood of success."

For reference, Columbia's Class of 2030 acceptance rate was 4.2% (2,581 admitted out of 61,031 applicants). Even at that level of competition, the university judged that "without tests, differentiation is difficult."

Why now — and why everyone turned back at once

Columbia is only the last domino; the direction of the past two years was already clear.

The rationale converges on one point: in an era of grade inflation, transcripts alone cannot differentiate students. Internal studies at Dartmouth and Princeton both concluded that "test scores predict achievement in college better than GPA — and are actually better at uncovering hidden talent in regions with fewer educational opportunities." The rationale for dropping tests right after the pandemic (equity), it turned out, was not confirmed by the data.

What this decision signals to students preparing for college admissions

Let us start by correcting the most common misconception.

"It is test-optional, so I do not have to submit" is a dangerous illusion (optional ≠ blind). Even at test-optional schools, a submitted score at or above the top 25% of that school's admitted students works as a powerful admissions signal. A student who withholds a score is throwing that card away.

On top of that, because of self-selection (only students with strong scores submit), the bottom-25% SAT line for admitted students at most Ivies has risen about 50 points compared with 2018–19. A 1480 — once the elite-school "middle band" — now falls below the bottom 25% at some schools. The bar itself has moved up.

The question is no longer whether to take the test, but when to start and how strategically to prepare. Columbia setting 2026–27 as a grace period is, in the end, a signal: "prepare in advance."

Note: the UC system (Berkeley, UCLA, etc.) remains test-blind — even a 1600 will not be looked at.

So, what should you be preparing?

The two stories are separate, but the conclusion is one and the same.

A shrinking population will not loosen elite admissions. Quite the opposite. And as Columbia's decision shows, elite universities have begun demanding "verifiable ability" once again.

The direction of preparation is just as clear.

• Standardized tests (SAT) and a solid GPA are no longer optional — they are the "baseline premise"
• Your own inquiry experience and a consistent academic story are the real differentiators that set you apart

What elite universities ultimately want to see is not "a student with high scores" but "a student who takes learning seriously." And that evidence must be designed over years. The demographic cliff is a crisis for ordinary universities — but for a student who has prepared with fidelity to the essence of education, it is a golden opportunity to prove their true worth.