Applications to Elite US Universities (May 2021)
Best Asian Universities (June 2021)
The top universities in Asia are still Tsinghua, Peking, the National University of Singapore and Hong Kong University, according to the Times Higher Education 2021 Asian University Rankings. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/asia-university-rankings-2021-results-announced
Two Japanese universities, Tokyo and Kyoto, made the top 10 and Japanese universities had the highest number – 116 – of ranked universities.
US University Admissions (May 2021)
One of the most striking developments of the past few months has been the way that the covid crisis has effected applications to the US. Most US universities are now “test optional” i.e. they do not require standardised testing scores to support an application. The net result of this policy has been to open up applications to elite universities to large numbers of students who in the past would have been prevented from applying because of testing requirements.
Application numbers in the past few months have therefore rocketed and in consequence admission rates that were already low have become even lower: MIT for instance this year has an admission rate of 4% for undergraduates making it the most competitive university in the world. Other elite US schools show similiarly low admit rates.
The lesson that prospective students need to learn from this is to diversify their applications as much as possible – there are large numbers of excellent universities and colleges in the US outside of the minority of elite schools, largely in the northeast, that are attracting such enormous numbers of applicants.