2007 birth spike fuels rigorous competition for college admissions

 Written by Rosa Saba, March 20, 2025 https://spartanshield.org/48058/feature/2007-birth-spike-fuels-rigorous-competition-for-college-admissions/

    The class of 2025 seniors are one of the largest graduating classes in history due to the baby boom in 2007. This causes an increased amount of university and college applications across the globe. In America, 4.7 million people will be 17 years old in 2024 and 2025. This is in increase from the previous 4.3 and 4.4 million in previous years. This directly affects those who are planning to apply to competitive universities. Due to the increase of the student body, there are more students who are qualified.“It’s difficult to be accepted into a college when there are so many competitors,” said senior Nadia Meeks. “Especially as an Asian woman, since affirmative action is gone, I’m held to higher standards and have a lower chance of getting accepted, which is alarming and frightening.” However, this increase is only expected to be temporary as, since the birth rate increase in 2007, we have seen a decline in the years following. High schools may actually see a deficit in seniors preparing for college.

    My thoughts on this come from someone directly affected. I applied to a very sought after school, and to hear back a rejection as a qualified student, for lack of better word, sucks. Many universities, when they receive a large amount of qualified students applying, they start to reject. Even if these students may seem even more qualified than those who they have admitted already, they physically can't let them in due to lack of space. We have seen this a lot this year with the overwhelming applicants, but this also means we will see many students wanting to transfer. In previous years, transferring between universities or collages makes it easier to get in. This year. I'm assuming we will see a big difficulty in transferring, as many students now look to this option as a way to get into their dream university/college. Personally, I was rejected from UBC. This was my target school, and I had wanted to go here for a while. I am now looking to transfer from SFU, another well known university, just not somewhere I want to be in the future. Though I live in this generation of baby boom, I cannot fret as I cannot control the amount of people born when I was. I can only look forward to the future!