Education

Students Push Creative Envelope to Get Into College

By Caralee J. Adams — February 12, 2013 1 min read
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The competition for a slot at the nation’s most elite colleges has gotten so intense that one student has built his own customized iPhone app, hoping it will be his ticket to acceptance.

Aspiring computer-science major and high school senior Alex Greene applied with a one-of-a-kind app to demonstrate his creativity to admissions counselors at Stanford University, the Huffington Post reports Monday.

With just a 6.6 percent acceptance rate at Stanford, Greene wanted to do something to help him stand out. Tech experts from Gigaom.com are calling it “brilliant.”

Applicant pools have gotten significantly bigger as students are trying their chances at more schools and the process is easier with online applications. Nearly one-third of students apply to seven or more schools, according to the most recent survey from the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

Go ahead and admire Greene’s ambition, but realize that most students don’t have to feel compelled to top it. Although acceptance rates for four-year institutions declined slightly during the past decade, most schools are not as selective as Stanford: The national average acceptance rate was 63.8 percent in 2011.

A version of this news article first appeared in the College Bound blog.