[Aurornis]

It’s an arms race. Now that students are encourage to apply to huge numbers of universities for safety, the universities are forced to accept a smaller percentage of applicants to avoid overcommitting.

So student, parents, and counselors see this and tell everyone to apply to even more colleges and the cycle continues.

[cherryteastain]

UK caps applications to 5 to combat this exact problem.

[kelipso]

When you have this problem of universities rejecting applicants based on arbitrary criteria, limiting that becomes an issue too.