[not_paul_graham]

That is not the only scenario. More people want to apply to the best colleges than ever. Also given that these schools are targeting students/schools in road shows nationally & internationally it is likely that the increase in number of applicants is also due to the a larger percentage of the sample population's interest in attending these institutions.

As an anecdote, I recently took the GMAT and had MIT as one of the schools that my score was sent to. I scored well above the 95% which is a decent score. Since then I've been getting extremely targeted emails from MIT almost weekly either about an online chat / forum, some resources, etc.

[ForHackernews]

FYI, schools deliberately try to drum up interest from students they would never dream of admitting. The way US News & World Reports ranks schools, they look better if their admit percentage is lower, so the more chumps (no offense) they can talk into paying the application fee and then reject, the higher their score.

When I was in high school, I got all sorts of recruitment mailers from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. and there's no way those schools seriously considered me a viable prospect.

[guyzero]

Right, is it really any "harder"? If we assume rational and consistent grading of applicants (I know, I know, but we have to make some assumptions) then if you're in, say, the top 3%, is it actually any hard to get in? Are the new applicants for any given school actually good or are they simply optimistic students who didn't apply before?

I mean, how many people who Harvard (say) would accept don't already apply? Probably a pretty small number. The issue with getting into Harvard remains a number of factors, but other applicants in't really one of them. That is, the quality of the applicant pool of people accepted hasn't changed much.

[aet]

Donate a million (or ten) and apply again.. :)