GAINING admission to America’s elite universities is notoriously difficult. These days it seems as if the most selective colleges are competing to reject as many applicants as possible. One of these institutions now says it no longer wants to promote its exclusivity. On August 30th Stanford University, which this year admitted a mere 4.3% of applicants for its class of 2022, said it would no longer advertise its admissions figures. “When Stanford publicises its admission numbers during the enrollment cycle, the main result we observe is stories that aim to identify which universities experience the most demand and have the lowest admit rates,” Stanford Provost Persis Drell said in a statement. “That is not a race we are interested in being a part of”.

The admissions arms race has been accelerating for years, driven by a rise in applications. In 1995 just 10% of American freshmen applied to seven or more colleges, according to the National Association for College Admission Counselling. By 2016 this figure had increased to 35%. This year a 17-year-old in Texas made headlines for earning a spot at 20 schools, including all eight Ivy League universities. The increase in applications has been caused in part by a shift to online applications and the popularity of the so-called Common Application, a standardised form now accepted by more than 800 institutions, up from around 300 some 15 years ago. With more applicants vying for the same number of spots at elite universities, admissions offices are rejecting an ever-larger share of them. This creates a vicious circle in which low admission rates push anxious high-schoolers to apply to more schools, which in turn forces schools to reject more applicants.

For all the frenzy over Ivy League admissions, the average acceptance rate at American universities overall is 66%, more than ten times as high as that of Harvard or Yale. Well-qualified students eager for a place at a selective school still have a decent shot. An analysis in 2014 by Kevin Carey, a researcher at the New America Foundation, a think-tank, found that the share of top students who are admitted to at least one elite school is 80%.