(CNN) The ongoing college admissions cheating scandal shows just how far some people are willing to go to get their kids into an elite university.

And with acceptance rates at top colleges and universities falling to record or near-record lows, high school students are facing increasing pressure when it comes to applying to the nation's best schools.

Yale University, one of the schools named in the admissions scandal, saw its acceptance rate dip to 5.9% this year.

To illustrate how exclusive elite universities are these days, take a look at the eight Ivy League schools, among the most respected institutions of higher education in the world.

This year Harvard accepted 4.5% of its applicants. Yale, one of the schools implicated in the cheating scandal, accepted less than 6%.

Over the past five years, all the Ivies have been accepting smaller and smaller slivers of their total applicant pools. At the same time, more and more students are submitting applications, which is driving down acceptance rates. It's sort of a vicious circle.

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