Hillsdale College numbers from Hillsdale College admissions, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor numbers from University of Michigan’s Office of Budget and Planning and the Detroit News. Courtesy | Collegian Staff

Hillsdale College’s acceptance rate is now the second-lowest in Michigan, following only the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, according to a recent report from the Detroit News. 

Hillsdale admitted 20.74% of applicants to the current freshman class, The Collegian reported last semester. This rate remains the same for spring semester transfer students, according to Zachary Miller, senior director of admissions.

The acceptance rate of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2023 was 18%, and it is currently the fifth-most competitive four-year public university in the nation, according to federal data reporting in the Detroit News. In past years, University of Michigan’s Office of Budgeting and Planning reported acceptance rates of 26% in 2020, 20% in 2021, and 17.6% in 2022; however, their admittance rate for transfer students was 23% in 2023. 

“We have a pretty good pulse on the competitiveness of the other schools in Michigan,” Miller told The Collegian last week. “We’re not currently pursuing growth in enrollment — we’re admitting about the same amount of students that we tend to admit.”

Hillsdale’s admission rate dropped sharply between 2020 and 2021, when applications surged.

“We went from 36% as an admit rate in 2020 to 23% in 2021, and since then, we’ve been in the low 20s every year, between 20% and 23%,” Miller said. “All the students on campus now would be a part of classes that were in that low 20% admit rate.”

Miller credits Hillsdale’s increase in popularity to the school’s in-person stances on COVID in 2020 and its growing national reputation today.

“The reason that we attract students is to provide a sound, excellent traditional liberal arts education within the mission of the college, and I don’t think there’s a lot of schools that do it and stand by the principles that we do today,” Miller said. “Certainly I think we’re among the best in terms of the way we educate students.”

Visiting Assistant Professor of English Cameron Moore was a former lecturer in technical communications for University of Michigan’s College of Engineering.

“Clearly the students at both places are really excellent,” Moore said in an email. “U-M is a massive research university and Hillsdale is a small liberal arts college. That makes a huge difference in culture simply in terms of scale.”

Moore said he taught project-based engineering courses at University of Michigan, which involved instructing students how to write reports and give presentations. He now teaches Great Books courses at Hillsdale.

“Perhaps this is comparing apples to oranges,” Moore said. “The similarity, I suppose, is that both cases require working with students to solve the problem at hand, whether that’s how best to communicate design choices or why Dante chooses Virgil as a guide,” Moore said.

Freshman Fara Newell said Hillsdale’s reputation for excellence attracted her, and it was her top choice out of all the schools she applied to.

“I really appreciate the fact that Hillsdale doesn’t take state funding, and so they have independence and freedom because of that,” Newell said. “Hillsdale values are also what I was looking for in a college.”

Senior Abby Davis said she applied to several schools before selecting Hillsdale, after attending Scholar’s Weekend.

“The students that I met here were very impressive. I wanted to be like them,” Davis said. “Something about living here for a weekend made it really real, and the fact that I could picture it made me really excited about it.”

Miller said Hillsdale’s yield rate, the percentage of students who commit to Hillsdale after getting accepted, also increased with the number of applications.

“Five years before that 2021 class, we were anywhere from the low 40s to the mid-40% range,” Miller said. “Then starting in 2021 we went up to 56% and then peaked at 62%, so we’ve been between the mid-50s and below 60% in terms of our yield rates.”

Miller said Hillsdale intends to keep its enrollment of between 380 to 400 students per year, resulting in the lowered admissions rate.

“The college and its current size — we know it works well, and we know we can deliver an excellent education where students have a great educational experience,” Miller said. “Our goal is to do that, and the size of the campus that we have now allows us to do that.”

Moore said Hillsdale’s size allows him to engage further in the community.

“Hillsdale is small enough that I run into current and former students all the time simply by walking around campus, going to lunch, or sitting on a bench,” Moore said. “It’s much easier here to cultivate and continue relationships beyond the end of the semester.”

Miller said the admissions team pays attention to each student’s academic profile, high school community involvement, and who they are as a person.

“We want students who understand that Hillsdale is going to hold them to a higher standard, we want to see how they respond to that,” Miller said. “Are they willing to commit themselves to honor, honesty, duty and respect, like we ask all of our students to?”

But with Hillsdale’s growing competition, Miller said admissions also has to reject many excellent students who would have been good fits at Hillsdale.

“It’s the hardest thing we do,” Miller said. “Folks see selective schools and think, ‘oh, man, that’s really neat that they’re only admitting one out of every five students that apply,’ and it speaks to the work that Hillsdale does on a national scale. But it’s also hard, because it’s just difficult to say no to kids that you like, so that’s a burden that we have as well.”

Newell said Hillsdale had the lowest admission rate of the schools she applied to.

“I wasn’t betting on it, but I was really, really hoping to get in, and then getting in is a greater reward and a greater honor and more impressive than if it had a higher admission rate,” Newell said.

Hillsdale’s admissions team, made up of ten counselors who travel across the country, prioritizes giving personalized attention to every single applicant, especially in the interview process, according to Miller.

“It allows both the applicant to give life to their application, to share more about their passions, their interests, to explain parts of their application that they think are important,” Miller said.

Newell said she was especially nervous going into the interview, but it did not turn out how she expected.

“I ended up really enjoying my interview,” Newell said. “I didn’t feel like I was being interrogated, I felt like I was having a very constructive and wonderful conversation with the person interviewing me, and I’ve heard the same from a lot of other students.”

Davis said she saw the interview process as an important contributor to the student culture of Hillsdale.

“Consistently, people try hard and care about developing their character and working hard,” Davis said. “I think that one of the ways they’re able to suss that out, put together a student body that has that type of drive is through the interview.”

Miller said it is difficult to say, right now, whether the acceptance rate will change in the future. 

“The applications have stayed fairly steady over the last five years so we’re in this new era, with the number of applications,” Miller said. “Will that increase? There’s a good chance it will in the future, but time will tell.”