In recent years, it has become common for university admission to be more competitive. While it has some drawbacks, I see this development in a positive light. This is mainly because universities can sort out bright students and quality of life will be improved.
One of the major downsides of increased competition for universities is being extremely stressful. To get accepted, students should outperform other candidates, meaning they are required to study harder, even if it means they are sleep deprived. This may lead prospective students to experience psychological burnout. As a result, they may not perform well and get stressed in exams, which can cause losing self-confidence in the long run.
Despite this, there are some benefits for both universities and society. Having numerous applicants, institutions will have various options so that they can choose promising students among those applicants. This, in turn, helps educational institutions to improve reputation as they can have more opportunities to provide society with professionals. Harvard, which has a prestige of supplying great thinkers, can be a pertinent example.
Furthermore, this can promote the notion that to enter the university people ought to stand out from their counterparts in some sense. To elaborate, they realize that they need to acquire abilities such as coping with pressure, problem solving and critical thinking skills. Eventually, this could yield greater outcome by fostering experts in different domains, resulting in improvement in standards of living. Therefore, competition of this nature should be promoted.
In conclusion, while I can understand the challenges that this rivalry entails, I still think it opens the door for graduate schools to select high-achieving students that can be a huge contribution to the community.