<p>What are the top 15 in terms of difficulty to get in? And I don't just mean % of admits... a school can have 0.0001% admit and still be easy if the 0.0001% has 610 SAT. </p>
<p>So which schools are the hardest to get into?</p>
<p>Deep Springs College would have to be among them (and is one of the most likely to be overlooked.) It may in fact be the hardest.</p>
<p>By reported 75th pct M+CR SAT scores alone, it would look something like this:</p>
<p>1 Harvard (1590)
2 Olin, Yale, CalTech, Princeton (1580)
6 Harvey Mudd, MIT (1560)
8 Dartmouth, Stanford (1550)
10 Duke, Swarthmore, Columbia (1540)
13 WUSTL, Pomona, Chicago, Amherst, Brown (1530)</p>
<p>These scores are bunched up fairly tightly. Other selection factors would separate them, moving some schools up or down (or off or on), but it is hard to quantify by how much if we are excluding admit rate as a factor.</p>
<p>For instance you’d probably want to add Deep Springs up near the top, move Stanford up with Princeton, possibly replace Chicago & WUSTL with UPenn and Williams, etc. But it is hard to make these distinctions on any principled basis because we don’t have profiles for all the rejected students. Maybe Chicago looks more closely at essays, Williams looks more closely at extracurriculars and leadership roles. So how do you determine which is tougher, unless you can compare admission outcomes of a sufficiently large pool of students who applied to both?</p>
<p>the best thing to do would be to look at the usnews selectivity rankings. they take more in to account than admit rate alone or sat scores alone.</p>
<p>Apparently, the only other factor USNWR takes into account is class rank (percentage of admits who ranked in their HS top 10%). It’s not clear how they account for variations in the competitiveness of high schools (I strongly suspect they don’t, and can’t, except crudely by the factor weights). And they separate universities from LACs.</p>
<p>Here’s a CC thread that attempts to address some of these issues:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/687793-selectivity-ranking-national-us-lacs-combined-usnews-method.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/687793-selectivity-ranking-national-us-lacs-combined-usnews-method.html</a></p>
<p>Notice that PapaChicken’s ranking drops Chicago from 13th to 25th compared to my simple SAT-only ranking above; it raises WUSTL from 13th to 7th. Which ranking more accurately reflects your chances? That may depend on your personal strengths and weaknesses relative to each school’s criteria. </p>
<p>There are many complicating factors. For example, WUSTL, Northwestern, Georgetown and Cornell all have professional schools that the LACs do not. Some schools are women-only. These factors may affect the size of the applicant pool and hence the admit rate. For instance, I believe Cornell’s architecture school has one of the university’s lowest admit rates (though its admitted students would not necessarily be equally competitive among, say, Haverford applications.)</p>
<p>I wonder why Olin is not even in PapaChicken’s top 75?</p>
<p>class rank, scores, and admit rate combined are more revealing than looking at SAT alone(like this thread) or looking at admit rate alone(which most people do). but clearly even the US News ranking doesn’t tell the whole story.</p>
<p>Lots of factors to consider. Julliard, Curtis etc. and the service academies are extremely selective.</p>
<p>Dont forget, the top publics are as difficult at those listed for OOS students. William & Mary takes about 40% and Uvirginia takes about a third. But UNC and Cal take much less.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Probably because specialty schools are not included in the list.</p>
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</p>
<p>It is, in general, a myth that OOS students have much higher stats at most state schools.</p>
<p>UNC-CH and UF (OOS)</p>
<p>hmom, i would say it is somewhat harder for an OOS student to get in to a state school. It is somewhat exaggerated on this site the scores needed. Pretty sure this only goes for the most desirable publics(UNC,cal/ucla, virginia)</p>
<p>Reason they are competitive for OOS is because state law mandates x% of in state students(UNC for sure)</p>
<p>We don’t really know if OOS is harder or not for the public schools. Acceptance rates might be higher but the pool of applicants might also be more competitive for OOS applicants.</p>
<p>Why? Who would pay the OOS price if they could get into a top private? Most state schools (UVA is an exception) give little or no aid to OOS students.</p>
<p>I don’t have too many stats, but the acceptance rate for OOS is higher at UCLA–28% vs. 22% for in state. It is a little lower for OOS at Berkeley but it’s a number to watch as they have announced they will take more OOS students because they need the money. I’ve seen lots of kids get into Michigan that didn’t get into mid tier UCs.</p>
<p>That OOS at any of these schools is as competitive as an ivy is a myth.</p>
<p>According to the Georgetown Admissions website the 75Th percentile of SATS for the SFS was 1540 in 2007-08, and for the College was 1530. These are for the accepted cohort but with a 45 to 47% yield rate, the admitted class is probably at the same level or very slightly less. I have seen this number as high as 1550 for the SFS in prior years as well.</p>
<p>Right, the bottom 47% who didn’t get into a better school is the same quality as the whole group. Collegeboard says combined 75ths are 1490 (and that’s of course very different from 75th of combined)</p>
<p>The overall includes a substantial business school and Health./Nursing school which are really not the same as the College/SFS. The 1200 students enrolled in SFS and the college are probably closer to the 1530 range but since the info is not segregated at the College Board we’ll never know the answer for sure. But if one is assessing the true level of admissions competition, an estimate has to be made of the difference. (It would be a dissservice to let someone think from reading this board that he/she was in a stronger position than they really are with say a 1530 if applying to the College or SFS. Also, the SFS yield is probably materially greater than the College which should also be estimated.) Also, the traffic with competitors is not like the 47% is the bottom. In many cases it is the absolute top since one of the GU schools is preeminent in its field.</p>
<p>
UNC is certainly an exception. The OOS admit rate hovers around 19%, and the average CR/M score is 1420. The in-state admit rate is around 34%, and the average CR/M score is 1275.</p>
<p>While I wouldn’t place it in the top 15, OOS admissions at UNC is very competitive. Quite possibly the most competitive public, in fact.</p>
<p>I agree with IBclass06, go check out the UNC institutional research and assessment site and the student data. OOS UNC is significantly better than in-state UNC.</p>
<p>
I think it depends on the school. For UMich and UW-Madison, it’s probably not true. But certain schools (the UCs from what I’ve observed and UVa and UNC-CH from what I’ve heard) are very difficult OOS. Case in point: 4.0 student from my school with a 2390 SAT was rejected by Berkeley OOS (she was an ORM but despite this she was accepted by Stanford, MIT, Dartmouth, etc). And I don’t think anyone from my HS in recent memory has gone to the UCs, UVa (1 recruited athlete has, actually) or UNC-CH in recent memory, whereas many go to Michigan and UW-Madison each year.</p>
<p>tk21769,</p>
<p>You first have to prove that the SAT is a conclusive measure. If not, it does not differ from high school class rank.</p>
<p>The best is a combination of SAT scores, class ranks and admit rate.</p>