<p>Thanks for the thread bump. I hope everyone trying to meet a regular round application deadline can find a good reach, match, or safety on the list.</p>
<p>Excuse me for commenting so late on this list--but I've only just seen it now.</p>
<p>Tokenadult, thank you for compiling this list for everyone, but I personally find that your methodology for putting it together tends to perpetuate an existing bias that exists both on collegeconfidential and in many of the books you have used for choosing the list--specifically as relates to the topic of selectivity:</p>
<p>Small schools will almost always have a better chance of being considered "selective" considering that they only have to appeal to a very small group of students if "selectivity" is chosen to mean % of class admitted.</p>
<p>I hardly consider either Wheaton College or Union College to be "noteworthy", yet I'm sure they both made your list since they admitted only 45% or so of their applicants (in Wheaton's case, around 600 of their 1,600 applicants, 300 or so whom attended) compared to higher rates of admission at schools excluded from your list.</p>
<p>The methodology you use tends to be highly biased in my view against large universities, especially those flagship universities in the midwest and southwest that need to fill a large number of spots each year--and who would be doing their states a disservice were they to try and reduce their admission rates significantly.</p>
<p>To specifically exclude schools like Ohio State University, Indiana University at Bloomington, Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, North Carolina State, the University of Oregon, Purdue University, the US Air Force Academy and the University of Colorado in favor of the Wheaton Colleges and Union Colleges of the world is ludicrous in my view--and does not serve your end audience well.</p>
<p>Many of the colleges I've mentioned have significant research and teaching facilities that the Wheaton's and Union College's cannot possibly hope to emulate anytime in the next 50 years. Take, for example Ohio State's medical center, or Purdue's Industrial park, or the Air Force Academy's flight training center.</p>
<p>Additionally, many of these schools have highly ranked specialty school such as Indiana's Kelley School of Business (ranked #11 for undergraduates by USNW) or Purdue Engineering school (ranked #7 in the nation for undergraduates by USNW), Oregon's Sports Marketing and International business department (first one ranked in the top 5 and second one ranked in the top 10), and I doubt anyone would argue that the Air Force Academy is not certainly in the top 3 in flight training, and would rank near the top in leadership training. Can you tell me what top programs exist at Wheaton college or Union college that are anywhere near the caliber of these programs?</p>
<p>Anyway, I'm not trying to be overly critical--but I think you might want to reconsider some of your inclusion methodology when you put together next year's list.</p>
<p>Thanks,</p>
<p>P.S. Please don't tell me just to write to the book editors--since at least three of the schools I mentioned already (Ohio State, Purdue and Indiana) were on the original list of 168 you provided, but were later removed in the revised list of 131 (for reasons I obviously do not understand).</p>
<p>Well, the updated list is in the newer thread, </p>
<p>and I hope I've made it sufficiently clear in that thread that the only designation of "selectivity" among the colleges is the Barron's methodology, which I agnostically adopt in the absence of another methodology. </p>
<p>As for the main other point, I would never recommend that a student look at a list of colleges and just go top-down to choose colleges to apply to. (That's why my lists are alphabetical rather than rank-ordered.) A student with specialized interests might look at the detailed descriptions in the college guides I consulted, </p>
<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/5117504-post10.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/5117504-post10.html</a> </p>
<p>(in particular, the Rugg's guidebook purports to list colleges by what major programs they are strong in) and then choose colleges on that basis. I expect that the college application list for each of my children will "skip over" some more nationally famous/more selective colleges to include colleges that are good fits for their interests.</p>
<p>I'm glad you included Marquette. It suffers from its location in Milwaukee, but it's a wonderful school in the Jesuit mold of Fordham, Georgetown, BC, et al.</p>