1980 Barron's Selectivity Index

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hi All:</p>

<p>I stumbled upon a study which references the Barron's Selectivity Index from 1980. See Table 1a - <a href="http://www.nyu.edu/classes/jepsen/hoxby-selective.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nyu.edu/classes/jepsen/hoxby-selective.pdf&lt;/a>. There are a number of schools that would be on the list but they are missing from the study (Wesleyan, Bryn Mawr, Chapel Hill, etc.). Anyway, I thought it was interesting; here it is:</p>

<p>MOST COMPETITIVE
Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown, CalTech, Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Columbia, Cooper Union, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Haverford, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Mount Holyoke, Princeton, Rice, Smith, Stanford, Swarthmore, UPenn, Wellesley, Williams, Yale</p>

<p>HIGHLY COMPETITIVE PLUS
Bennington, Carnegie-Mellon, Colgate, Colorado School of Mines, Barnard, Northwestern, Reed, Rose-Hulman, St. John’s-Maryland, Tufts, Berkeley, Chicago</p>

<p>HIGHLY COMPETITIVE
Bates, Brandeis, Bucknell, Carleton, Case Western, Colby, William and Mary, Colorado College, Davidson, Duke, Franklin and Marshall, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Grinnell, Hamilton, Kalamazoo, Kenyon, Lafayette, Lehigh, Middlebury, New College of the University of South Florida, Oberlin, Occidental, Polytechnic Institute of New York, Rensselaer, St. John’s-New Mexico, St. Olaf’s, Stevens Institute of Technology, Trinity, Union, University of Dallas, Notre Dame, University of Rochester, University of the South, University of Virginia, Vassar, WUSTL</p>

<p>VERY COMPETITIVE PLUS
Bard, Pitzer, Scripps, Clark, Clarkson College of Technology, Coe College, College of the Atlantic, Connecticut College, Emory, Gustavus Adolphus College, Hampshire, Illinois Institute of Technology, St. Lawrence, UCSB, University of Michigan, Vanderbilt, Washington and Lee</p>

2

<p>Huh… interesting. Colorado School of Mines is in the second list??? I believe it’s ranked lower than the University of Colorado at Boulder now, somewhere around 80 on USnews. It’s taken quite a plunge, apparently. </p>

<p>And the University of Dallas was in the same category as Duke, Georgetown, and WUStL? haha</p>

3

<p>Some of these aren’t as competitive now, I don’t think, like the St. Johns colleges, Bennington, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke. Others, I think, would be higher. I would imagine William and Mary would be in a higher category than Franklin and Marshall.</p>

4

<p>Yes! I graduated from high school in 1980 and this was the book I worked from for choosing a college. Today’s kids will laugh, but back then it was common to apply to one reach, one match, and one safety.</p>

<p>I am not sure how Barron’s decided the selectivity. There certainly wasn’t all the attention paid to it like today and the US News - “this school is ranked 8 higher than that school”. Colleges were grouped in a broad band and then it was supposed that the differences were a matter of major or fit.</p>

5

<p>Tragically, people are still influenced by the USNWR nonsense and other beauty contests. :frowning: We’d be better served by a standardized “(GRE/MCAT/LSAT/etc) minus (SAT/ACT)” tabulation of schools. That would show some evidence of what schools actually do to/for their students. The schools showing the highest difference then might bubble up over time.</p>

6

<p>That list is virtually no different than when I came out in '74 … other than the military schools are missing. </p>

<p>Actually back in '74, Washington University of St. Louis was sending out promo mailings just like other schools. No doubt there are more schools that are quite competitive as time as gone by. </p>

<p>Honor programs have been a great leveler. Back in the day, someone that got a great scholarship would pass it by for an Ivy league school. They would be worried about being a great student in classes with kids occupying space. Now, with honor colleges or classes they get a great financial package and spend time in smaller classes with other motivated and talented students even special dorms and events. There are some downsides to honor programs too but no doubt it has shifted the talent pool to a wider collection of colleges.</p>

7

<p>WUSTL 3rd tier, and USC not on the map. Those are the two poster children for figuring out a way to work up the USNWR rankings…</p>

8

<p>Also NYU…</p>

9

<p>Duke would get honorable mention.</p>

10

<p>Emory and Vanderbilt have done well too.</p>

11

<p>That kind of confirms what I have stated about Colgate having been more selective than Middlebury and Georgetown that others on here have refuted. </p>

<p>I’m surprised that Penn is in the top tier though since I have read that around that time its acceptance rate was as high as 50% for the Class of 1982, I believe.</p>

12

<p>Penn was in the Barron’s Highly Competitive (and not Most Competitive) category in the late 80s.</p>

13

<p>I had been under the impression that Georgetown used to be even more selective (relative to other schools) than it is now… but maybe I’m wrong about this (?)</p>

14

<p>You are wrong about Georgetown. I has become much more selective recently and that also holds when compared to peer schools.</p>

15

<p>how about sarah lawrence??</p>

16

<p>To the person that said they were surpised Penn was in tier 1 with acceptance rates in the 50’s, please understand that would be in line with the other teir one schools at the time as well. Harvard was probably in the 30’s or 40’s. Acceptance rates have fallen tremendously over the last 30 years for a variety of reasons, but Penn’s selectivity was relatively inline with now when compared to benchmarks of the time period.</p>

17

<p>Interesting to see UC Santa Barbara there with UCLA and UCSD nowhere to be found.</p>

18

<p>Wow from 4th tier to top 20 for Emory.</p>

19

<p>

</p>

<p>No, it wasn’t. Penn’s acceptance rate as late as the Class of '96 was 47% at a time when the acceptance rate at Harvard and Princeton was 16%, Dartmouth and Brown were in the 20-22% range, Cornell and Columbia were in the low 30% range, Williams and Amherst were in the 25% range and Bowdoin, Colgate, Middlebury, Wesleyan type schools were in the 32-38% range.</p>

20

<p>

Actually, the acceptance rate for Penn’s Class of '96 was 39%, but it was 47% for the Class of '95 so your point is well taken:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.archives.upenn.edu/primdocs/upa/upa1_1/90s/19920619tr.pdf[/url]”>http://www.archives.upenn.edu/primdocs/upa/upa1_1/90s/19920619tr.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (see page 8)</p>

<p>For Penn’s Class of 1984–more relevant for the 1980 Barron’s Selectivity Index–the acceptance rate was 40%:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.archives.upenn.edu/primdocs/upa/upa1_1/80s/19800620tr.pdf[/url]”>http://www.archives.upenn.edu/primdocs/upa/upa1_1/80s/19800620tr.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (see page 9)</p>