20 Colleges with Lowest Acceptance Rates for Class of 2013

Applying to College
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<p>As always, this information can be misleading to applicants who can apply only to particular colleges of a multicollege university, not some fictional amalgam of the university as a whole. For example, in the prior admissions cycle, acceptance rates to Cornell’s various undergraduate colleges ranged from 15% to 32%. The university doesn’t have one acceptance rate, it has seven different ones. The same is the case with other multi-college universities where applications are to the component individual colleges, not some conglomeration. Selectivity differences among a university’s various colleges can be quite material in some cases.</p>

<p>Secondly, if one must pointlessly aggregate, then aggregate correctly. Columbia’s information is missing its large undergraduate College of General Studies, which has a much higher acceptance rate than its two other undergraduate colleges. Consequently, Columbia purposely does not report it. This should be included in Columbia’s aggregate admissions %, for whatever that proves, if all colleges are to be included for other universities. It also has an unreported undergraduate nursing program I believe.
From some other recent CC thread, it appears that Johns Hopkins and some others (Georgetown? Duke?) also have unreported colleges deliberately absent from their submitted data. </p>

<p>Meaning you are comparing comprehensive data for some multi-college universities with cherry-picked partial data from some others. And then comparing them all to schools that consist solely of liberal arts colleges. An exercise almost certain to produce some misleading conclusions, IMO.</p>

<p>IMO the wisest thing for you as an applicant to do in assessing your admissions odds most accurately is seek out the data for the particular college of that university that you are actually applying to, not data for the university as aggregate.</p>

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<p>I realize this is an old post, but also please consider:</p>

<p>the applicant pool at U Chicago is going to differ from others, therefore SAT and acceptance rates will differ . You can’t draw a great statistical conclusion if you’re comparing apples to oranges. i.e., if students "self select " themselves out from applying to U Chicago, or JHU, these institutions will have a spuriously higher acceptance rate. Additionally, the colleges are learning how to “game” the system too, knowing that the majority of applicants are influenced by their parents, who in turn only spend time ( on the whole, as an aggregate) watching the USNWR ratings . So these schools strive for higher numbers of applicants, by sending them “personalized” “invitations” to apply… thus, the acceptance rate is also dependent on that school’s advertising budget. Be careful what you accept as “truth” !</p>

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<p>Curtis Institute of Music (5%)
Julliard School (8%)</p>

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<p>Yes, it is interesting that Curtiss Institute of Music in Center City remains the most selective institution of higher education in the US.</p>

<p>Most of the data on this thread is 2009. FYI - Georgetown’s final admit rate (after waiting list) last year was 20%.</p>

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<p>There is this one music school on Penn that accepts only 4% of applicants. It is called Curtis Institute of Music.</p>

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<p>only 4% ???
so getting in is like hitting the lotto …</p>