<p>One of the components of many college rankings is % of students accepted. This also seems to be important to many students on these forums, who pronounce schools as "better" "more elite" or more "competitive" if they admit a smaller percentage of applicants. Some schools are well known for trying to drive up the numbers of applicants so that their acceptance %s are lower and they gain an advantage in the USN&WR rankings. My question is why this number makes the slightest bit of difference when there are numbers available to show the scores and GPAs/class rank of those who actually enroll.</p>
<p>Look at it this way--if Harvard (just to use an example) suddenly announced that it would automatically admit students who scored 2350 or better on the SATs (or 35 or better on the ACTs) and took at least 8 AP tests, and automatically reject anyone falling below those norms with no exceptions and no appeals, it would raise its acceptance rate to 100% (well, maybe a little less, since there are always people who think hard and fast rules don't apply to them), but it certainly wouldn't diminish at least the numerical quality of the students who applied, were accepted, and enrolled. Why would it be "graded down" for the higher acceptance rate? It would be one thing if colleges didn't keep track of things like median test scores for admitted and enrolled students--then difficulty of admission could be used as a measure of quality of student body. But, they do keep those stats. And, while they certainly don't tell the whole story, no rankings I know of track things like number of football captains/first chair french horns, but all announce quantitative ranges.</p>
<p>Other than as another form of competitve sport/bragging opportunity, can anyone explain why schools are ranked in the "quality of students" area based in part on median scores and grades, and in part on % acceptance rather than exclusively by the former?</p>
<p>I can't speak to rankings as I truly am not into rankings, nor follow them, I think the admit rate does speak to the selectivity of a school. When weighing one's odds of admission, I think one has to look at BOTH the stats of the admitted students and the acceptance rate. A very low acceptance rate makes the school more selective. If you have two schools that have a profile of stats of admitted students in a similar range but one school has a much lower acceptance rate, I would say that the school with the lower acceptance rate is harder to get into. Does that make it "better"? I am not into "better" or "best". I am into fit. The students may not be smarter. But it does make the school more selective or harder to gain admission. At the school that requires the same stats but has a higher acceptance rate, sometimes that can mean if your stats are in range, you likely will get in. But with the same stats at a school with a low acceptance rate, many with the requisite stats will be turned away and the selectivity makes for more difficult odds and sometimes a student needs more "plusses" on their profile than merely the SAT and GPA ranges to get in, since most applicants have those but a greater number are not offered admission.</p>
<p>In US News, 15% of total ranking is due to selectivity. In the 15% of the selective rank, 10% of that is through admit rate, 40 or 50% is through SAT score, and 40-50% through students in top 10% of their classes.</p>
<p>I also think choosing a school based on ranking is complete foolishness. (E.g., which is better for film: Harvard or USC? Engineering: Harvard or MIT? Business: Harvard or Wharton? Economics: Harvard or UChicago? Marine Science: Harvard or UMiami?) Even percent-admitted and academic-metrics have limitations. Is CalTech with 2000 students directly comparable to MIT with its 10,000 students? Isn’t it sufficient to describe both schools as excellent?</p>
<p>Where to start? In my company headquarters, we recently had a blind taste test for coffee vendors vying for our business--Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and Peet's. If we had a vote rather than a blind test, I can assure you that Starbucks would have won hands-down, because of their strong branding. Howeer, Peet's was the winner. US News is going to pick the Starbucks every time.</p>
<p>In defense of US News (which I don't like to defend): One theory is that where you have a functioning market, the collective "wisdom" of the market is superior to any particular analytical formula. Thus, for example, people have repeatedly shown that betting markets, on the whole, do a better job of predicting the outcome of sporting events than sports analysts, and artificial trading markets in options on political candidates are more accurate in predicting election results than polls.</p>
<p>In the college "market", people choosing to apply to a college and choosing to go there if accepted are real market data, and it would be a mistake to ignore it altogether. Certainly, they are more current and more reflective of something real than the index of peer reputation USNWR uses, even though the information that index attempts to capture is the information I, personally, care about most. And those data are much more powerful than direct quality metrics like average class size, or endowment/student.</p>
<p>The point you make is a good one. % accepted may be no better an indicator of how good a college is than the number of trucks at a truck stop are indicators of how good the chili is. Who actually enrolls in the school is a far better measure than who applies.</p>
<p>Applicants to any particular college are a self-selected group. When students feel that they have little or no chance to get in to a school, they don't apply. When a school orients itself toward a subset of the population, such as Brigham Young, many students don't apply. However, looking at the yield for such schools is often revealing. Schools like BYU and Yeshiva have very high yields to go with high acceptance rates. The students that apply really want to go there. I also suspect that the Harvard hypothetical you pose would also result in very high yield as well, although Harvard's yield is already very high.</p>
<p>The biggest problem with the notion of selectivity being 15% in USNWR rankings is the ability of schools like Wash U to game the system. I'm not singling out Wash U because others certainly do the same, but they were the first school to aggressively market to top performers in the way that they do. My S must have received something from Wash U every week or at least every other week all during his junior year and the first part of senior year. Their outreach began in sophomore year after the first round of PSATs and grew as time went on.</p>
<p>This kind of "interest" on a school's part certainly drives the number of applications up which when combined with zero net gain in the number of students admitted makes the school appear to be much more selective. It worked for them as their rankings steadily grew each year that their advertising campaign increased in size and scope.</p>
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The biggest problem with the notion of selectivity being 15% in USNWR rankings is the ability of schools like Wash U to game the system. I'm not singling out Wash U because others certainly do the same, but they were the first school to aggressively market to top performers in the way that they do. My S must have received something from Wash U every week or at least every other week all during his junior year and the first part of senior year. Their outreach began in sophomore year after the first round of PSATs and grew as time went on.
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<p>WashU also games the system by having no additional essays in its Common App supplement. The student just fills out some simple demographic information and clicks the button. For those who are sick of writing extra essays, this is a big inducement to apply.</p>
<p>I found the selectivity stat helpful in making a realistic list of colleges. Low acceptance rate + student stats upper middle to bottom = put it in the Hail Mary pile. Be happy if you get in, and not surprised if you don't.</p>
<p>After several years on CC I've discovered that for some people getting into the highest ranked/most selective school IS the most important criteria to them. Fit or cost is not as important. There are others that have different criteria. As long as there are college students that value rankings/selectivity then there will be ranking systems and publications that list them.</p>
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WashU also games the system by having no additional essays in its Common App supplement. The student just fills out some simple demographic information and clicks the button. For those who are sick of writing extra essays, this is a big inducement to apply.
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When students feel that they have little or no chance to get in to a school, they don't apply.
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I'm not sure that is true for some of the "name brand" schools. A "Hail Mary" might just be caught; other times, parents insist on the application, which together may pump up the selectivity. Then there is the argument that decreasing admit rates result in actually decreasing true selectivity.</p>
<p>I see the Hail Mary app (good term) as the result of what students see as a largely random and whimsical selection process at a number of schools.</p>