<p>Being fairly new to the college admissions game and knowing the rating system is flawed in regards to how the data is calculated I also wonder how accurate are the admit rates? This is information received from the college and knowing there was a recent scandal with one college changing SAT score information, I wonder if this is accurate? Do colleges all use the same criteria for measuring admit rates? Does it really mean anything? Is yield a more important number?</p>
<p>The acceptance rate counts for 1.5% of the total ranking in USNews so it isn’t a major factor in the rankings. The fact that it is the first column shown in the table makes it seem more inportant than it is. </p>
<p>Yield rates do not count at all in USNews. Private univerities (outside the top 20 or so) have low yield rates due to their cost. Many applicants might prefer to go to a private school but end up going to a state school for financial reasons.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say that the rankings are so much flawed because of ‘how’ the data are collected, so much as ‘what’ data are collected. When looking at any ranking, you need to look at the factors used and the weights given to the factors, that’s what biases the ranking one way or the other. </p>
<p>What many applicants don’t understand is what tom pointed out, acceptance numbers have a relatively small part in the rankings, so they are not a good tool to use for developing a school list. There are some other admissions factors they look at, such as test scores.</p>
<p>For accurate admission rates, go to the Common Data Set for the school, this data is collected consistently across all schools (although some schools provide more information than others).</p>
<p>In general, we all assume the numbers given by colleges are accurate. Yes, there are going to be scandals. I don’t think college admissions is that different from many other businesses in this way.</p>
<p>Yield is only important if you’re the school, trying to admit about the right number of students to fill, but not overfill, the number of seats in your fr class. To the applicant, you only care about being admitted.</p>
<p>Thank you for your opinions. </p>
<p>There seems to be so much hype around being elite in some form or another, I still wonder how prevalent it is to bloat the actual number of applications. Or the colleges that have no application fee must see greater applications when compared to like schools who do charge a fee. Or maybe schools that don’t require essays compared to schools that do and wind up drawing kids that just can’t face another essay. Not to mention the amount of applications kids are submitting in the fear they won’t be accepted anywhere.</p>
<p>It seems like there are too many variables to gather accurate information which makes it all irrelevant.</p>
<p>Ranking are important to many, but I think even more is the concept of “selectivity.” Even if selectivity is only 1.5% of a college’s ranking, I believe it is about 150% in a candidate’s mind. Everyone wants to be a member in the most selective country club; how it “ranks” compared to other clubs is a figment of other criteria that are important to the ranker, but far, far less important to the consumer. Selectivity is top of mind for the college consumer. USNWR really doesn’t want to acknowledge the primacy of selectivity, because then anyone could rank. In fact, we do.</p>
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<p>I disagree, but of course I’m here on CC, so that’s a given :D. The reason I say this is because I think that it’s important to gather information to be able to:</p>
<p>Construct a realistic list of colleges to apply to which contains a range of admissions AND financial safety, match and reach schools.</p>
<p>That is entirely doable and does take knowledge of the college admissions and financial aid/scholarship process. If you look at this forum and the FA & Scholarship forum right now, you will see countless threads about either not being admitted into the majority of schools a student applied to or not being able to afford any school once accepted. Most of these cases would have been avoidable with a basic understanding of this process.</p>
<p>Yes, I would have to agree with you on that point. My heart goes out to many on the rejection strings, it is pretty brutal.</p>
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<p>And I agree with you on these points. Again, college admissions is a business; but I would hope they’d be a highly ethical business, if for no other reason than as an example for the students applying and attending.</p>
<p>I too have been distressed at the ever growing marketing and gamesmanship on the part of colleges. IMO, the most recent signs of this are the abundant likely letter and long WL phenomena. I see these practices as benefiting the college recruiting and ranking concerns at a very high cost to the majority of young people applying.</p>
<p>I have stuck around CC to see my kids through this maze and to hopefully steer others away from major pitfalls, but do I like what the system is becoming? Absolutely not.</p>
<p>How does a long wait list benefit colleges? I am puzzled by the number on waitlists, just as big as the class size.</p>
<p>^See post #5 here:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1312925-why-there-such-massive-use-waitlist-year.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1312925-why-there-such-massive-use-waitlist-year.html</a></p>
<p>I could be wrong in how the numbers are calculated, but I think that it also helps to reduce acceptance rate, which is a factor used in rankings. A school can keep down initial acceptance numbers and rely more heavily on those that choose to stay on the WL and therefore will be more likely to attend if accepted.</p>