Acceptance rate this year = 39.8 percent (!)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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<p>According to article this week in the school newspaper, as announced by the President, Shirley Ann Jackson. (<a href="http://poly.rpi.edu/article_view.php3?view=5994&part=10%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://poly.rpi.edu/article_view.php3?view=5994&part=10&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p>

<p>How acceptance rate has fallen in past years: </p>

<p>2005 and earlier ~ 70%
2006 - 67%
2007 - 49%
2008 - 39.8% </p>

<p>Pretty dramatic change ..</p>

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<p>Probably because more people applied. When that is taken into account, it is probably more like a 5% decrease, which is still pretty good. RPI is definitely moving in the right direction. Perhaps in ten or twenty years it will be competing with MIT and CalTech.</p>

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<p>you cant base everything on the acceptance rate.</p>

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<p>Well I wasn't trying to base everything with any precision, but with lower acceptances even when adjusted to the inflation in applicants comes a smaller, more concentrated student body, and more ability to spend more money per student, as well as more attention and such. This increases the chances of the students doing better in their studies, which increases satisfaction, which later helps in increasing the endowment even further. It's sort of like a general cycle. And the acceptance rate is just a good indicator, you know.</p>

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<p>aBeautifulMind - I think you have to be cautious tying lower acceptance percentage to smaller incoming class. You would want to check the class sizes to see how much smaller the freshman class is than previous years, if at all. The %of acceptance is more probably a factor of larger pool of applicants that have included RPI. The %accepted will go down dramatically if the number of applications has risen dramatically, even while class size may have remained the same.</p>

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<p>^I know this, that is why I stated "when adjusted to the inflation in applicants."</p>

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<p>wow i didn't realize it was 70% 2005 and before! crazy!!</p>

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<p>They have said this is the largest graduating class in the country in years so that affects the acceptance percentage. Just our luck to have to graduate during a "baby boomer" year!!</p>