<p>Hey everyone, it's me again :). I was curious about some discrepancies I found between college search engines and Rose-Hulman's actual website. Most college search engines list RHIT's admission difficulty as, "easy," and their Fall 2009 acceptance rate at 70%. However, on the RHIT website they list their admissions difficulty as extremely difficult, with 3800 applicants competing for 550 spots (approx. a 15% acceptance rate). Scroll to the bottom of this webpage to see the blurb I am talking about: Rose-Hulman</a> Institute of Technology</p>
<p>If the information on their website is correct, I have a much smaller chance of getting into their school than I thought :(.</p>
<p>The website is misleading because it provides applicant/enrollment numbers rather than applicant/acceptance. Acceptance is not the same as enrollment. They have to accept a lot of people to fill their freshman class. </p>
<p>According to the RHIT 2009-10 common data set, 2495 of 3554 applicants were accepted and 465 actually enrolled. So, the acceptance rate was a little over 70% and yield from accepted applicants was about 18.6%.</p>
<p>For this fall’s freshman class, there were over 3800 applications with an acceptance rate of 65%. Yield was about 21%. Every college in America admits more students than actually show up. If a student is admitted here, s/he is going to be admitted to many high quality places, and the choice becomes that much more difficult. That dynamic is occurring all over the country. Hope that helps.</p>
<p>Jared Goulding
Assistant Director of Admissions
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology</p>
<p>Jared, thanks for providing an update based on this year’s class. Nice to see you on CC! </p>
<p>KathyE, even though the acceptance rate at RHIT is high compared to many other schools that are popular on CC, because of the unique qualities of RHIT it attracts a self-selected group of applicants. That makes its stats for accepted students quantitatively higher than most schools with similarly high acceptance rates.</p>
<p>The acceptance percentage is a somewhat misleading statistic as far as comparing schools. Since Rose is not as well known as a lot of places, generally students that apply are really interested and already qualified. If you are looking to compare admissions difficulty, I think numbers like class rank and standardized test scores are more useful.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the responses everyone! I totally forgot about how yield factors in to admission statistics, obviously senior year is already messing with my head
I know that the 70% acceptance rate can be misleading as almost all the applicants are highly qualified, but a 70% acceptance rate is much more reassuring than a 15% one ;). Thanks again everybody!</p>
<p>Also important to remember that low acceptance rate does not automatically mean a higher quality education or that a higher acceptance rate does not mean a lower quality education.</p>
<p>It’s like what Ivy Leagues put in their letters - that there were many qualified applicants, just that they didn’t have room to admit them all. Rose does.</p>
