<p>According to the 2014 USNWR ranking, Vanderbilt's acceptance rate was 14.2%, but the NYT says it was 11.97%. I wonder why.</p>
<p>The best source for this information is the school’s admissions office. I really can’t explain the discrepancy.</p>
<p>The acceptance rate for USNWR is for 2012. The NYT maybe for 2013. It may also depend on how they include ED vs RD.</p>
<p>All colleges & universities have a “snapshot” date that’s usually about 3 weeks into the semester. Agreeing with Go9ersjrh, the NYT stat was probably based on 2013 data, likely supplied in the spring after all the acceptance letters went out. Over the summer, additional students will be pulled from the waitlist and the admit rate will climb somewhat. The USNWR ranking is based on the snapshot data for the previous year which is used for the Common Data Set. The Common Data Set usually becomes available in October each year. Here is the link for the data that supports the USNWR statistic:
<a href=“https://virg.vanderbilt.edu/virgweb/CDSC.aspx?year=2012[/url]”>https://virg.vanderbilt.edu/virgweb/CDSC.aspx?year=2012</a></p>
<p>Still waiting for Vanderbilt to update their class profile for 2013, but these were 2013 Admissions Rates on the Vandy blog:
ED 21.18% of 3,248 applicants (this is both ED I and II)
RD 10.84% of 27,840 applicants
USNews data is always a year behind.</p>
<p>Yes the USNWR data on admit rates & test scores are a year old. The data they use for “reputation” (22.5% of total score) is 100 years old data.</p>
<p>100-year-old data… ha ha ha. But, seriously, bud123 you have a point on that, and that somehow explains why Vanderbilt is stuck in 17 forever.</p>
<p>Rankings are about as pointless as beauty contests. And the USNWR rankings are particularly pointless.</p>
<p>Vandyman, you are absolutely right. The USNWR rankings seem to me a device to immortalize the status quo of American establishment.</p>
<p>Not sure I’d quite go there 
but there is certainly some self-reinforcing characteristic in the way they capture their data and compile the rankings.</p>
<p>But more importantly, if you take the top 30-40 schools, the difference for an undergrad student made by the school is far smaller than the difference made by the student’s abilities and hard work.</p>
<p>But it’s really hard to measure a school’s value-add, so what gets measured is what’s easily measurable.</p>
<p>The USNWR rankings reflect too much of the schools’ past rather than the present and hopefully the future, and that is why I think they have been serving the status quo of American higher education. They do not help the up and coming schools like Vanderbilt.</p>