<p>Our friend, xiggi, can’t sleep at night that Berkeley has lower than 20% admit rate. lol…</p>
<p>Having said that, I kind of agree with him that it’s too early to say whether the numbers are accurate or not.</p>
<p>Oh, RML, I do not stay awake worrying about Cal as their mission is not to dip below an artificial yardstick of selectivity. Simply stated, they should never be compared to schools that do NOT have massive Spring admits or even larger transfer admits from various JUCO or CCs. Different animals wearing different stripes.</p>
<p>However, it remains that the numbers reported should be accurate and not represent a partial admission rate.</p>
<p>
Are you aware of any specific inaccuracies in the admit rates posted by the NY Times? And by inaccuracies, I mean that an admit rate listed by the Times was different than the one provided to it by the relevant admissions office. And I’m not talking about the entire blog, but just its annual tabulation of admit rates.</p>
<p>
I agree that it’s way too early for accurate final admit rates–hence the suggestion (futile as xiggi might find it) that it would be interesting to compare these initially reported rates with the final ones after all waitlist activity. That would provide a clear indication of which schools, if any, are relying on extensive waitlist activity over the summer to artificially depress initial admit rates in the spring.</p>
<p>My point about the NY Times’ table of initially reported admit rates (which The Times gets directly from the admissions offices) is that it’s simply a more reliable source for those initally reported admit rates than a list thrown together by anonymous posters on an internet bulletin board. I wasn’t claiming that the admit rates reported by the colleges themselves–albeit as reported by The Times–are the true admit rates, although that’s what xiggi seems to think I was saying. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Updated Georgetown.
Source: [url=<a href=“Undergraduate Applications Largest in Georgetown History - Georgetown University”>Undergraduate Applications Largest in Georgetown History - Georgetown University]Georgegown.edu/news/[/url</a>] </p>
<p>5.9%–Harvard
6.6----Stanford
6.8----Yale
7.4----Columbia
7.86—Princeton
8.9----MIT
9.4----Dartmouth
9.6----Brown
11.9—Duke
12.0—Vanderbilt
12.3—UPenn
12.4—Claremont McKenna
12.8—Pomona
15.3—Northwestern
15.4—WUSTL
15.7—Pitzer
16.1—Bowdoin
16.2—Cornell
16.5—Georgetown
16.7—Williams
17.4—Olin
17.7—Johns Hopkins
18-----USC
18-----Washington and Lee
19.6—UC Berkeley
19.7—Wesleyan
21.0—Barnard
21.2—Tufts
25-----Bates
25.7—University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
27.1—Hamilton
27.4—University of Virginia
29.0—Babson
29-----Colby
30-----University of Richmond
32.7—George Washington
34-----University of Rochester
34.7—Macalester
35-----NYU
39-----Occidental
41-----University of Florida
45.5—Boston University
51-----Elon</p>
<p>Really, xiggi? Would you still have posted in this very thread had you not seen Berkeley’s below 20% admit rate? lol…</p>
<p>And, it is not a hidden secret that Berkeley does admit a few extra students for Spring admits. How is that any different from your beloved privates that accept thousands of WL? lol</p>
<p>vanderbilt and duke harder than Penn this year? wow</p>
<p>^ Admit rates, alone, don’t tell the whole story of relative selectivity–especially these inital rates which, at least in some cases, are subject to fairly significant change after waitlist activity over the summer. You really have to look at other stats such as SAT ranges, GPA ranges, and class ranks (to the extent they’re provided) of admitted and enrolled students at various schools to determine how relatively selective they are.</p>
<p>RML, I cannot possibly explain to you how admissions numbers are compared … year after year. And again and again. Let this refresh your memory. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1115323-initial-acceptance-rates-class-2015-a-3.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1115323-initial-acceptance-rates-class-2015-a-3.html</a></p>
<p>It is really not that hard to figure out the differences between WL admits and deferred admissions.</p>
<p>Is it that hard to believe that Duke is more selective than Penn this year (not saying that acceptance rate is the entire picture)? I was always under the assumption that they were always very similar in terms of selectivity.</p>
<p>Sent from my HTC Vision using CC</p>
<p>^ Indeed, the difference between 11.9% and 12.3% admit rates is inconsequential, except maybe for some kind of bragging rights. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I was really surprised with vanderbilt’s low rate. They were like 20% just a few years ago</p>
<p>^ Last year, Vanderbilt’s inital admit rate was 15.6%, and then after it admitted 212 from its waitlist, its final admit rate was 16.4%:</p>
<p><a href=“BigFuture College Search”>BigFuture College Search;
<p>the wide separation in acceptance rates during the last couple of years between Amherst and Williams continues</p>
<p>any particular reason for this, other than maybe the smaller size student body of Amherst?</p>
<p>11.9% - Amherst
16.7% - Williams</p>
<p>
Looking at overall admit rates doesn’t tell the whole picture. Penn takes a considerably larger percentage (~50%) of its class from ED than any of its peers, which raises yield and drives down its RD admit rate.</p>
<p>
Boy, are you way off base on THIS one–and that’s quite unusual for you. ;)</p>
<p>For the Class of 2016, Penn accepted 47% of its anticipated class through ED, while Columbia admitted 45% of its class, Dartmouth 42%, Duke 38%, and Brown and Cornell 37%. Moreover, through their single-choice EA (I realize not quite the same as ED, but similar), Harvard also accepted 47% of its anticipated class, while Yale accepted 52%, and Princeton accepted 56%. So to say that Penn accepts “a considerably larger percentage of its class” through early admissions (or ED, if you want to restrict it) than any of its peers, is not supported by the actual data. Furthermore, keep in mind that, with the exception of Cornell, Penn’s class is significantly larger than those of its peers–with over 1,000 more students than Columbia, Dartmouth, Yale, and Princeton; 900 more students than Brown; and 700 more students than Duke and Harvard.</p>
<p>Moreover, for the Class of 2015–when Penn accepted 48% of the class through ED–1,275 of the enrolled students were accepted through RD, for a RD yield rate of 46%. Duke, on the other hand, accepted 1,079 of the its enrolled Class of 2015 through RD, for a RD yield of 33%. In other words, even with an 18% larger RD cohort than Duke (1,275 vs. 1,079), Penn had a signficantly higher RD yield than Duke (46% vs. 33%), and that’s a purely apples-to-apples RD yield comparison.</p>
<p>Finally, both Penn and Duke had an ED admit rate of 25% this year, with Penn having 4,526 ED applicants–the largest ED applicant pool among its peers–compared to Duke’s 2,641 ED applicants. In other words, Penn is able to maintain ED selectivity similar to Duke’s (and Dartmouth’s, for that matter) because of its significantly larger ED pool.</p>
<p>So again, the ED-yield-and-selectivity-manipulation claim–especially vis-a-vis Duke–does not withstand factual scrutiny and is, quite frankly, a red herring.</p>
<p>But I still think you’re one of the best posters on CC. :)</p>
<p>45 Percenter, I stand corrected. I remembered that the SCEA schools are usually around the 48% mark (something Byerly pointed out [long</a> ago](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/70342-magic-48-rate-harvard-stanford-yale-princeton-etc.html]long”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/70342-magic-48-rate-harvard-stanford-yale-princeton-etc.html)), but I must admit I was too lazy to crunch the numbers for ED. I knew Duke’s was in the 35% range, so I assumed the others were as well.</p>
<p>In any case, I wasn’t really accusing Penn of any sort of “manipulation.” My point was rather that colleges with larger percentages of their class coming from ED can have RD admit rates that are lower than colleges with lower percentages of ED or with EA. Put a different way, the more you rely on RD to fill your class - which is a gamble if you don’t have a high yield - the more students you must admit. Since Duke has more (62%) of its class come from RD than Penn (~52%), and since Duke’s RD yield is lower than Penn’s, as you pointed out, I fully expected Duke’s RD admit rate to be noticeably higher. </p>
<p>I just did the 2016 calculations and was surprised to find that the two are very similar regardless. Penn did indeed have a higher ED admit rate and a lower RD admit rate, but the difference is virtually negligible. Penn’s huge ED pool seems to be the primary reason for this; if it were closer to the size of Duke’s or even Cornell’s (~3500), the ED rate would be a lot higher and closer to what I expected. </p>
<p>Duke 2016</p>
<p>ED applied: 2641
ED admitted: 648 (24.5%)
ED deferred: ~700
RD applied: 28909
Total RD pool: 29609
RD admitted: 3105 (10.5%)</p>
<p>Penn 2016</p>
<p>ED applied: 4526
ED admitted: 1148 (25.4%)
ED deferred: 886
RD applied: 26690
Total RD pool: 27576
RD admitted: 2698 (10.1%)</p>
<p>Correction:</p>
<p>Georgetown acceptance rate = 16%</p>
<p>[Undergraduate</a> Applications Largest in Georgetown History - Georgetown University](<a href=“Undergraduate Applications Largest in Georgetown History - Georgetown University”>Undergraduate Applications Largest in Georgetown History - Georgetown University)</p>
<p>wildcatalum-
If you do the math on the numbers in your link the Georgetown acceptance rate comes out at just under 16.5 percent. Sometimes schools and/or publications round the numbers off and it looks like these numbers were rounded down.</p>
<p>“just over 20,100 applicants”, 3316 acceptances</p>
<p>
Actually, Penn’s RD admit rate was 9.8% (2698/27,576), and not 10.1%, but who’s counting? :)</p>
<p>And there’s also waitlist activity to come. Last year, Penn admitted 56 from its waitlist. Any idea how many Duke admitted from its waitlist? For some reason, that part of Duke’s College Board listing says “Information not supplied by college.” :rolleyes:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And if Harvard’s EA pool had been the same size as Duke’s, Harvard’s EA acceptance rate would have been 29%. 
It’s the size of the applicant pool, in combination with the size of the target class and the yield, that determines how low a school’s acceptance rate will be. Obviously, if you assume any of those to be higher or lower, it will affect the admit rate. But of course what’s relevant are the actual numbers.</p>