<p>I don't think so Slipper. I think you are confusing selectivity with quality...again. Penn has always had quality programs and quality students. And I see no difference between "elite" and "top". As far as my working vocabulary is concerned, only 15 or 20 universities in the US can legitimately have the words elite or top attached to their general description...Penn has always been one of those schools.</p>
<p>I think slipper is trying to prove my main point which was that Penn has rised in prestige among both students AND employers as can be shown from its "feeder" stats into grad schools and employment opportunities.</p>
<p>In fact we can use a different college instead of Upenn. My point is that the term "top student" is relative. If other students beat out a "top student", then that top student wasn't really a top student, now was he?</p>
<p>That "former" top student can then attend his/her match/safety instead which will become more prestigious as more of these "top students" attend. </p>
<p>For better clarification, imagine if the current top 25 SHRANK their class sizes by half. The next 25 schools will then replace them in their current prestige level and the FORMER top 25 would become more prestigious and selective.</p>
<p>I TOTALLY disagree with the op's statement that if a "top" student gets rejected from his/her reach or selective school, that student will somehow miss a quality education.</p>
<p>ACA, Penn's feeder rating has not improved over the last 100 years...nor has its appeal to employers. Universities take decades to improve fractionally, and schools like Penn, that have been leading the academic world for over 100 years do not simply emrerge overnight.</p>
<p>Not true Alexandre, everything I have read has shown Penn's feeder rank increase as its selectivity has.</p>
<p>Well Slipper, I actually studied university placement for over a decade. Penn has not changed. And let me tell you, if Penn trly has improved drastically in the feeder department, it must have been seriously lacking because even as we speak, Penn is not one of the top 10 feeder universities. But like I said, Penn has not changed over the years. You seem to forget that Penn has not become more selective in an absolute sense. As Penn got more selective, so have most other top 25 universities. But I stand by my previous statement, Penn was never "mediocre". It was always and remains a top 10 university. And selectivity is not an indicator of quality. Chicago is as much a feeder school as Penn, and yet, it is not as selective as Penn. Caltech is way more selective than either one of those two but its feeder score is slightly lower.</p>
<p>Besides selectivity, Penn has also improved its finance greatly. In terms of endowment, Penn had the second greatest percent increase from 1990-2000 in the Ivy League. </p>
<p>In terms of improving selectivity, Penn's raw admission percentage was higher than Cornell's in 1990, despite having a smaller class. Nowadays, this is reversed. So unless you argue that Cornell has become less selective, I think there are some evidences to say that Penn has become relatively more selective. </p>
<p>I haven't been keeping track of historical data, but Penn's enrollment into Harvard Law increased in the past year.</p>
<p>Whether the school has improved a lot if up for you to decide. I think it has.</p>
<p>Aurelius, Penn's endowment in 1990 stood at $1 billion, or 15th in the nation. Today, it stands at $4.5 billion, or 9th in the nation. Yes, Penn has done OK in terms of endowment growth, but not unusually so...and certainly not 2nd among the Ivies in terms of growth. Harvard, Dartmouth and Yale have all experienced 500%+ growth in endowment. Penn stands at 450%.</p>
<p>The University admitted that they did unusually poorly in endowment growth from 2004-2005, which was in fact, one of the lowest in the Ivy league IIRC. However, the data that I was referring to was for 1990-2000. </p>
<p>You were aruging that in terms of academic reputation, the university has not changed very much. This is probabaly true, since academic reputation changes very slowly. But I think change can be measured in other ways than that. In terms of raw numbers (endowment, endowment/student, acceptance rate), Penn has at least surpassed Cornell. In terms of street name recognition, I think the USNEWS ordeal has also helped the school a lot.</p>
<p>The truth is students change their perceptions as a school becomes more selective, and when these students get jobs they keep that notion so the selectivity stays. We have seen many schools accomplish recognition this way even though academically they have not improved to the same extent. WashU, Penn, Emory, Duke all come to mind.</p>