<p>I recently went to my college orientation and they stated that they had accepted 1900 incoming freshmen and that there were over 10,000 applicants. I can assure you that this school does not have a <20% acceptance rate! My guess is that, in actuality, they accepted many more students but 1900 was simply the amount of spaces. This is not the only school I have seen exaggerations of numbers come from. When I used to look at Cornell it seemed they always had thousands more applicants than collegeboard indicated. What is going on?!</p>
<p>What they probably said was "There were over 10,000 applicants vying for only 1900 spots."</p>
<p>Maybe they meant that the 1900 were those that had matriculated to that college.</p>
<p>Colleges always accept more students than there are spots in their freshman class. UNC has like 20000 applicants each year, and accepts about 6500, of that about 3500 matriculate.</p>
<p>Yeah. What was the exact phrasing??</p>
<p>yield ......</p>
<p>They lie like crazy.
Especially WashU.</p>
<p>They don't lie, but the way the information is presented may be misleading. Newspapers do the same, too. For example, at an Amherst speech, I heard the percentage of international students was 10. But when I went to the website, the fact was only 7% or less is non-US international; the remaining 3% are citizens. This is just one example.</p>
<p>Another is WashU's acceptance which goes like: out of the X applicants, you have been selected as one of the Y who will be attending. While (X/Y)100% is actually the yield rate, at first glance, it seems like the acceptance rate.</p>
<p>well the lady did make it seem like only 1900 were chosen from over 10,000 but clearly that isn't possible because obviously they weren't able to attract all 100% of accepted students. it just seems like many colleges highl exaggerate the numbers of those applying. on cornell's site it showed that they essentially had a 15% acceptance rate yet collegeboard shows more of a mid 30%</p>
<p>But wheres the college board getting their info from?Don't they get it from them/the universities?</p>
<p>^ Cornell's numbers on college board are for the entire university (including the hotel school, agriculture, etc.). Admission rates for CAS and engineering are significantly lower.</p>
<p>People lie with statistics all the time, not only colleges. They misquote for their own purpose, thats' why there is this book written:</p>
<p>I think colleges spin things, but this rampant lying some of you are describing sounds off to me. </p>
<p>With the internet and more sources for college information, it would be very hard for a college to publish false statistics without someone noticing the discrepancy.</p>
<p>Sometimes people misunderstand things, like thinking "spots in the class" equals the acceptance numbers. Our local TV station just did this to Michigan, leading with a headline like "U-M rejects 75% of its applicants." Which is laughable, and completely false, but it wasn't the college who said that. We supplied all the correct numbers to the media--it was a journalist who misunderstood how college acceptance works.</p>
<p>Sometimes people make mistakes, too--especially admissions counselors who have not been on the job long. They're not lying as a part of college policy--they're just young, and careless, and inexperienced. And it's not just inexperienced people who make mistakes. I've done enrollment and admissions analysis for ten years, and last month I calculated a percentage for the new freshman class incorrectly. Mistakes do happen.</p>