<p>13.8%, is it a real one? I saw it on the school websites. I thought Ivies may get an acceptance rate around 15%, now comes CMC. I once wanted to apply but I didn'tthis year because I was stunned by the figure.</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s a real number, and it’s predicted to fall down even lower this year thanks to the giant boost in apps, making it perhaps the most selective LAC of 2012.</p>
<p>It’s unclear though what the implications of the SAT scandal will be.</p>
<p>CMC’s acceptance rate like many of the top LACs is a niche below the Ivy Leagues. Ivy’s are around 5-10%(save Cornell and Penn), the top LACs have acceptance rates of 10-18%(such as Williams, Pomona, Amherst, Swarthmore), and the top national universities such as Northwestern and Rice have rates from 15-20%.</p>
<p>The significance of an absolute acceptance rate also has to be tempered by the degree to which “self-selection” impacts the applicant pool. Cal Tech has an acceptance rate of around 13%, yet the academic caliber of their applicant pool is in a different stratosphere then, say, Stanford, with a 6-7% acceptance rate. Further, CMC and Pomona both benefit from being among a very small handful of top notch LAC’s in California/ the West coast (i.e. 2 or 3). If the only top tier LAC’s on the East coast were Amherst and Swarthmore, their acceptance rates would arguably drop to <10%; however, the east also has Williams, Middlebury, etc. etc. Everybody and their sister/brother who wants to attend a top California LAC applies to Pomona and CMC, inflating the numbers applying, thus depressing the acceptance rates.</p>
<p>Actually, I believe there’s a great deal of cross-over between CMC/Pomona applicants and applicants to Amherst/Williams/Swat. DS’s friends are applying to both West and East coast colleges in these groups, fwiw. These institutions draw from all over the country and the world at this point. And they’re all remarkable and unique colleges!</p>
<p>That they are!</p>
<p>I think Dad2 is right. There are not so many top liberal colleges on the west coast as on the east coast. Anyway, I was a little shocked at that time and CMC’s essay topic was a special one. I had no idea about it.</p>
<p>No question, Claremont is one of the hottest colleges in the world, which explains a high demand for seats and low acceptance rate.</p>
<p>During the years in which the SAT cheating scandal apparently took place, the CMC acceptance rate has plunged dramatically. It may be that in the zeal to improve CMC’s USNews ranking, SAT scores weren’t the only numbers fabricated. This is pure speculation at this point … but it is a possibility.</p>
<p>Another CC poster put forth the following argument on another thread: If the goal is to cheat the USN rankings, why fudge only SAT numbers; why not fudge a couple of other numbers, too (like possibly the acceptance rate, numbers of applications, etc.)? This could, unfortunately, be part of the reason for the dramatic drop in CMC’s published acceptance rate in recent years (i.e. the same period of time in which the SAT cheating was playing out).</p>
<p>There is NO evidence of this, at present. However, we simply don’t the extent of the commitment that existed at CMC to “win the USNews game, at any cost.” So far, it’s one errant administrator and fake SAT scores. </p>
<p>The acceptance rate may be a fake, too. Hopefully not. We won’t likely know for at least several months, when investigations have had a chance to take their due course.</p>