Class of 2019 - A quick look at the admission rates.

Parent Cafe
1

Here’s a list of a few selected schools ranked by their rates of admissions. It is not a comprehensive list but is reasonably correct as of May 2015. On this list, Liberal Arts Colleges account for 1/3 of the highest ranked schools.

Selectivity Class of 2019
Schools Admit Applied %

Single Digit Admissions
Stanford 2,144 42,487 5.05%
Harvard 1,990 37,305 5.33%
Columbia 2,228 36,250 6.15%
Yale 1,963 30,237 6.49%
Princeton 1,908 27,290 6.99%
Chicago 2,356 30,162 7.81%
MIT 1,467 18,306 8.01%
Brown 2,580 30,397 8.49%
Claremont McKenna 698 7,152 9.76% *LAC
Pomona 790 8,091 9.76% * LAC
Penn 3,697 37,267 9.92%

Ten to twenty percent
Dartmouth 2,120 20,505 10.34%
Vanderbilt 3,500 31,000 11.29%
Duke 3,534 31,150 11.35%
Swarthmore 950 7,817 12.15% *LAC
Johns Hopkins 3,065 24,717 12.40%
Harvey Mudd 523 4,119 12.70% *LAC
Pitzer 536 4,149 12.92% * LAC
Northwestern 4,187 32,124 13.03%
Amherst 1,176 8,566 13.73% *LAC
Rice 2,600 17,900 14.53%
Bowdoin 1,009 6,790 14.86% *LAC
Cornell 6,234 41,907 14.88%
Tufts 3,050 19,064 16.00%
Georgetown 3,202 19,481 16.44%
UC Berkeley 13,000 78,900 16.48%
Williams 1,159 6,883 16.84% * LAC
Middlebury 1,512 8,894 17.00% *LAC
USC 9,050 51,800 17.47%
Barnard 1,301 6,655 19.55% * LAC
Notre Dame 3,577 18,156 19.70%

More than 20 percent
Bates 1,208 5,636 21.43%
Wesleyan 2,177 9,905 21.98%
Davidson 1,200 5,350 22.43%
Emory 4,796 20,519 23.37%
Carnegie Mellon 4,863 20,547 23.67%
Kenyon 1,689 7,077 23.87%
Hamilton 1,301 5,434 23.94%
Grinnell 1,580 6,414 24.63%
Vassar 1,937 7,567 25.60%
Scripps 731 2,613 27.98%
Boston College 8,232 29,400 28.00%
Virginia 9,147 30,853 29.65%

Even more
NYU 18,500 60,322 30.67%
Boston University 17,522 54,757 32.00%
Smith 1,800 5,004 35.97%
Macalaster 2,360 6,031 39.13%
Dickinson 2,700 6,028 44.79%
GWU 9,117 19,780 46.09%

2

Before you ask, there are a number of highly selective schools that have yet to release preliminary numbers. Think Caltech et al.

3

I’m jealous of all you parents. Acceptance rates were so high when you were my age. UChicago, for example, had an acceptance rate above 60% in the year 2000. In the 80s, some of the Ivies had acceptance rates approaching 50%.
Times were so much better in my parent’s generation.

When my 9 year old sister applies to colleges, acceptance rates will probably be under 2% for top schools. By the time my children apply, 0.5%? less?

4

Really interesting…and thank you @xiggi for the great formatting!

The only thing i don’t like (not shooting the messenger here :slight_smile: is that many folks will think “the better the college, the more people they turn away” but as we all know here, those numbers can be finessed (I’m looking at you, UChicago, with your student come-ons ) and even the colleges at the "bottom’ of your list are extraordinary matches for many smart kids.

5

Who on earth thinks “the better the college, the more people they turn away”?? Acceptance rates are to a large extent driven by the personal tastes (du jour) of 18 year olds, who aren’t savvy.

6

@Pizzagirl You have a point but better colleges DO tend to have lower acceptance rates. The correlation is strong.

7

Yep, 18 year-olds by and large aren’t savvy. But that’s why schools are incented to game, because many teenagers do buy in to the (IMO, mistaken) notion that lower acceptance rate = more prestigious.

8

I posted the list that contains a simple and single metric, namely the rate of admissions for the Class of 2019. Others, led by magazines, are attempting to add more metrics to define either the “best college” or the one with the highest “research” reputation by culling the opinions from a narrow and self-selected group of academics. In the end, it is to each his or her own. The admission rate is simply what it is.

However, however, regarding the claim that a lower acceptance should not necessarily be a reasonable proxy for “more prestigious” would it not be fair to ask those posters to share … which schools happen to be prestigious with a middling acceptance rate?

So, PT et al, why don’t you post a similar list with the prestigious schools that show a correlation between high admission rates and … high prestige. Or should we accept that the definition of prestige is one that remains as elusive as it is personal and biased?

If it is that clear, it should be cinch to develop quite an extensive list! Fwiw, I will spot you a few, namely the military academies – as long as one uses the REAL rate of admissions and not the fabricated one that is often published. The academies are prestigious and have average (real) acceptance rates.

9

Re#2, it may well have been easier for the “baby bust” decade entering college starting in the early 80s. But it was no picnic for those who entered during the peek of the preceding “baby boom” a little over a decade earlier.

Bear in mind, in those days, there were no computers. no word processors, no internet, no “Common App”. Every application, every recommendation letter, had to be individually typed, individually assembled, individually mailed. Due to administrative burden, every school I know about limited of how many applications a student could apply to. Applying was very time consuming.

Also there was no US News ranking the schools based in part on acceptance rates, so the schools were not mass-mailing prospective applicants to inflate application volumes.

For these reasons, population aside, back then schools got fewer applications. But probably a higher proportion of them were “quality applications:”- applicants who really thought seriously about attending the school, due to the effort involved in applying, and the rationing of their few application slots.

Back when my D1 started her investigation process, over ten years ago,based on my analysis it was not obvious to me that admissions chances for her were really materially tougher than they were for me. Now though, I have to concede the point.

It should start getting easier again soon though. Unless they all just fill up with internationals.

10

“You have a point but better colleges DO tend to have lower acceptance rates. The correlation is strong.”

Yes, but that’s different from saying lower acceptance rate DRIVE perceptions of colleges being better colleges.

There’s also a distinction between social prestige and academic prestige.

11

@SouthernHope Pretty much every school’s admissions department doubles as a marketing department, not just the ones College Confidential has arbitrarily decided to lampoon as fishing for applicants. Last year Columbia sent me a postcard every other day for a month before the RD deadline - and they probably stepped up their advertising this year seeing as they came in 3rd in the Acceptance Rate rat-race. Harvard mailed a massive packet with the words “Have you considered Harvard?” in huge letters across the front and Stanford literally sent me a book of information about the school.

But I think it’s disingenuous to look at this as a totally bad thing. Elite schools still skew wealthy, urban and white. There are still hordes of qualified students who wouldn’t dream of applying to UChicago (or Harvard, or Stanford, or Columbia) simply because they are unaware of the financial aid they may receive, they assume the schools are Not For Them or they have never even heard of any colleges beyond their local state school. I won’t deny that part of the motivation for marketing is to make the school appear increasingly selective, but there is at least some altruistic component to them. The schools want to broaden their applicant base to give all components of society an equal chance at receiving the benefits of an elite education.

12

Better colleges is an entirely different element – let’s set that one aside! On the other hand, let’s use prestige in all the forms one wants to use. Let it be social, academic, or whatever, the question remains the same:

Can the people who claim there is no correlation, please provide a list of the schools that would support the notion that a high admission rate is a proxy for being prestigious?

Again, if it is that evident, the answer should be simple.

PS Actually, it might be a stretch to include ALL prestige. Let’s agree to drop athletic prestige out of the equation as we might have a list with the University of Bama or UConn, or other schools where sports are THE thing.

13

deleted

14

@xiggi, sure, there is a correlation, but that doesn’t mean that it should be all that important as a criteria. For example, Columbia’s acceptance rate is less than half what Cornell’s is. Yet by pretty much every measure worth considering, they are peers. Also, back when NYC was a dump and people were afraid of going there (and people got mugged in Morningside Heights all the time), Cornell was significantly more selective than Columbia. Was the quality of education at Columbia worse than Cornell’s when NYC was a dangerous place and now significantly better? I think not.

And yes, of course perceptions of prestige are personal. What else could they be?

15

@Pizzagirl – who believes that low acceptance rates make a college seem more desirable to future applicants? Umm…pretty much everybody :slight_smile: As has been discussed here a great deal, lots of colleges (and i shouldn’t have called out only chicago…many many colleges have been forced into aggressive marketing to drive up numbers) spend lots of money making sure that that the acceptance rate is low…and the yield is high. Doesn’t mean that Stanford isn’t a good school :slight_smile: I just mean that part of the game is looking as selective as possible.

@Yosoflo – valid point…and these marketing campaigns sometimes do pull in very valid candidates who might not have thought about the college otherwise…

16

I do not disagree but that answer is deliberately avoiding the answer to my question. The importance of the yardstick of admission rate is irrelevant to my argument.

In simple words, people here have posited that the admission rates are NOT a good proxy for a form of prestige. That is different from now pretending that either the rate of the perceived prestige should not be an important criterion.

Again, short of a few examples of prestigious schools with high admission rates, there is little to do than accept that … a low admission rate is a proxy for prestige. And that is entirely contrary to the comments about naïve teenagers making a mistake in judgment!

CQFD!

PS Regarding the Cornell vs Columbia, I can’t discuss the eras when rocks were still cooling down, but I would have a hard time to recall a time in the past 15 years when Cornell would be considered both more selective and more prestigious than Columbia in general terms. Of course, I could imagine one making comparisons between one’s hotel school and the other’s nursing or adult schools with different results. As far as the difference between prestige versus “the better school” I should concede the point. Columbia School of Education is prestigious! :wink:

17

@SouthernHope I just liked that you used the word finese. Very hip.

18

Yes, @Xiggi, the world (and the universe) is indeed more than 15 years old.

“Again, short of a few examples of prestigious schools with high admission rates, there is little to do than accept that … a low admission rate is a proxy for prestige.”

So in other words, other than the counterexamples that you’re discounting, there’s nothing to disprove your point. Not sure I can argue against that.

My view is that there are other proxies for prestige (like endowment size, research prowess, recruiting opportunities, and alumni achievement) that are as good or better proxies for prestige than acceptance rate and most of those are more relevant to a student’s education.

19

Note that Cornell received more applicants than Columbia or any other ivies. The acceptance rate was higher because they have a far larger entering class size. Similarly colleges with extremely small class sizes can have a lower admit rate than one would predict according to USNWR/prestigology type assumptions. For example, according to the news story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/01/prweb12457839.htm , Olin’s admit rate should be ~57/1072 = 5.3% this year… lower than all the ivies. There are also issues related to colleges with similar admit rates having very different pools of applicants. For example, according to IPEDS, the colleges with the lowest admit rate in 2013-2014 were Curtis Institute of Music, Stanford, Harvard, and the US Naval Academy. I wouldn’t group Curtis and the US Naval Academy as academic peers to Columbia, even though they had a lower admit rate. In short, while there is a correlation between various academic measures, I wouldn’t read much more into it than that.

20

@Data10, indeed, which is why I think granting much if any significance to admit rates is kind of silly.