The Ivies (with the possible exception of Cornell) have not only had a higher ratio of applications to acceptances than Wesleyan, but, higher ratios than Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Bates, Colby,Hamilton, Haverford,Swarthmore and Tufts.
Williams College’s stats have been flat for as long as Wesleyan’s. Does this mean that Bates is now suddenly as prestigious as Williams?
Of course. My point was that unless you’re talking about aspirational peers there is no peer of Wesleyan, and no LAC with the exception of Pomona, that has a single digit acceptance rate.
No. Did I say that? I didn’t even say Bates is as prestigious as Wesleyan. What I did say is that many of Wesleyan’s peers have experienced growth in the number and quality of applicants, while Wesleyan’s applicant pool seen to have stayed static. I made no claims about Williams. For all I know it’s experiencing a bit of the same slip I see at Wesleyan, although for the record, Williams’s acceptance rate is much lower that that of either Bates of Wesleyan.
According to Wesleyan’s own internal planning documents,
http://2020.blogs.wesleyan.edu
I’m not a big fan of the USNWR rankings, but clearly they influence the public. As of the most current rankings Wesleyan is at 15, tied with Colby, a school it would have eaten for lunch in terms of both prestige and rankings only a decade or two ago.
You still haven’t answered my question. Colby’s admissions stats suggest that it admitted 16% of all applicants for the Class of 2019 compared to 17% for Williams. Does that mean, Colby is more prestigious than Williams?
Perhaps we should take this discussion to another thread to prevent mucking up this one.
Not sure where Kickstart got their information but their link is from January, long before acceptances were mailed out, and has only application numbers, not acceptance numbers. Straight form the horse’s mouth:
http://www.colby.edu/news/2015/06/18/class-of-2019-most-impressive-in-college-history/
Editing to add-I think I see where Kickstart got their number. They punted and assumed Colby accepted the same number of students as Bates, not realizing that Colby has traditionally had a lower yield.
While I'd say Xiggi is only right about the single digit thing if he's counting the Ivies (which have always been more selective than Wesleyan) as its competition, I think his basic point stands<<<
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Not only do the point stands, but there ARE LACs that announced single digit admission rates! Including Pomona and CMC with identical rates.
As far as JW/Circuitrider’s comment about peers, the list might vary according to one standard. What’s the list of LACs with admission rates at around 18 to 25 percent?
The numbers are what they are. Some schools have become more popular and others have stagnated in recent years. Again, no biggie.
^ Point taken, and I bow to your Xigginess. 
I missed CMC as well.
^^ schools that would be in the sub 18 percent admission rate group.
Claremont McKenna 698 7,152 9.76%
Pomona 790 8,091 9.76%
Swarthmore 950 7,817 12.15%
Harvey Mudd 523 4,119 12.70%
Pitzer 536 4,149 12.92%
Amherst 1,176 8,566 13.73%
Bowdoin 1,009 6,790 14.86%
Williams 1,159 6,883 16.84%
Middlebury 1,512 8,894 17.00%
I would like to add a point regarding Wesleyan. As one of the largest LAC, it has a harder time increasing its pool of applicants on a continuing basis. Once a school reaches 10,000 applications, it reaches a point of diminishing returns in the LAC world. Inasmuch as I’d love to tease Circuitrider about the changes in dynamics between Wesleyan and the Claremont schools, one has to recognize that it is easier to grown from 3,000 to 7,000 than from 10,000 to 15,000. It is also hard to believe that the rates in California will sustain the torrid increases of the past decade.
On the other hand, I am happy to remind my dear friend John Wesley how he badly read the tea leaves during the “scandal” days at CMC. His doomsday predictions were way off the mark and must still cause him a bit of chagrin for being wishful thinking.
Times have changed and will continue to do so. Consortiums do fare a bit better than large broad-based liberal arts colleges.
That’s a roundabout way of saying that at ~10,000 applications a year, Wesleyan is the most popular LAC in the country…
^Only if you consider UC Irvine, with its 41% acceptance rate the 4th most popular university in the US.
I’d quit while you’re ahead!
^I have no idea what you just said.
^ UC Irvine receives the 4th most applications of all US universities. UCLA is first, UC Berkeley is second, followed by UC Irvine, Cal State Long Beach, UCSB, St. John’s, UCSD and UC Davis. My point was that quantity does not always equal quality and judging the popularity of a school by number of applications with no regard to yield is a hollow exercise.
Wesleyan’s a great school, a top school. Let’s just leave it at that.
If that makes your bruised ego and self-esteem better, I am all for it! I was being nice and do not mind continuing on a national holiday.
I have no more problem with saying that UCLA, a flagship university of the most populous state in the union, is the most popular research university in the country than I do with saying that Wesleyan is the most popular LAC. Both schools reject close to 80% of their applicants.
Does anyone have stats on Cal State schools, particularly Cal Poly SLO? I’d be very curious to see what their admit rates are for residents vs OOS/Intl. I’ve seen some posts that seem to indicate OOS residences getting in with same scores that IS residents got wait listed or rejected with.
@circuitrider But, UCLA is not a flagship.
^actually please ignore that comment
The term “flagship”, I have just found, is debatable.
Yield of 50% for Barnard, from http://barnard.edu/news/welcome-class-2019: