@CU123 “Is there some advantage to have a lower admit rate?”
I guess the advantage would be the place the university falls in each year’s “College Admissions Statistics Class of 202X” on CC : )
I think someone above mentioned that a lot of rankings is from the perception of high school guidance counselor or “reputation” and I assume that a college that has very low admit rates might seem more selective and its reputation grows. But I have no expertise.
OK that’s valid, there certainly those who want to attend a highly selective college and base there application decisions on selectivity no matter how erroneous that decision might be.
CU123, I like your bottom line, but it’s often not achievable for those who want to attend a school that has an acceptance rate less than 10%. And I bet you anything Stanford will come under suspicion in the future for not releasing their data, because it’s a move away from transparency, and people who like dealing with facts and numbers might have suspicions about any institution who does not release its admissions data. Stanford likely only decided not to release acceptance rates this year because US News this past year eliminated acceptance rates from its rankings criteria…rankings, which, according to US News, are all about data, right? If Stanford is sincere about getting away from this rankings game, then they should do what Reed College did more than a decade ago when they refused to provide US News with any of their data, and look what happened to them. The US News College ranking machine turned around and punished them. Reed, which is truly one of the great liberal arts colleges in this country, had always been ranked in the top ten, and suddenly US News didn’t even rank them in the top 50. And what happened to Reed? In the years following Reed’s lower ranking, the number of their applications went down. And so I suspect Stanford will continue to play the ranking game by providing all the data US News requires to complete its rankings. And speaking of those rankings, T20hopeful2023 is very sharp to remind us that of the criteria US News uses in determining its rankings, 20% comes from peer perceptions and guidance counselors (I guess that’s a form of subjective data), and as T20hopeful2023 points out, peer perceptions of university presidents, as well as guidance counselors, are often formed by how selective they believe schools are, because they often rank schools by the quality of their faculty and their students, and so, yes, they will always likely pay attention to acceptance rates.
As for the gaming…do the math! A school that doesn’t have ED has to accept more students because they have to fill the class and the ED kids are a “sure thing”, and EA kids are NOT. There is less hedging with ED…and now there is ED I and ED II at many schools. And EA!! Sheesh.
As a few people have pointed out, the mid 50% scores might be more useful in determining the caliber of a school, although scores can be skewed as well. (For example, if a school is test optional, do they put the scores of the applicants in their numbers if the students were accepted without scores? I think they are supposed to, but not sure.)
@Maximilius: " Stanford likely only decided not to release acceptance rates this year because US News this past year eliminated acceptance rates from its rankings criteria…"
I’m pretty sure the published release dates of those respective decisions, Stanford not releasing accepted student rates and US News eliminating acceptance rates from its rankings criteria, may show that Stanford made that move before US News did.
Whether there were signs, or there was actual information given to Stanford before the US News announcement, I do not know. But I think Tessier-Levigne (Stanford Prez) sent out notice of the university’s stance before I (maybe I got there late?) the publication’s new position.
@collegemomjan Again gaming exactly what, USNWR dropped admit rates this year. So no “gaming” rankings.
“To put more emphasis on outcomes, U.S. News dropped acceptance rate from the methodology in the 2019 edition and removed yield rate starting with the 2004 edition”
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How would you get scores from an admit that never provided them, ask them for scores after the fact, no I don’t think so. They would neither count for or against.
Waiting2exhale, maybe so, but certainly you would acknowledge that the players in that world are all pretty well connected and likely know what’s going on before official policies are announced. I mean come on, politicians and government workers in Washington are not the only people in the world who leak information.
^^^ I believe I alluded to the possibility of such.
Brown Class of 2023 summary
“As for the gaming…do the math! A school that doesn’t have ED has to accept more students because they have to fill the class and the ED kids are a “sure thing”,”
Another perspective is that a school that can attract well qualified ED applicants, but does not have the yield of a tippy-top, can strategically use ED to get a good start on shaping the class it wants, as well as improve efficiency in its admin office. I think there are benefits for schools that go beyond “gaming”.
“A record-low 4.50 percent of applicants to Harvard College received admissions offers to the Class of 2023, with 1,950 of 43,330 candidates securing places in the class“
“The University of Pennsylvania has logged its most selective admissions year in history, accepting only 7.4 percent of applicants, the school announced late Thursday afternoon“
“Cornell University’s acceptance rate increased for the first time in four years, as 5,183 students worldwide — 10.6 percent of all applicants — were alerted to their admission by Thursday at 7 p.m. Nearly 55 percent of this year’s admitted students are “students of color” — underrepresented minorities or Asian Americans — a new record for Cornell“
(Rolling Asian students into “students of color” is worth it’s own topic.)
Princeton
“ Overall, the University accepted 1,895 students out of an applicant pool of 32,804, representing a 5.77 percent acceptance rate.”
(56% “people of color ”)
“Dartmouth offered acceptance to 7.9 percent of applicants for the Class of 2023 — a historic low and 0.8 percent decrease from last year — marking the third consecutive year that the College’s acceptance rate has decreased. ”
(51% “people of color” without defining it)
“Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have accepted a new record low of 5.1 percent of applicants for the class of 2023, the University announced today”
“Yale College admitted 2,178 students to the class of 2023 from a record pool of 36,843, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions announced on Thursday.
The number of admitted students represents 5.91 percent of applicants for both early action and regular decision”
Ivy summary:
Brown - 6.6%
Columbia - 5.1%
Cornell - 10.6%
Dartmouth - 7.9%
Harvard - 4.5%
Penn - 7.4%
Princeton - 5.8%
Yale - 5.9%
@T20hopeful2023
“Duke needs more math majors. 37,761 (RD) + 4,852 (ED) = 41,500. Not 41,600“
37,761 + 4,852 = 42,613
(The math on their percentage isn’t right either. 2,101/37,761 = 5.56%)
Bowdoin - 8.9% (https://bowdoinorient.com/2019/03/29/admissions-class-of-2023/)