I wondered whether schools with larger engineering programs might tend to have grad rates slightly lower than expected because internships and co-ops delay graduations. I compared the 6-yr with the 8-yr grad rates and found that the more selective engineering schools graduate students pretty much within the standard 6-yr limit. Examples follow with the difference between 6-yr and 8-yr percent.
1 California Institute of Technology
1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
0 Vanderbilt University
2 Carnegie Mellon University
1 Northwestern University
1 Rice University
1 Washington University in St Louis
1 Princeton University
0 Stanford University
1 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
0 University of Pennsylvania
0 Columbia University in the City of New York
1 Duke University
0 Johns Hopkins University
1 Tufts University
1 Case Western Reserve University
1 Cornell University
2 Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
0 Northeastern University
0 Harvey Mudd
0 University of Notre Dame
1 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
1 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
2 Colorado School of Mines
0 Stevens Institute of Technology
1 University of Southern California
1 Lehigh University
2 University of California-Berkeley
2 University of California-San Diego
On the other hand, there is a big difference among less selective engineering schools. Examples:
14 University of Utah
10 California State Polytechnic University-Pomona
10 California State University-Long Beach
10 San Jose State University
10 California State University-Los Angeles
9 The University of Texas at El Paso
8 Brigham Young University-Provo
8 Kettering University
8 Wichita State University
8 Utah State University
8 California State University-Sacramento
8 California State University-Fresno
7 Oakland University
7 California State University-Fullerton
7 Boise State University
7 Youngstown State University
Here are the definitions of reach, match, safety by Princeton Review. I think their definitions are good although they don’t include grad rate. They call “reach” schools “dream” schools. I think grad rate captures something about the connotation of a “dream” school insofar as it factors in the concept of “value added” by the college itself to the quality of the “raw material” they are working with (measured partly by SAT). What do you think?
I also like their point that prospective students should not be thrown off by sticker price.
A dream school is one where your academic credentials fall in the lower end, or even below, the school’s average range for the cohort of students accepted the previous year. Dream schools are long-shots, but they should still be possible. Don’t let the sticker price of a financial reach school scare you off! Financial need, academic strength, and a college’s desire to have you on campus can all influence your financial aid award and make the cost of attendance more manageable.
Match
A match school is one where your academic credentials (grades, SAT or ACT scores, and class rank) fall well within the school’s average range for the most recently accepted class. There are no guarantees, but it’s not unreasonable to expect to be accepted to several of your match schools.
Safety
A safety school is one where your academic credentials exceed the school’s range for the average freshman. You should be reasonably certain that you will be admitted to your safety schools. Like your dream and target schools, these should also be colleges you’d be happy to attend. In addition to admissions criteria, it’s a good idea to think about financial aid when creating your list of safety schools - make sure there is at least one school that you know your family can afford on that list.
Send college applications to a few schools from each category (for example, three dream schools, three match schools, and two safety schools). Applying to a range of schools will ensure that you set ambitious goals and give yourself some back-up options where you know you can be happy and successful.
Wait that’s a fairly ridiculous definition of safety. Most of HYPSM have a 35 ACT as their 75th percentile score. By this definition, a kid with a 36 ACT would call those schools safeties, which they aren’t ever.
@Ynotgo, agree as I have twin DD’s that have 35’ACT’s, multiple 750-800 SAT 2 Subject Tests, but as they only achieved 3.8 UW / 4.2 W GPA with the most rigorous courses (6-8 AP’s each) or maybe their focus on sports was limiting they have been waitlisted or denied from every USNWR top-6 LAC. Not a loss as they were accepted by every #7-25 LAC they applied to and they have amazing choices to pick from, but the standard Safety, Target, Reach definitions aren’t applicable in these instances.
There is an additional factor for a school to be a safety, and that’s selectivity. If a school accepts less than 50% of it’s applicants, the fact that you’re in the top 25% of applicants matters less. It matters less and less as the acceptance rate goes down. So for top 20 schools in the teens and single-digit acceptance rates … none of them are safeties regardless of your scores and GPA.
That is why it is often said that HYPS is not a safety for anyone.
I think test scores provide a more valid index of selectivity than acceptance rates.
I agree that the most selective schools are never “test score” safeties because the distribution of applicant test scores is not normal. The distribution is skewed very heavily toward the test ceiling and they rely on other factors as tie-breakers.
Grad rate has very little bearing, if any, on a college’s selectivity.
Whether a school is a reach, match or safety is based on the following quantifiable info (IMO):
Its overall admit percentage (it can be broken down further into RD, ED, EA admission rates)
Average test scores of admits, or test score ranges, and how an applicant’s scores compare – prior year CDS
Average GPA of admits, and how an applicant’s GPA compares – prior year CDS
% of admits who are in the top 10% of their class, and whether the applicant is/was (it’s a bigger deal at some schools than at others)
If ECs and recs are great, or if you have a hook, that can move your chances up – but how much is very hard to quantify. You’re dealing with human factors, like the adcom’s mood when he or she reads your app. Since we don’t know exactly what each school is looking for, it’s really impossible to chance kids with any certainty at the most competitive schools. It isn’t even reliable at some less selective schools either – we see surprises now and then.
So chancing should only be seen as a ballpark estimated guess based on stats, since we don’t know how much weight each school puts on those stats. 1300s get into Yale while 1600s are rejected.
I agree that grad rate is not the same as selectivity but it is just as predictive of average SAT scores as admit rate. I think of SATs/ACTs as the most valid index of selectivity. Admit rate depends on how many students apply relative to school size which is, in turn, related to marketing and niche appeal of the school. Admit rate is not the same as selectivity either in my way of thinking. Admissions yield is even less valid.
Some schools have about twice the admit rate you’d expect based on their average SAT scores:
Vanderbilt
Harvey Mudd
Northwestern
Rice
WUSL
Amherst
Carnegie Mellon
Notre Dame
Haverford
Northeastern
RPI
U Illinois C-U
Also, keep in mind that I did not claim grad rate was selectivity. My point was that it was useful in determining reach, match, safety (which was debated).
However, it is often a result of the college’s selectivity.
Many colleges emphasize SAT/ACT scores less than other admission factors, including high school courses/grades/rank as well as subjectively graded components like essays, extracurriculars, etc…
SAT/ACT scores seem to be overemphasized on these forums because they are the only convenient common measure, despite often being less important than other factors at many colleges.
I am not sure how various colleges weight admissions factors but no matter what a college admissions office emphasizes, SATs/ACTs are still the most valid index of selectivity and are highly predictive of students’ success in college. I don’t say this because it is convenient but instead because SATs/ACTs are standardized, test a wide variety of knowledge and abilities, and are designed to specifically target preparation for college. An SAT score from rural Montana means the same thing as an SAT score from urban Los Angeles. They permit an apples-to-apples comparison whereas different high schools may have different grading standards and very different student populations. Admissions offices also have to take account of how challenging the courses were that the student took which can be somewhat subjective. Standardized test scores are a much fairer basis for college admission than grades and rank. I am certainly NOT saying that they are the ONLY thing that matters.
Although I am not involved in college admissions professionally, I like to try to help prospective students select an appropriate set of schools for consideration because many students sell themselves short. I think two common mistakes are to (1) rule out private schools prematurely because of sticker price and (2) fail to properly match themselves with challenging schools that will provide the greatest return on investment. Students don’t always go to the best school they can get into.
What “wide variety of knowledge and abilities”? The knowledge and abilities that do well on the SAT are only a small subset of those which are used in college.
For (1), students and parents should use the net price calculators before applying. Private schools vary greatly in how good or bad their financial aid is. For (2), the “best” school needs to be one that does not leave the student with a heavy debt burden at graduation – a poor return on investment.
That was an interesting finding about HS GPA and SAT predicting first year college GPA. The difference between their ability to predict first year college GPA was only .01. I would call that even. But first year college GPA is not the only indicator of college success. SAT midpoint is correlated about +.80 with both first year retention rate and with graduation rate. That is pretty high. I wish I knew what these figures were for HS GPA but I don’t.
What constitutes a heavy debt burden? I think you have to weigh the potential benefits, both tangible and intangible, against the dollar amount of debt. This is a cost-benefits analysis.
Heavy debt burden is needing parental loans or cosigned student loans, or more debt than a year of post-graduation pay (which is more strongly dependent on major than college once outside of the consulting and investment banking target colleges).
I’m afraid I don‘t know if the ranked scores stand for the basic score for having a chance to apply, or the score which can promising for one to get in even without really outstanding features？
Admit rate is important in defining reaches, matches and safeties because it can be used to (again, roughly…) estimate your chances at a school, if you also know how your stats stack up.
WUSTL and Vandy admits show stats that are quite similar.
But in the RD round, Vanderbilt admits a lower percentage. Therefore, all else being equal, Vandy is projected to be slightly more of a reach for an applicant than WUSTL.
If Vandy’s admit rate magically jumped to 35%, and the stats remained the same, we would be calling Vanderbilt a high match for top students – even if the score and GPA stats remained constant.
Or look at Stanford and MIT. MIT admits’ test scores are higher on average, but you wouldn’t say that MIT is more selective than Stanford, would you, when Stanford’s admit rate is around 5% while MIT’s is around 7.5%? And if you are a kid with a 1550 SAT and a 3.9, would you say MIT is a higher reach because its average test scores are higher? I wouldn’t.
So while test scores and GPA are an important part of judging selectivity, when it comes to calling a school a reach, match or safety for any particular student, admit rate is an important factor. (even if it is manipulated by schools using marketing and different admissions schemes…)
Tony, if your Math and CR SATs are above the 75th percentiles, then the school would be a safety in most cases. If your scores are between the 25th and 75th, then it would be a match. If your scores are below the 25th percentile (but not too far below), then the college would be a reach. That’s how I would look at the list in post #1.
For what it is worth, I downloaded data from the collegesimply web site for SAT, HS GPA, and acceptance rate for 318 schools. The correlation between HS GPA and acceptance rate was only -.21. The correlation between HS GPA and SAT midpoint was +.75. The correlation between SAT midpoint and acceptance rate was -,22. Acceptance rate may be interesting but I doubt that acceptance rate is useful for defining reaches, matches, safeties.
Another thing about acceptance rates is that they are not very predictive of graduation and retention rates. The correlation between acceptance rates and both graduation rate and freshman retention rate is only -.26. So acceptance rates bear very little relationship to selectivity and student success.