<p>PCP, as I wrote earlier, everything depends on one’s definition. When it comes to college admissions, the term selectivity has a very clear definition. However, people love to introduce a very personal definition that corresponds to their individual preferences. </p>
<p>The fact that Berkeley is the premier public university does not make it automatically HIGHLY selective, let alone “beyond” highly selective. When it comes to pure selectivity, just as Michigan, Berkeley suffers from the lower statistics of a student body that is mostly drawn for a regional base, and from the relative absence of highly competitive OOS students. Berkeley does, however, benefit from the UC system of applications that generates a large number of systemwide applications. </p>
<p>Like it or not, selectivity is measured by the qualifications of the enrolled student body, and is not something that can be massaged by corrupt survey respondents.</p>
<p>I don’t think people in the rankings business even agree there is a very clear definition on “selectivity”. USNWR clearly labeled Cal as “most selective”, whereas the lists you provided did not. You would hope the definition of selectivity used by each of these organizations is not just a mere personal preference of a single individual.</p>
<p>Back to the thread subject, the OP clearly indicated in post #3 that Berkeley is not what she had in mind as not “highly selective”. From the context and the example schools of the original post, even without post #3, it is not hard to conclude that schools like Cal and Stanford are not what we are looking for here, at least not on this thread.</p>
<p>US News has a method for measuring selectivity. It considers 3 statistics of enrolled students: their SAT scores (50%), the percent who were in their high school top 10% (40%), and admit rate (10%).</p>
<p>By this combined 50-40-10 measure, Berkeley is the 26th most selective of all universities and LACs (in between Chicago and Middlebury, both of which are on the above “Most Competitive Colleges” list.) If you use another reasonable measure, it may move up or down, but probably not too significantly compared to the difference in selectivity between in state and OOS. So I’d say Cal is a great candidate for the topic list if you’re in state (perhaps the #1 candidate), but far-fetched if you’re not.</p>
<p>For its primary applicant pool (Californians), UC Berkeley is very selective. However, when measured on a national scale in comparison to many top privates (like Emory or Notre Dame or Georgetown), its enrolled student body is not nearly as strong. </p>
<p>This disparity is likely further enhanced by the huge transfer population that the UCs annually take (eg, last year UCB enrolled over 2000 transfers on top of a freshmen class of over 4200). I think that it is very likely that the transfer population further dilutes the strength of the overall UCB student body, although we’ll never see the confirming statistics as the transfer students escape inclusion in the traditional measurements. </p>
<p>I should add that there are subsets of the UCB student body that would be competitive in many of the top privates, eg, its engineering students, and these are certainly highly selective. </p>
<p>Btw, I agree with those arguing that places like UCB are probably not what this thread was aiming for. Maybe some of the other UCs or other California schools that also do a good job would be better choices, eg, Scripps (avg SAT similar to UCB) or Chapman (not overly selective, but well known as a feeder to the film industry).</p>
<p>Hawkette, comparing those 4 schools illustrates why not to over-emphasize selectivity (as a proxy for the “strength” of the student body and indicator of overall institutional quality).
Berkeley gets significantly more PA “respect” than the others, for good reason.</p>
<p>Berkeley and Georgetown occupy nearly adjacent positions in the US News rankings. One is a world-class research university with superb facilities, broad and deep course offerings, one of the most distinguished faculties in in the world, and a long record of significant contributions to knowledge. The other is this country’s second-ranked Catholic college, with significant strength in one or two niche areas (IR, perhaps languages), fair-to-middling facilities, and a faculty that is good but not especially distinguished (notwithstanding some famous political celebrities in short-term non-tenured positions.) </p>
<p>Certainly GU is a better choice than Berkeley for some students and does have its own advantages for undergraduates (such as DC-area internships.) However, the student body at Berkeley probably is stronger if you look beyond narrow distinctions in scores and grades to the variety of talent and backgrounds represented on each campus.</p>
<p>For some good students in California, Berkeley is exactly what this thread should be aiming for. There are very few more selective universities that offer enough extra “respect” to be worth paying double to attend, even if you get admitted. And if a school like Scripps is no more selective, then unless for some reason you really need a women’s college or a LAC, why would you pay the hefty price premium over Cal?</p>
<p>Purdue – my son is a sophomore in poli sci at Purdue, 3.0 HS GPA, 1900 SAT. We live in CA and he couldn’t get into the top UCs (UCLA, Berkeley, UCSD, UCSB, UCI), but got in easily at Purdue and whenever he tells someone here in California that he goes to Purdue they are always very impressed.</p>
<p>Really? **All **ranking league tables? Do you mean every one of those “league tables?” Could you enlighten this board about what is a “league table,” and which refrence you use to make the determination on how to compose this most august body of research. Please tell how went to work to find the “league tables” worthy of inclusion and composed a comprehensive list. After all, you wrote ALL tables … </p>
<p>I look forward to learn about the nature of YOUR “tables” and, perhaps, how and where those “tables” defined a methodology to differentiate “highly selective” from the rest of listed schools. And, why don’t YOU tel us what the term selectivity should mean!</p>
<p>Will this be another prestige equals selectivity circular argument? Because if it is, you might want to read the OP question.</p>
<p>I agree with this idea. Insofar as SAT scores are highly correlated with family income, the disparity between the selectivity of 1st tier publics and 2nd tier privates is not so much due to a discrepancy of smarts and talents but that of socio-economic status.</p>
<p>How are Northwestern and the Claremonts not extremely selective?</p>
<p>Purdue! It has some really good programs but I know people with slightly lower grades get in. It’s a great choice.
NYU
UC’s (some of them. especially if you live in CA)
Case Western
Whitman-- not sure how much international acclaim this one has. but it offers lots of great merit-based scholarships!
SCU- gorgeous! and the education isn’t too shabby, either
Pittsburgh</p>
<p>And UMich is pretty selective, but not as much as many other top colleges.</p>
<p>Since RML has not responded, “League Table” is just a fancy name for a list of results. </p>
<p>The term is commonly used in the world of banking - by both Investment Bankers and Commercial Bankers involved in putting together syndicated credits (huge loans shared by a number of banks). Banks jockey for “league credit” when arranging or committing to credit transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Credit is assigned based upon the size of commitment as well as role assigned to the institution (such as Managing Agent, Lead Arranger etc.) These tables are published in financial publications and are often used when discussing who is bigger/better etc. and which bank is rising/falling in importance.</p>
<p>Actually, Marist is among the 50 most selective schools in the nation so I don’t know why it would make this list. Clearly the person who wrote Marist doesn’t realize how selective a school it is. On every site you go to for colleges, it will say “highly or very selective”.</p>
<p>^regardless of what web sites choose to rate it as, Marist has a 25/75 avg. SAT of 1160. For most of America that is pretty selective, but would be considered a safety for most kids on CC.</p>
<p>By this composite selectivity measure, the 50th most selective school is Oberlin. The mean stats for enrolled Oberlin students are near, or above, the 75th percentile numbers for admitted Marist students. For example, the mean ACT score for a recently enrolled Oberlin class was 30, compared to a middle 50% range of 25-29 for admitted Marist students (according to the schools’ sites). </p>
<p>I don’t believe that most kids on CC lie. Some do, I’m sure. But what you see on this forum is not a representative random sample of American high school kids. A forum like this is going to attract a relatively large number of motivated high achievers with SATs above 1920 (the 75th percentile mark for Marist admits), making it a good “match” if not a safety school for many of them.</p>