<p>U of Rochester, Rensler Polytechnic and Pitzer are all schools where I have known students to be happy even though they started the process hoping for more selective schools. And Pitzer (like the less-selective members of the Five Colleges Consortium) offers a late bloomer the chance to take classes at much more selective colleges.</p>
<p>The self-selecting part has helped my kids a lot, even with less-than-perfect grades (but lots of academic challenge). This is where essays can help tip a kid with an uneven profile.</p>
<p>Just met a kid over the break who came from a very difficult high school and was in the middle of the class. He is at U of British Columbia and has been happy with everything but the cost.</p>
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<p>Which is very sad. One of my good friends is going to Bucknell, and declined UMich and Princeton to do so. It was her dream school and she would have been crushed if she had been rejected because she was âoverly qualifiedâ :(.</p>
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<p>Thatâs because (non-SUNY) Cornell and Stanfordâs admissions policies are holistic, unlike UCLA and UC Berkeleyâs which are formulaicâŠ</p>
<p>The UCâs do not differentiate between applicants graduating from the top 10% of, for example, a mediocre Californian public school vs. an elite NE prep schoolâŠ</p>
<p>Very few schools meet a strict interpretation of both criteria. Weâre really only talking about a few state flagships. Berkeley is too selective, even for in-state students. Some posters seem to think Michigan is, too. That would leave 3 by my count. But unfortunately, UNC is too southern to be âhighly respectedâ and Wisconsin is too ⊠Midwestern 
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<p>That leaves exactly one school in the country that meets both criteria: The University of Virginia.</p>
<p>prodigalson this confused me </p>
<p>âThe UCâs do not differentiate between applicants graduating from the top 10% of, for example, a mediocre Californian public school vs. an elite NE prep schoolâŠâ</p>
<p>because it isnât true at all. In state residents are at a clear advantage over the applicant from a NE prep school.</p>
<p>additionally both UCB and UCLA are moving a bit more to holistic admissions and though stats are still paramount. They both consider the essay, first generation status and the strength of the academic program including senior year classes. </p>
<p>UCB is even more holistic these days and more likely than UCLA to look at the whole applicant. </p>
<p>What you said about them being formulaic was accurate years ago but is less so today.</p>
<p>The University of Utah</p>
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<p>Theyâre no more similar than University of Miami and Miami University.</p>
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<p>Yes, I understand this. I am not saying that instate residents do not have priority over OOS applicants. Obviously, they do. </p>
<p>Let me clarify: replace âNEâ with âCalifornianâ and the point still holds.</p>
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<p>It seems conceivable that the essay is basically an indirect means for the UCâs to tease out URM status. Not to mention, the UCâs do not require recommendations.</p>
<p>Of course, the holistic/formulaic dichotomy consists of two ideal types. No university is either/or. My point is that the admissions policies of privates vs. publics are very differentâŠ</p>
<p>For my major of choice (engineering) its almost ridiculously good how many strong engineering schools, with wonderful reputations there are that are not maddeningly selective. For the Ivy caliber engineering applicant (700+ math I, 750+ math IIc, top 5% class ranking, with strong ECs) these schools are almost a virtual shoo-in for admission.</p>
<p>They include in no particular order:</p>
<p>Georgia Tech
UIUC
UWisconsin
Purdue
University of Texas
University of Maryland
Texas A&M
Penn State
University of Minnesota
Va Tech
Rose-Hulman
UCSD</p>
<p>For really strong candidates for admission at top schools (with perfect/near perfect math and science scores and top 1-2% class ranking) you should add Michigan, CMU, Cal&UCLA (in-state) to the list. Save Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Princeton and Cornell, most of the perennial powerhouses in engineering donât take ending world hunger and curing cancer to get into.</p>
<p>Purdue University.</p>
<p>lafalum: thank you for posting what I didnâtâŠ</p>
<p>to tk21769</p>
<p>"Very few schools meet a strict interpretation of both criteria. Weâre really only talking about a few state flagships. Berkeley is too selective, even for in-state students. Some posters seem to think Michigan is, too. That would leave 3 by my count. But unfortunately, UNC is too southern to be âhighly respectedâ and Wisconsin is too ⊠Midwestern </p>
<p>That leaves exactly one school in the country that meets both criteria: The University of Virginia."</p>
<p>I seriously hope that was a joke.</p>
<p>Itâs surprising how hostile this thread is in places. Wow. </p>
<p>Iâd suggest two colleges from my area: Hope College and Calvin College. Both have high acceptance rates, with Calvin accepting over 90% of its applicants, yet both deliver excellent academics. Many graduates have assumed well-respected and prominent positions in communities across the world.</p>
<p>Many of the colleges mentioned on this thread are good schools and maybe well-known to grad schools but are generally unfamiliar to employers and laypeople so they donât belong on this thread. LACâs, especially, are not well known at all internationally, save for the top 5 or so but even those LACs are obscure outside the US. </p>
<p>I think any big university that does research and publish a lot is well known internationally and can have a lower selectivity.</p>
<p>Examples: NYU and Case Western</p>
<p>Also big public universities like U of Michigan.</p>
<p>My foreign relatives know top schools like HYPS, MIT, and UC Berkley but they also think NYU is an ivy-league school (haha). They also are react positively to any âUniversity of (input state name)â and schools that are mentioned in the news recently like Virginia Tech (regardless of good or bad news), but alternatively they react negatively to Northwestern, Dartmouth, and Emory because they never heard of those schools. Schoolâs reputation like brand name recognition.</p>
<p>Have to make a pitch for Michigan StateâŠalthough it has a 70% acceptance rate, it is no school to be ashamed of. Residential colleges (public/international affairs, science, and arts/humanities), journalism, agriculture, nuclear physics, and pre-vet are among the top programs at MSU. MSU is a school that brings in loads of international students with excellent recognition in research worldwide (being one of the U.S. premier research institutions, and having tons of student opportunities to be a part of it). Plus the athletics are top-notch (an added bonus)</p>
<p>None of these schools is exactly my cup of tea, but Iâd propose VMI, the Citadel, and possibly U of the South (Sewanee) and Colorado School of Mines (known, at least, in its field).</p>
<p>University of Missouri.</p>
<p>@brewerfan99 #156{</p>
<p>Yes, I was joking in post #146. Or I should say, half-joking. Letâs call that argument a reductio ad incommodum.</p>
<p>Many of the lists here seem rather arbitrary to me. The difficulty is the contradiction inherent in the topic question. How do we know that a school is âhighly respectedâ? One of the best available metrics is selectivity, perhaps combined with yield. For which schools do the greatest numbers of the best students âvote with their feetâ by choosing to apply and, if selected, attend? If we deliberately look for schools that are not highly selective, how do we know that they are highly respected?</p>
<p>Public universities have a mission that tends to suppress how selective they can become. Yet, they have access to public funds. Several states have built well-funded universities that are able to attract top faculty and students. These few schools have acquired international reputations. Their reputations are reflected in several major rankings. We can validate their prestige by looking at objective indicators of research output (such as publication volume or research spending amounts). The prestige (or alleged prestige) of a small liberal arts college is harder to validate objectively in this way. We can look at other output indicators such as Bachelor-to-PhD production, graduate school placement, or median alumni salaries, but the available data seem to be problematic in one way or another. Moreover, these outputs donât seem to translate to widespread familiarity with these small schools.</p>
<p>This is why I say, half jokingly, that strictly speaking only a small number of schools satisfy the criteria. Even then, all sorts of biases are likely to affect our understanding of the âhighly respectedâ part. The best way to avoid this is probably to define what weâre looking for using some metrics-based ceiling and floor (such as a range of USNWR selectivity numbers).</p>
<p>But yes, now Iâm really âparsingâ the requirements.</p>