It counts for 12.5% of the total (4th in weight out of 7 major ranking factors).
“Graduation and retention rates” count more (22.5%), but selectivity seems to telegraph into these rates.
“Undergraduate academic reputation” also counts for more (22.5%), but again, selectivity may be influencing the guidance counselor ratings.
If you ranked colleges solely by average test scores (the biggest part of “selectivity” and 8.125% of the USNWR ranking), you’d wind up with a set of top N colleges that looks very similar to the USNWR top N (often in close to the same order).
Is that a good way to rank colleges? The USNWR ranking isn’t too far from a claim that America’s N best colleges are, approximately, the ones where its N x ~1000 best (or highest scoring) students go. But just ranking by test scores alone wouldn’t sell. So they toss up a lot of other voodoo to arrive at a pretty similar result. Which may or may not be telling us what the “best” colleges really are.
^ Selectivity counts for 12.5% of the total. Acceptance Rate counts for 10% of Selectivity (or only 1.25% of the total.) So yes, maybe @marvin100 meant the AR (not Selectivity) has almost no impact.
M D18 already opted out of the bazillion dollar admission racket at Stanford and the Ivy colleges in spite of being ranked 2 in her class. When she got the letter from Harvard that began with ‘Have you considered attending Harvard University?’ she quipped, ‘yes, and I have considered becoming queen of England too. It is going to happen for someone, but the odds are not good.’
We spent her $90 in Stanford money in the bookstore too. Got some cool stuff.
And US News- using yield rates as a ranking factor is just plain wrong. A ‘news’ publication’s purpose is to report rather than influence. Yield rate as a factor drives yield rate protection. Yield rate protection influences colleges to reject students they would like to have because they might be too qualified (and not come) - drives Lack of confidence- which in turn causes nervous students to apply to more colleges to escape a shutout. All of this leads to more applications and - yes- lower admit rates.
Tk21769 that’s not true. Our D is in top 3% with stats, class rank, APs, ECs, etc, - has no hook. Did not apply to Ivies. Deferred then rejected UVA; WL at UR and WMary. They were supposed to be match schools for her but was not accepted to any. She’s going to UConn, a safety. She only applied to 5 colleges and is shocked only accepted to 2, both local state flagships. It trickles down as many qualified kids are not getting into the state flagships even. My D feels like she pushed herself all these years for nothing…
@britlass: These days, a kid in the top 1% can be guaranteed only schools like UW-Madison, which is on par with W&M and Richmond academically (IMO) but is massive so has lots of slots to fill. Both UVa and W&M are relatively small publics and if you are OOS, it’s much harder to get in to them (they can afford to be picky) so you have to be almost Ivy/equivalent level to get in to them if you are OOS.
She has peers with similar stats who did get in to some of those colleges - sad for those kids flogging themselves to have it all be a crap-shoot. Our S (who lacks motivation) sees his sister flounder and it cements his attitude of “why bother trying so hard???”. UR is private so we figured better chances there than UVA and WM but apparently not. Moving on, right?? She is considering premed and UConn will serve that purpose just as well as anywhere else if she works hard.
@britlass: Yes, regarding pre-med, where cheapest and non-grade-deflating (like W&M is) is best and as for the son, he has to find internal motivation himself sometime anyway.
It doesn’t have to be in academics, but he’ll soon discover that girls aren’t much interested in guys who don’t try hard.