<p>This is an interesting phenomenon. For example, I have never heard of anybody (at my academic level, at least) that has been rejected by SDSU (San Diego State) despite its 30% acceptance rate. Same thing with Cal Poly SLO...</p>
<p>Paine College in GA has SAT CR and M 25/75 ranges of 350-440, is described as âless selective,â yet claims an acceptance rate of under 37%. Iâve always thought that was odd, and wondered if perhaps their criteria for what constitutes an âapplicationâ was very broad.</p>
<p>hmmâŠwhat kind of person gets rejected from these colleges? what are the applicant pools like compared to more selective colleges (without taking admit rates into consideration)?</p>
<p>State schools like SDSU are committed to serving students in their area. Because of that, itâs MUCH easier for students in the San Diego area to get in than students in other areas. I live in Northern California, and a lot of kids from my school got rejected from SDSU.</p>
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<p>On this board, perhaps we forget that not everyone is or should be college-bound.</p>
<p>Also, on this board, we have a tendency to conflate selectivity with a schoolâs quality. Mount Holyoke College is one of the top colleges in the nation, and its acceptance rate is 53%! Why? Probably because its applicants are a relatively self-selecting crowd. Not only is their applicant pool cut in half despite it being not much smaller than most co-ed liberal arts colleges, there are also many women who wonât apply because they donât want to go to an âall-girls schoolâ. A lot of top womenâs colleges suffer from this â Bryn Mawr has a 49% acceptance rate; Smithâs is 48%, Scrippsâ is 43% and even Wellesley, which is in the top 5, has a 36% acceptance rate. By comparison, Amherstâs is 15% and Williamsâ is 17%, and Swarthmoreâs is 16%.</p>
<p>So why does it happen the other way around? There are probably a variety of factors. Letâs take SDSU for instance â itâs a fair-to-middling public university, with just about average stats as far as SAT scores and GPA goes. Itâs also relatively inexpensive for California state residents, and is well-known in the Western region. A lot of very top students, or even just above-average students, may apply to SDSU as a âsafety schoolâ in case they donât get into their top schools or canât afford, since itâs still a good school despite not being at the top. At the same time, a lot of average students are applying there as a match school. And a lot of below average students who would probably never apply to academically more rigorous UC-San Diego (whoâs admission rate is actually higher at 42%) will apply to SDSU because they believe they have better chances of getting in there. In addition, you may have a lot of working adults who are trying to return to college trying to go to SDSU because they canât afford UCSD â the in-state tuition at UCSD is more than twice that of SDSUâs.</p>
<p>San Diego State obviously canât accept all of these people (they will number more than their first year class, of course).</p>
<p>Often itâs because they use the number of students that actually enrolled instead of the number of students that were accepted (much higher). VTech did that in one of their publications, and it took me a while to figure out why they had something like a 14% âacceptanceâ rate. ;)</p>
<p>My cousin, a 1600/1600 scorer, ranked third in his class of 250, was rejected by St. Johnâs College, which has an acceptance rate of 85 percent.</p>
<p>I still wonder what he could have writtenâor failed to writeâto pull that off.</p>
<p>^ He was probably a really, really bad fit for St. Johnâs and showed that in his application. Maybe he said he wanted to major in something other than Liberal Arts, which is the only major offered, IIRC. Or maybe he said he hated being told what classes to take.</p>
<p>I tend to think that a low admissions rate doesnât necessarily equal more difficult to gain admission, but that the correlation is sounder the other way around. Self-selective schools are still dealing with a smaller applicant pool and have less wiggle room to reject based on âholisticâ factors. The womenâs colleges are self-selecting, yes, but also significantly easier admits for a top female student than their coed educational equivalents.</p>
<p>College of the Ozarks has like a 12% acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Central Stae U, a historically african-american college with an ACT range of 14-18, has an acceptance rate of roughly 35 percent. Although I still view this college as one of Ohioâs greatest assets, the ACT range is quite puzzling.</p>
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<p>Apparently, if you randomly answered every question on the ACT youâre expected to get a score of 12âŠ</p>
<p>Well, you get 200 points on the SAT for essentially writing your name down. How hard do you have to work to get a 350? And 25% of all students in the OPâs post actually scored LOWER than 350âŠ</p>
<p>well I know for sure cal poly SLO is not a bad school at all, one of the best CSU
You have to look at the applicant pool, so many apply to CSU because there are no essays and no recs required at all! Some of the easiest applications! Pretty much every B student at my school applied to CalPoly and SDSU, around half got in</p>
<p>They have low acceptance rates because so many less qualified people apply</p>
<p>Delaware State has an acceptance rate of 39% and their average SAT scores are 390-470 (CR) and 390-480 (M). I guess they donât have a high scoring applicant pool.</p>
<p>^ Yes. 99% of the students that I knowâI live in northern Delaware, as do the majority of Delawareansâwould rather attend CC or a branch campus of UD than DSU.</p>
<p>How about College of the Ozarks in Missouri. It is private and has an acceptance rate of 12% but a mid 50% ACT range of 21-26 and only 14% of its students graduate from the top 10% of their high school class.</p>
<p>Free tuition, only accepting EXTREMELY needy applicants justifies those stats for C of the Ozarks</p>
<p>Florida International University is considered to be one of the most selective in the state, 38% accepted. I donât understand why.
The ACT range is only 21-24.
40% had h.s. GPA of 3.75 and higher
Mid 50% of SAT Scores:
Reading: 500 - 580<br>
Math: 500 - 590</p>
<p>^erâŠmore prestigious maybe</p>