Digging deeper into admissions statistics helpful?

Applying to College
1

I admit I love analyzing admissions statistics. For example, the UCs this year were particularly interesting because, upon further inspection past the general admit rate, we saw that a number of the UCs admitted a much higher percentage of OOC and Intl students. And of course we can look at admit rates of ED vs RD and SCEA/EA vs. RD and draw some conclusions (though I guess not as many as students would like, given the fact that people say that legacy and athletes are often a fair amount of the early admits).

At some schools such as UCLA, you can actually dig deeper into certain majors (or at least one department, Engineering) to find further statistical data:

http://www.seasoasa.ucla.edu/azadeh/ucee-reports/UCEE%20Report%202015_2_27.pdf

Do you think having this kind of data more readily available would be helpful to students? Why do colleges not do more of this type of stuff–you know, break down of admit rates by major…or do they? Can this type of information be found for other UC schools and majors?

I realize highly selective schools often say they don’t admit by major, but is that really true? And is there any type of data from other top 50 schools comparable to the above link?

Finally, how helpful really is it to know the finer details of admissions statistics in application strategy?

2

While it’s all very interesting, for the prospective applicant, I’m not sure how helpful it is. At some point for the applicant, it is what it is. Nothing is the UCLA data is going to change the applicant’s application.

I’m sure they do; they just don’t necessarily share it with us

3

Well, I confess that my middle son changed two of his majors during application season last year in the hopes of applying to majors that were better fits and with high acceptance.

Because he was struggling so much with pre-calc in fall of senior year, at UCSD, he switched from Mech Engr to ICAM (Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts), and at UCLA, he switched from Mech Engr to EE (higher admit rate, but honestly, totally not the right fit; only Media Arts was a good fit at UCLA and it was too late to apply because of the portfolio). He got into ICAM and was WL for EE at UCLA. I would guess he would have been outright rejected if he’d applied to Mech Engr since the admit rate is much lower. My son was a very weak applicant for Engr, so I feel that switching to those majors was helpful for him.

That’s why I’m wondering how helpful it would be to know this stuff, particularly for kids who aren’t married to any particular major and have some flex in that regard.

Yeah–I’d like it if colleges shared more data.

4

Only at UCLA and UCB where which engineering major makes a difference. Not so much for UCSD.

5

@DrGoogle, do you know why that is? UCSD’s got a lot of impacted CS and Engr majors, don’t they?

Thanks.

6

I don’t really know the real reason but I think UCSD does not admit by major. Students who didn’t get into their majors will be admitted undeclared or similar major.

7

UCSD does have impacted engineering, you can be accepted to the university but rejected by the Jacobs college of engineering, I toured last summer and this was the information I was given.

8

That is true that is why I posted they admitted to undeclared or some other majors. But they won’t reject you. There is no playing game with UCSD.

9

Definitely major-specific information is useful when considering applications to UCB and CalPoly SLO for students who are flexible about engineering vs. physical sciences or EECS vs CS at UCB. I would suppose there are similar issues any place that admits by major or by college within the university.

I don’t know where the major-specific info is for CalPoly SLO. I’ve heard that some kids have gotten info by calling specific departments.

10

Here is a link for enrollment projections for Cal Poly SLO 2015-2016. You can use this information to get an idea of the acceptance rate. http://content-calpoly-edu.s3.amazonaws.com/ir/1/images/2015-16%20Enrollment%20Projections_0.pdf
Take the FTF target value x3 and then divide by the FTF apps. This gives the expected admit rate for each major.
You can also get acceptance rates for the majors at SDSU: https://asir.sdsu.edu/Pages/applications-by-major.aspx#skipnavigation

11

@Gumbymom,

Uh, I am really bad at doing that formula thing, I confess. What’s the apx. admit rate for bio applicants at SLO? I’m looking for info on biological sciences and biomedical engineering. I’ll try the formula, but if you can get it quicker than me (duh!), I wish you would. :slight_smile:

Thanks!

12

Ok, so if I’m doing this correctly:

For biomedical engineering, FTF is 80, times 3, is 240, divided by 1920= 12.5% admit rate. Is that correct?

And biological sciences: FTS X 3 is 603, divided by 4191= 14.4% admit rate. Correct?

Are these two of the most selective majors?

Last year, someone here on CC said that Mech Engr. admit rate was around 10%, but according to this formula, admit rate was 16.2%. How accurate is this, then?

13

BME and CS (11.7%) are probably the most selective of the Engineering majors. Biology and Kinesiology are the most selective in the College of Science. To be honest, I do not know how accurate this is until they post their final enrollment results, but based on previous years information, it is pretty close. BME’s target was 75 and looks like 94 new admits while CS had a target of 140 and had 147 admits in 2014, so both a little higher than predicted. I do however know that in 2013, SLO was over enrolled and had 800 more students SIR than predicted, so their 2014 estimates may be off and they accepted less students for that year and this past year??? I really cannot not tell you how accurate these numbers are, but they do give you ball park of what to expect. There are many majors with a >50% acceptance rate at SLO.