I saw that UIUC is on of the top ranked engineering programs in the country, but the university has an overall acceptance rate of something like 62%. This seemed kind of high for one of the top engineering schools compared to the others on the list (Caltech, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley) I noticed this was the same for Wisconsin, Purdue, Texas A&M and some others that have really highly-ranked engineering programs, but acceptance rates in the 50-60s. Is there an explanation for this? Is is really just because the engineering programs themselves have lower acceptance rates than the entire school? (which I can’t find anywhere)
Acceptance rate means nothing. It has nothing (or nearly nothing) to do with the quality of a school or its programs. There are a number of factors. You already mentioned the fact that, in general, the engineering departments of those schools have a lower acceptance rate than the whole school, but even then, it is going to be higher than some of the others you mentioned.
The more important trend is that the ones you listed with high acceptance rates are all public schools. As public schools, they are basically required to admit a certain number of students each year, particularly residents of the states they serve. Most public schools, regardless of their actual quality of education, therefore have both a higher acceptance rate and a higher attrition rate. They admit more students with generally lower high school grades, and are therefore likely to have more people eventually fail out if they are a rigorous program. Purdue has a pretty well known reputation for this, for example.
The important thing is, though, that neither of these two factors alone says a whole lot about the quality of a program. Ultimately, the real judge of quality (in my opinion) is what sort of companies recruit a school and how successful its graduates are in pursuing graduate schools. That’s how you know how valued the graduates are by industry and by academia.
Texas A&M is an example of a state school bound by rules of the Texas legislature to serve the state population. They are required to admit the top 10% of graduates from Texas high schools and it’s first come, first serve into the engineering department (provided students have min. SAT/ACT scores). Approx. 55% of admits for the all majors are from the top 10% with the rest being reviewed. I would argue that Texas A&M has a quality engineering department, but it’s hard to compare statistics with other schools because of the state law.
This is one of the reasons why private universities are always at the top of the USNWR college rankings and it is, as others have noted, irrelevant. Private universities have no obligation to take a certain fraction of the students from in-state. Private universities are usually smaller than the big flagships and therefore can have lower acceptance rates if they get a lot of applications (a great tactic for moving up in the rankings).
@boneh3ad so for these public schools that have their ‘quotas’, the acceptance rate could be rather misleading if you were an out-of-state student, correct?
Sure. Generally speaking, at most state schools it is easier to get admitted as an in-state student.
Yes, the acceptance rates for the COE of some of the publics will be much lower thatn their other colleges. Even for instate students, it is not easy to get into UIUC for Engineering. Check out the college selectivity within UIUC.
http://admissions.illinois.edu/apply/requirements_freshman.html
As you can see, for the COE, the caliber of students is much better as compared to the other colleges. The same holds true for all the publics known for their Engg. school - UTAustin, UMich, UCB, GTech, etc.
UMich (2013) - http://www.engin.umich.edu/college/about/facts
UTAustin (2014) - http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/whyut/profile/scores
GTech (Freshman 2014) - http://admission.gatech.edu/life-tech/class-profile
The admission criteria/stats for OOS students to these top publics for their COE are equal or better than some privates with lower acceptance rates. I have provided the stats for Tufts and Emory as a comparision.
Tufts (Freshman 2014) - http://admissions.tufts.edu/apply/accepted-student-profile/
Emory (Freshman 2014) - http://apply.emory.edu/discover/fastfacts.php
At the well-regarded public University engineering programs with high acceptance rates, the engineering dropout rate is huge. If the acceptance rate were lower, the dropout rate would also be a lot lower, since a lot of the people who drop out wouldn’t have been accepted in the first place.
I’ve heard engineering jokingly referred to as “pre-business”. When I was an freshman engineering student at a public U, I remember a professor telling us “Look to your left and look to your right. Of the 3 of you, only one of you will graduate in EE here.” And I think he was about right.
However, there are always a percentage of students with lower stats, accepted only because of looser admission standards, who are able to successfully graduate. In my anecdotal experience, it is usually those who have gained some maturity and motivation and start to work harder than they did in high school.
High admission rate may also means less applicants. UIUC really sucks in financial aid. Also, you apply directly to a major. So most applicants are quite determined and they are well aware of the mid 50 for admission. Although there are difference in admission stat among different colleges within UIUC, the admission rate for College of Engineering there was still 62% in 2013 which is not far off from the overall admission rate.
http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/6085/screen/19?school_name=University+of+Illinois+at+Urbana-Champaign