<p>Yale is attracting better students because it provides a better undergraduate program. Yale students won 3 Rhodes and 4 Marshall scholarships this year - more than all seven other Ivy League schools, combined. No other Ivy League school won more than 1 Rhodes or more than 2 Marshalls.</p>
<p>Yale has a better social life, mostly because its campus is much more cohesive and you can walk everywhere in a couple of minutes. Harvard's campus is very spread out. Also, New Haven is now easily one of the best college towns in the country. New Haven has gentrified to the point where housing prices have been doubling every year, and hundreds of new restaurants, bars, 24-hour eateries, clubs, theaters and shops have opened in the immediate vicinity of Yale. Cambridge is boring and shuts down early by comparison.</p>
<p>It's not a flame. It's observing a large shift that has taken place - Harvard had the lowest Ivy acceptance rate for decades (at the undergraduate level, not across grad schools), but in two of the past three years, it has been surpassed by Yale.</p>
<p>Is it true that Harvard's admissions director is going to be fired over this?</p>
<p>Selectivity is more than just the % accepted... Yale's acceptance rate is only 0.7% less than Harvard's... But Harvard generally has the HIGHEST SAT average out of non-tech schools (second only to Caltech when you include tech schools). I think it's a wash in the end... and it is probably equally difficult to get into Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and Columbia. </p>
<p>As for Cambridge shutting down early and being boring? Ummm, right.
Now that's funny. It just makes you sound like a bitter troll. Stick to facts and your arguments will be taken more seriously.</p>
<p>It's true that selectivity is more than just the % accepted, but if you look at the academic achievements of Yale students (which I hinted at above), they are really without peer. Also, the SAT medians are the same at both schools. Also, Cambridge shutting down early is a common complaint of Harvard students.</p>
<p>posterX,
No, Harvard's SAT scores are SLIGHTLY higher... I don't think it matters, but if you're going to make a big deal over a small 0.7% difference in acceptance rates, then it's fair to point out the small difference in SAT scores.
The achievement of Yale students is WITHOUT PEER? Ahhh no.
Check out where most INTEL/Siemens winners go, etc...
I would say Harvard and Yale students (as well as Stanford, Princeton, MIT, etc) are all equally as accomplished... but Yale has students "without peer"??? Riiiiiiiiiiiigggghhhhttt.... Grow up.</p>
<p>You should remember that Yale's acceptance rate will increase once they take people off of the waitlist. Harvard's matriculation rate is higher than Yale's. Really, it's too early to make these claims.</p>
<p>While PosterX does seem like a troll, I must say Saxfreq, that Yale hasn't had to go to the waitlist in the past two years, and probably won't this year either. Harvard, however, generally does.</p>
<p>That's also due to the fact that Harvard has a 350-student larger class size. </p>
<p>Yale (and Penn) seem to be trending upward, as Princeton and Dartmouth trend downward. Whether Yale's selectivity can be maintained is a question that no-one can yet answer. But two of out three years doesn't make for imperial dominance. Harvard still attracts more apps.</p>
<p>any evidence? harvard had a slight dip last year in those elite scholarships... sorry, one year does not make a downward trend... and just when you started to sound reasonable...</p>
<p>I am merely arguing that while Harvard has dominated the elite scholarships, other schools have made a stronger effort to sell their applicants, and this is perhaps reflected in the numbers. </p>
<p>It's hard to draw trends from one year, I admit. I was only speculating.</p>
<p>Consider this: if "percentage accepted" is your measure of "selectivity," then undeniably less selective admissions practices can result in greater apparent "selectivity."</p>
<p>Say that a university - perhaps Yale - decides to emphasize cloudy, subjective "personal" factors to a much greater extent, making the process (from an outside perspective) more random. If prospective applicants view the process as more arbitrary or luck-driven, more will apply (after all, you might as well buy yourself a lottery ticket!). This increase in applicant numbers means that more students will be rejected, and that admission rates will tumble.</p>
<p>How exactly is this supposed to reflect selectivity?</p>