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And if any institution were to truly base its self-esteem on the % of its incoming class that turned down offers of admission at other elite schools, that institution would be Deep Springs, where virtually everyone has turned down HYPSM in order to attend. Doing so would be pretty contrary to the DS ethos, however.
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<p>Deep Springs is a special case. If offers an extremely unique, amazing kind of education that you can't really get anywhere else. It's true that these students turn down HYPSM for Deep Springs -- but, of course, they can do this, because after two years at DS, they'll /transfer/ to YPSM (or, more commonly, Harvard, Chicago, etc.). DS is also an extremely difficult school to be accepted to.</p>
<p>i'm not even a Harvard fan, but the OP is silly to imply that New Haven is a better college town that Boston. New Haven is a dump, and Boston is a vibrant city and the biggest college town in the nation.</p>
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And if any institution were to truly base its self-esteem on the % of its incoming class that turned down offers of admission at other elite schools, that institution would be Deep Springs, where virtually everyone has turned down HYPSM in order to attend. Doing so would be pretty contrary to the DS ethos, however.
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<p>In addition to the points that saxfreq made, remember that the Deep Springs applicant pool is probably very self-selective...they're the kind of kids that know they want to work in a farm for 2 years. I'd venture to guess that most kids aren't that way, and those kids apply to the relatively similar schools that are HYPS.</p>
<p>F.scottie, the Urban Land article is concerned with the period 2000 to 2005. I suggest you check out a copy from your local library because it is quite interesting. Obviously, areas like CT and New England in general experienced a recession in the 1990s after the cold war ended and many cuts were made to defense industries. But many urban areas in states like CT are now seeing very rapid growth. Read the wikipedia article more carefully - the New Haven area's population has actually grown dramatically since 1950; the decline in the central city area (i.e., the tiny area within the municipal boundaries created in the 1700s) is due simply to the fact that the office employment district has expanded, necessitating the removal of some homes, and because average family sizes have decreased. You're talking about a very small area here, unless you take the wider definition of a city (metropolitan area) like the U.S. Census Bureau uses, in which case New Haven has 800,000+ residents. </p>
<p>Other central cities such as Manhattan have also declined in population for the same exact reasons, although they are now seeing some growth as development of high-rise buildings and condominium conversions continue; for example, central New Haven is projected by CERC to grow from 124,000 to 136,000 between 2000 and 2010 and central Manhattan is projected to grow by a similar, slightly smaller percentage as well. Projects like the $1 billion Time Warner Center in Manhattan, and the $150 million, 20-story high-end condo building under construction in downtown New Haven are examples of the reasons why central city populations are now increasing again.</p>
<p>New Haven has similar demographics to Manhattan, and these types of areas are now considered the most desirable to developers because they have a certain diversity, late-night activity, entertainment and nightlife districts, a range of housing units affordable to a broad constituency, and a very high number of singles and people aged 25-34 (of which New Haven, like New York City, has the highest number in its home State, and orders of magnitude more than a boring place such as, say, Princeton). In fact, one analyst on CNBC yesterday predicted that suburbs would start to shrink, because, due to the slowing housing market in boring car-based suburbs like Irvine, Princeton and Levittown, virtually every major national developer has shifted their sights towards central city projects in the past few months.</p>
<p>wow, you should be hired as new haven's new director of tourism and traavel or something. lol, I have never met someone who favors the town over Boston/NYC, or to make such great claims, or even LIKE the town in general...those I know from CT never seem to be able to stop raggin on New Haven and even my friends at yale wish it were located elsewhere lol.</p>
<p>At least New Haven has 1 person convinced....New Haven nightlife? entertainment districts? right.....Manhattan and Boston are definitely subpar when compared to New Haven's bustling 1 am activity.</p>
<p>Like many areas of Boston and New York City, downtown New Haven has changed a great deal in the past few years - obviously you still find differences of opinion. Ten years ago who would have thought Brooklyn, NY would have one of the best party scenes? The massive influx of thousands of luxury apartments and million-dollar condos (representing billions of dollars in investment) in places like South Boston, downtown New Haven, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Chicago's River North are evidence enough of how desirable those areas have become, and how quickly.</p>
<p>No, I would not make that argument. The most desirable applicants are those that have the capacity to build an outstanding entering class that adds luster to alma mater for years after they graduate. Some of those young people apply in their early round to their most preferred school, and some do not. In both admission rounds, Harvard dares to be nonbinding and allows all of its applicants to shop around for other offers of admission. </p>
<p>Byerly has previously posted newspaper articles from campus newspapers of various "peer" colleges of Harvard showing that it is no stretch at all to conclude that those colleges are worried by Harvard's dominance among cross-admits. </p>
<p>You make an assertion about a college that is so unusual in its academic and social atmosphere that all I can say is that if that college really has the lowest base acceptance rate in the country (does it, really?), then the base acceptance rate is an especially incompetent form of evidence for showing which college is most selective. Most of the most outstanding high school students in the United States look for an education with more diverse learning opportunities in a more normal social environment, and many of the best of the best make applications to colleges like YPMSC and, especially, H. </p>
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<p>Oh, definitely, I acknowledge that many superbright young people have no specialized interest in advanced math. Because I am a math coach, examples related to advanced math students come most readily to mind when I look at today's generation of college applicants. In my own generation, I was a varsity debater for my high school and on a state championship TV quiz show team. My undergraduate major was a foreign language, so I have known the humanities side of the science-humanities divide pretty well over the years. Both in my own generation and in the current generation of college applicants, I am aware of many students with a wide variety of interests who think Harvard is their top choice school. </p>
<p>I will repeat my specific call for information. Yesterday (16 August 2006), I wrote: </p>
<p>"Here's a specific request for information: find any large, publicly described group of outstanding young people, such as the U.S.A. Today academic first team, or the Intel winners, or the National Forensics League champions, or the National Latin Competition winners, or whatever, and LINK TO THE LIST, and show here in a post to this thread, name by name, where those outstanding students matriculated for college class of 2010. Show me the data." </p>
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<p>The original poster in this thread, whoever he really is, has made a factual assertion in the thread title, and provided no evidence to back up the assertion. Lawyers distinguish the "burden of production" from the "burden of persuasion" when talking about the burden of proof, but in any event PosterX has declined repeated opportunities to show affirmative evidence that backs up his assertion. Thus far, I am putting him to his proof--will he be able to back up his statement? </p>
<p>There have been a few data sets of high school students that tracked where they applied and where they matriculated. Once such data set was the basis of the Krueger-Dale study of incomes of graduates from a variety of kinds of schools, and another was the basis of the National Bureau of Economic Research study showing a large revealed preference for Harvard among college applicants admitted to Harvard and to anywhere else. I'd be happy to see both studies replicated with a data set including a current population of college applicants (as I doubt the Dale-Krueger study and agree with the NBER study as against its doubters), but that's not my burden of proof here. It's enough for me to point out that the OP's argument is logically flawed, implausible, and not backed up by data, and then to ask him (as I have) for more evidence for his claims. He is welcome to point to some verifiable resource listing the names of a large group of outstanding high school students--of any category one chooses--and then show where those students applied/were accepted/matriculated.</p>
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In the ranking based on the choices of student who intend to major in the humanities, Yale occupies the number one slot, displacing Harvard into the third slot. While most changes of a small number of rank places should be ignored because the rank ordering is imprecise, this one should not because the analog of statistical significance suggests that place-trading between
Harvard and Yale is meaningful.
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This result from the Avery/Glickman/Hoxby/Metrick revealed preference study shows that a certain, fairly well-defined group of students prefer Harvard to Yale (again, for whatever reason) and that this difference is statistically significant. Just an interesting factoid, since this is the one notable area where Harvard is not dominant.</p>
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Also, New Haven is now easily one of the best college towns in the country.
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Hahahaha.</p>
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there is one very large group of students for whom this is not true: those who plan to major in the humanities
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<p>I'm not surprised at this -- I plan to major in the humanities and Yale was far and away my first choice when I began my application process. Too bad I was rejected, lol. Anyway, I find Harvard's humanities dept. very impressive at any rate and am really excited to study with profs like Jamaica Kincaid :)</p>
<p>Thanks to svalbardlutefisk (cool screenname, by the way--are you Norwegian-American as I partly am?) for pointing out a subset of students for whom Yale is the number-one preferred destination. That is precisely the kind of information I was asking for in this thread. </p>
<p>Thanks too for the link to recent revised publication of the revealed preference study, which doesn't Google up well to the posting of the article that is publicly accessible. </p>
<p>tokenadult- yes I am part Norwegian.
Anyway, the thanks should really go to Byerly. I would never have found the link if he hadn't posted it in another thread.</p>
<p>I remain doubtful of the "breakdown" in the Revealed Preference Rankings. Stanford is known for its sciences more than its humanities, and it tends to fare far better with RSI, Intel types than TASPers...and yet it does better with "humanities" students.</p>
<p>^^^ That may just mean that there are a few more dominating sci-tech schools than there are humanities schools (in part because the job market nudges many young people into having an interest in sci-tech college majors). In other words, Stanford may have "better" students (higher scoring students?) in its tech programs than in its humanities programs, and yet Stanford may be nearer to the top in national desirability in humanities (dominated only by Yale and few other schools) than in sci-tech (still dominated by MIT, by Caltech, and by whatever other school was mentioned in that regard). I think it pretty plausible that many of this country's strongest students in the current generation chase after spots in sci-tech programs rather than in humanities programs: follow the money and all that.</p>
<p>Actually, I'd disagree that Stanford is more desirable to humanities students than to science students--this year's batch of top science students (judging from Intel STS, Siemens, ISEF, etc., and I could give you exact numbers for the first two) very clearly chose Stanford more often than most other schools, just behind Harvard. This year, at least, the top few for top geeks were Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale, Caltech, and Princeton, in that order (although I'm not sure about the last two, maybe switch them), followed by UChi, Brown, etc.</p>
<p>An applicant who was admitted by Stanford and [Brand X] but not by MIT might indeed prefer Stanford for an MIT-style major. A different applicant who was admitted to both MIT and to Stanford might prefer MIT. One of the strengths of the NBER study of revealed preferences was knowing where applicants had been admitted--their "matriculation tournaments" were all among schools that had admitted them.</p>
<p>In the end most selection rates are the same between all the top schools - remember for the top privates the real selection rate for the kid who isn't an alumini or Intel STS winner = 1% prob.</p>
<p>Harvard is mad soft on its alumni, 50% Acceptance rate for Alumni applicants after all...</p>