<p>yea byerly you are not as smart as i would expect</p>
<p>There is already a term, "base acceptance rate," to communicate the idea that a college has many more applicants than it can admit for its entering class size. But the term "selective," in referring to a college among all the colleges in the country, refers to what degree a college can exercise choice all possible college applicants, choosing only the (inter)nationally best. I don't think any thinking person doubts that Harvard is at or near the top of the list in selectivity in that sense. Even if the U.S. News criteria were jiggered to drop the ranking of Wash. U. or whatever other school you think doesn't belong in the top ten, it's unimaginable that Harvard would drop out of the top ten.</p>
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[quote]
No, Mr Payne, selectivity implies the caliber of the student academically speaking: SAT scores, class ranking, GPA--all the factors we already discussed. The more difficult the admissions, the more kids you find at said school with the highest SATs/ranking/GPA. So a more selective university will generally have more academically distinguished students
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<p>Exactly. So why does US News even look at any <em>matriculating</em> statistics? It's about admission, not matriculation. I think you missed my point.</p>
<p>That is silly. My party isn't "selective" if I invite Madonna, Paris Hilton, Henry Kissinger, Barry Bonds ... and <em>you</em> .... and only <em>you</em> show up!</p>
<p>(As a disclaimer, this issue is definitely one of opinion: one side saying matriculating student data is more relevant than admitted student data and vice versa.) </p>
<p>That said, a student with let's say a 4.0 GPA, 1550 SATs, ranked 1 in his class applied RD to Yale and WUSTL. Yale was his reach, WUSTL his safety. He decides to go to Yale after getting into both. If US News were to include admitted students data (like this kid's), WUSTL's selectivity would be artificially escalated. The kid wanted all along to go to Yale and had little intention of matriculating at WUSTL. It only would have happened if he didn't get into Yale. By including the data of matriculating students, US News presents a more accurate picture of how selective WUSTL really is--that is, the caliber of students WUSTL can attract...the caliber of WUSTL students not WUSTL applicants.</p>
<p>An aside: Obviously, WUSTL's admissions people know that, to some extent, like Tufts, they are a "safety" school for the Academic 1s and 2s. Tufts dealt with the "problem" by rejecting overqualified students it knew wouldnt matriculate RD. WUSTL, on the other hand, used to fill a large portion of its class ED 1 and ED 2, expecting the Academic 1s and 2s to apply RD and most likely turn them down for Ivies. But to counteract a lower yield on RD, WUSTL started giving out large amounts of Merit Aid to lure the 1s and 2s away from Ivies. To some extent, it worked, at least for the kids that really needed the aid.</p>
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[QUOTE]
That said, a student with let's say a 4.0 GPA, 1550 SATs, ranked 1 in his class applied RD to Yale and WUSTL. Yale was his reach, WUSTL his safety. He decides to go to Yale after getting into both. If US News were to include admitted students data (like this kid's), WUSTL's selectivity would be artificially escalated.
[/QUOTE]
No. Its selectivity would be accurately represented. Now, if you believe student caliber should be what we are looking at, you might have a point. To which I would respond, their rankings are still idiotic, because Stanford has a much high caliber than WUSTL.</p>
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[quote]
The kid wanted all along to go to Yale and had little intention of matriculating at WUSTL. It only would have happened if he didn't get into Yale. By including the data of matriculating students, US News presents a more accurate picture of how selective WUSTL really is--that is, the caliber of students WUSTL can attract...the caliber of WUSTL students not WUSTL applicants.
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Then they shouldn't call it student selectivity. By <em>definition</em>, the selectivity of a school is determined in the admission process, not by matriculation statistics.</p>
<p>You are forgetting the biggest portion of this: schools need to fill classrooms. The board has an obligation to the university as a whole to admit enough people to fill the desired class size - this is the primary determinant in any schools admission policies. They have to make the bar low enough to fill their classrooms, and this why the 'selectivity' statistics would still create an accurate heirarchy between all the schools.</p>
<p>What Payne says in #26 would be much more convincing if all schools have the same yield rate (that is, the same percentage of students admitted who actually enroll). But colleges manifestly differ greatly in yield, and for all colleges below the very top tier, a lot of the loss in yield comes from highly desirable people who were mailed invitations (who were offered admission) not attending the party (not enrolling). The admissions figures that Brown has published make this clear: it is precisely in the groups of students for which the probability of admission to Brown is highest that the yield of enrollments to Brown is lowest. </p>
<p>I think most members of the general public are quite clear that if a college is "selective," it ends up with the better students. We all know that Harvard is highly selective, because Harvard surely does that as compared to other colleges.</p>
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If you treat the Bible like he treats the USNews Rankings, then I feel sorry for you.</p>
<p>^What does that mean?</p>
<p>Which words don't you understand?</p>
<p>next year 2007(USnews) will look like this
Yale
Harvard
Columbia
Pton
Penn
Stanford/MIT
Dmouth/Brown</p>
<p>IvyLeaf - You must be aware that the idea of Tufts rejecting overqualified applicants is completely false, otherwise the SAT score ranges of admitted students would be lower than their counterparts at G-town, JHU, Emory, etc. And, last time I checked, with 15,500 apps, and an under 26% admit rate - Tufts is no where near being a safety. Every time posters like you on CC continue to use sweeping rumours and straight lies to bash Tufts, you merely highlight your ignorance and intense rudeness towards one of the most competitive of American Universities.</p>
<p>One of my friends got into Yale (9% admit rate), but not Tufts.</p>
<p>Tufts' admit rate is low simply because they do reject qualified applicants.</p>
<p>When not much more than one out of five RD admits takes you up on the invitation and most go elsewhere, it is essential to do a better job of identifying in advance who is - and who is not - using you as a backup. </p>
<p>It is wasteful of resources to have to admit so many people to fill each spot, and hurts efforts to "design" your class - with the requisite diversity, etc.</p>
<p>WorldbandDX--aka a Tufts student--it's a well-known fact that slightly less selective schools, like Tufts, reject overqualified applicants it knows will enroll elsewhere. It's called yield protection. Reject the applicant w/the 1550 SAT score, admit the one w/the 1450, reject the one w/the 1350--all for different reasons:</p>
<p>The 1550 will enroll at an Ivy not Tufts.
The 1450 won't get into H/Y/P/S/M/Br/Col unless he/she has a hook. Tufts, Wash U, etc., know this. He/she is Tufts's target student.
The 1350 is low for Tufts.</p>
<p>All this said, Tufts is a good school. It's a competitive school to gain admission into. No one is arguing any of these things. It's just that no one really believes Wash U is as selective as US News ranks it. Strategic admissions--like rejecting overqualified applicants/yield protection--make Wash U and Tufts appear more selective than they are. No "sweeping rumors or straight lies" here.</p>
<p>The 1550 will also likely be rejected from an Ivy unless he/she has some sort of hook, or at least something that makes them stand out from the rest of the applicant pool.</p>
<p>Also, Tufts does not yield protection now, though it may have done so in the past. The average SAT score for admitted students for the c/o 2010 was about a 1430, and many were well above or well below this score. For matriculated students the year before, it was a 1402 IIRC. Its' average SAT score has climbed from the mid-1300s to the low 1400s in just the past five or so years. Tufts also looks at the whole application, and if a student clearly wants to attend the school and put more effort into their application than another student with higher grades and scores, then the student who put more effort into the application is probably more likely to get in.</p>
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The 1550 will also likely be rejected from an Ivy unless he/she has some sort of hook, or at least something that makes them stand out from the rest of the applicant pool.
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<p>This is a thread about Harvard in the Harvard forum, and it is mathematically true that more 1550s are rejected than admitted at Harvard. But at some other Ivy League schools, the odds would be better than 50:50 that the 1550 applicant, on that ground alone, would be admitted. </p>
<p>Applicants with 1550s are rare. Not all of them apply to Ivy League schools. I just wrote about this yesterday on another college-specific forum. </p>
<p>In the most recent year for which there are published figures I can link to here </p>
<p>there was a running total of 5,030 students who had combined (single-sitting) scores of 1550 or higher (939 having scores of 1600) and a running total of 15,016 with combined (single-sitting) scores of 1500 or higher. </p>
<p>Most (all?) of the Ivy League schools give applicants the benefit of their best combination of section scores, even if that didn't come from a single sitting of the SAT I, so there are a few more 1500+ scorers by the Ivy League admissions methodology. But some of those high school students had no intention of applying to any Ivy (they applied to colleges nearer to their home towns, especially colleges with attractive merit aid programs) and some were otherwise unlikely to be admitted by an Ivy (because they had good test scores but crummy high school academic preparation and a lack of elite college prerequisites or SAT II scores). So the pool of Ivy-willing, Ivy-ready, high-SAT college applicants is barely large enough to fill each year's entering classes in the eight Ivy League colleges.</p>
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<p>The second quoted statement contradicts the first. Some colleges don't look at "demonstrated interest" at all, because they know full well that most applicants are interested.</p>
<p>Then we must have different understandings of what yield protection is. The standard claim is that Tufts will reject applicants whose stats are too high, which is simply not true. If a student puts more effort into their application, their intrest in the school will come across. If two students with identical scores submit applications, and one shows intrest in the school and the other doesn't, then it's likely that the one who showed intrest in the school will get in and the other won't. No school, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, or Columbia, uses numbers as the sole basis for admission.</p>
<p>I would exclude CalTech and WashSTl from this set. Cal tech has very small class and most kids are to narrow to overlap with IVY pool. All this does is to equate with Caltech with Harvard, which is not the case for 90% applicants.</p>
<p>Selectvity pool wise MIT and Caltech will toughest sine they are looking for some of science type for small admit classes. Have seen MIT turning doen kids who get HYP with out any problem.</p>
<p>They we should look at Schools who are similar in size and offerings, here I would take MIT and Cal Tech out. WU I am not sure it belongs there.
Peers in order of direct battle:
Harvard : Yale, Pton, Brown, Penn Col and MIT( just being local) Stanford(west kidss)
Pton: Yale, Harvard, Penn, Col, Stanford(West), MIT(techs)
Yale: Harvard Pton, Brown, Col, Penn
MIT: Cal tech, Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell, CMU, Harvard
Caltech: Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell, then others IVYs
Penn: Col, Brown, HYP, Duke, Stanford(west), Dartmouth,
Columbia: Yale, Penn, Brown Pton, Harvard, cornell, Dmouth and NYU</p>
<p>So it makes no sense bunching them together.</p>