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One of the cheerleaders for UCLA is, in fact, majoring in chemical engineering.
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<p>Hey, there are exceptions for everything. Heck, Ayla Vain, a former San Francisco Gold Rush Girl (the cheerleading squad for the NFL San Francisco 49'ers) graduated from MIT in EECS. Pretty darn impressive.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.aylavain.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.aylavain.com/</a></p>
<p>Nevertheless, the point still stands. Football players in all schools, but especially in Division 1A, tend to choose the easier majors. One could even view this as an entirely rational thing to do. If they lose eligibility by getting less than a 2.0 GPA, then they may lose their athletic scholarship. It's pretty easy to end up with less than a 2.0 if you're in a difficult major like engineering. Never mind that somebody with, say, a 1.7 in chemical engineering may actually have worked harder than a guy with a 2.3 in a creampuff major. The NCAA doesn't care about that. All they care about is that you maintain a 2.0, and if that means taking easy classes in an easy major where you can get passing grades without doing very much, then so be it. </p>
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Admission decisions are based on the Admission Committee's experienced judgment applied to individual cases, and many factors are taken into account. Each application is given a full file review by at least two readers, taking account of all available information. Because GPA and LSAT alone do not fully or adequately summarize information about individuals that is important to admission decisions, these "numbers" often prove poor predictors of admission decisions on individual applications. At no point on the GPA or LSAT scales are the chances of admission to Harvard Law School 0 or 100 percent. As reported to the ABA, the 75/25 percentile GPAs for the class entering in 2005 were 3.92/3.68 and the 75/25 percentile LSATs were 176/170.
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<p>Those specific numbers you are quoting are basically the same as mine (which I got from USNews). The GPA is a bit lower, the LSAT is a bit higher. Hence, it all goes to show that Harvard Law students tend to have better numbers than Stanford Law students. Which only gets back to what I've been saying - for people with strong numbers, Stanford is more selective. For people who don't have strong numbers, Harvard is more selective. Hence, you can't categorically state that one is more selective than the other, and you certainly can't base this off a supposedly simple examination of admissions percentages.</p>
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Regarding Stanfords selectivity - most major publications recognize that Stanford is more selective than Harvard.
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<p>So name some of these publications. If there are so many of them it should be easy for you to cite, right? </p>
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I loved how you ignored the response to you self-selection argument, but I digress as I don't care
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<p>If you really don't care, then why do you keep bringing it up? Make up your mind. </p>
<p>And did I ignore it? I don't think so. Since you are the one asserting that self-selection is not occurring, I think it's up to you to demonstrate that it is not occurring. In particular, you are the one who asserted that selectivity could be ascertained simply by looking solely at admissions percentages. </p>
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In an earlier post you talked about how most apps never get read by Yale, which was untrue.
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<p>Fine, I should have said that most apps are not read CAREFULLY by Yale. I don't consider a perfunctory once-over to be a true 'read'. And the truth is, if you have a poor GPA and a poor LSAT score, your app will be, at best, skimmed over quickly. It is precisely those people who have strong numbers who will be placed into a better bucket and will therefore undergo a more thorough examination. </p>
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I'm not sure about the natural science being "uber-competitive" because IB isn't at competitive as MCB, and thus it depends on what natural science major,
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<p>Yeah, but both are more competitive than the creampuff majors. Hence, I don't think it really does depend on which natural science major. On average, natural science majors are more competitive than the creampuff majors. For example, I would assert that Physics may be even more difficult than Engineering. Even the easiest natural science tends to be more difficult than the easiest 'Studies' major.</p>