<p>hat said, the way Oregon does their admissions is likely how most schools, especially the top schools, do their admissions. They just can’t admit it though because then they’d get fewer applicants, which means a greater acceptance rate, which looks bad for “prestige” and “selectivity.” I bet if you called each school you still wouldn’t get a straight answer.</p>
<p>I don’t think I agree with this. Even if schools such as Stanford and NYU publicized their admission policies, they would still have very low acceptance rates because those programs are prestigious and popular. In fact, imposing some kind of lower GPA limit or talking about a quantitative formula would make their job easier, because some of the people with lower stats would not apply, giving them fewer applications to look through. And at the graduate level, acceptance rates aren’t the metric by which programs are measured - many programs don’t even publicize their doctoral program acceptance rates. It’s by research productivity. That’s all that matters; that’s how hiring happens, tenure happens, and promotions happen.</p>
<p>Rather, I think these places don’t publicize a specific method because they don’t have one. They don’t want to rule out the superstar with 3 publications who tanked undergrad but got a great master’s GPA, or the brilliant researcher who did do so well on their GRE, or so on and so forth. It’s really just such a subjective process that they don’t want to tie themselves down to any one method.</p>
<p>But yes, I think letter writers are used to writing for around 12 schools and I think you should apply to all of them if they are good fits.</p>