High Acceptance Rate for Caltech?

Colleges and Universities A-Z California Institute of Technology
1

<p>This site (<a href="http://www.ivywise.com/Students_stats.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ivywise.com/Students_stats.htm&lt;/a&gt;) claims to have the "2006 Acceptance Rates for 20 of the Most Selective Colleges in the U.S.." Why is Caltech not on it? I thought Caltech is very very selective?</p>

<p>Yale University 8.6%
Harvard University 9.3%
Columbia University 9.6%
Princeton University 10.2%
Stanford University 11%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 13%
Brown University 13.8%
Dartmouth College 15.4%
Pomona College 16%
University of Pennsylvania 17.7%
Swarthmore College 18%
Duke University 19%
Bowdoin College 22%
Georgetown University 22%
Middlebury College 24%
Cornell University 24.7%
Johns Hopkins University 27%
New York University 28%
Northwestern University 28%
University of Virginia 36%</p>

2

<p>Caltech is more selective than most of the colleges on that list. Your source is either incomplete or just plain wrong.</p>

3

<p>Yea, it's wrong....where are the service academies...those are highly selective</p>

4

<p>It says 20 OF the best...</p>

5

<p>Well presumably the list is somehow biased. Caltech is more selective than UVA, aside from a few others. Especially considering the pool of APPLICANTS has the highest average math SAT scores in the nation. ;-)</p>

6

<p>
[quote]
Why is Caltech not on it?

[/quote]
Because the list is from IVYwise.com</p>

7

<p>The Selectivity list from US News is as follows:</p>

<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>MIT
Yale</li>
<li>Caltech
Princeton</li>
<li>UPenn
WashU</li>
<li>Brown
Stanford</li>
<li>Columbia
Dartmouth
Duke
Rice</li>
</ol>

<p>Clearly this Ivywise.com list is incomplete if not completely wrong. If you were to base selectivity only on admissions rates (the US News ranking takes into account other things) than Caltech would still be on that list (21% acceptance rate in 04)</p>

8

<p>Either way, acceptance rates aren't a particularly strong indicator of the quality of the school.</p>

9

<p>The undergrad acceptance rate went down to about 15% this year.
<a href="http://admissions.caltech.edu/news%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://admissions.caltech.edu/news&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>506/3319 ~= 15.25%</p>

<p>-Oren</p>

10

<p>I think Caltech sets a higher bar, so to speak, for academic performance/potential in admissions than HYPS, where it is easy to graduate in certain majors if you can't hack it in your original major. Being an athlete or legacy or URM will do you no good if you can't handle the work at Tech. The reason why Caltech's acceptance rate may be a little high (15% isn't that high though) is because the pool is more self-selecting.</p>

11

<p>I've very rarely opened a file with below 1400 SAT, if that means anything. I'm pretty sure a lot more people with low scores/grades apply to Harvard just for the heck of it, cause it's Harvard.</p>

12

<p>Ben,
Do you mean the new SAT? or the old one?</p>

13

<p>I think he means the old one..</p>

14

<p>That's what I thought...
But I would be really happy if he meant the new one :)</p>

15

<p>Yeah, I can't deal with this new business. I just ignore the writing and think about the old one :)</p>

16

<p>Well, last year I at least got waitlisted with a 1370 SAT, though I didn't bother signing up for it. Guess I should've taken a little bit more time to prepare/care about those standardized tests. Funny how all my math accomplishments get overshadowed by two computation errors on a pretty trivial test.</p>

<p>Out of curiosity, how many people get in off the waitlist? Just kinda wondering what my odds would've been had I stayed on.</p>

17

<p>It depends very very heavily on the year. This year, the odds are pretty good. Last year we took 0 from the waitlist.</p>

18

<p>Man, guess I was right to not bother waiting...</p>

19

<p>lizzardfire, which year did your rankings come from?</p>

20

<p>The selectivity is from the most recent rankings on US News College Reports. The admissions rates I quoted are from 2004 I believe.</p>