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<p>It’s very often true at any school that gives financial aid…</p>
<p>I got next to nothing when I originally got into Wash U, so it didn’t help me much, despite their large endowment.</p>
<p>If you make b/w 75,000 and 100,000/yr, finaid sucks everywhere… but i’m getting a massive amount of merit aid from tech. makes a difference:)</p>
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[QUOTE=airbarr]
It’s very often true at any school that gives financial aid…
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<p>But it is most likely to be true at a school with a multi-billion dollar endowment.</p>
<p>Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve been here. But actually, Georgia Tech’s acceptance rate for the class of 2012 was 21.8%. Here’s the link:</p>
<p>[GT</a> | Office of the President](<a href=“http://www.gatech.edu/president/notes/first100days]GT”>http://www.gatech.edu/president/notes/first100days)</p>
<p>that’s not the acceptance rate. The yield is somewhere around 40-45% for GT and so they accepted somewhere around 5000-6000 students for a class of 2400 (acceptance rate of 45-55%).</p>
<p>As a state university GT cannot be quite as selective in admissions as its peer private schools. In addition, applicants are largely self-screened because GT is predominantly a science and engineering school. A comparison of acceptance rates and graduation rates suggests that the top private engineering schools are super selective before admitting whereas GT culls the herd over the next four to five years following admission. Although this approach does not score points with US News, GT engineering grads (survivors) are as good as anyone’s.</p>
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<p>I’d generalize this observation to all more selective and less selective schools. Since engineering cannot be made arbitrarily easy, less selective schools will have lower graduation rates and more selective schools will have higher graduation rates. </p>
<p>It’s not just Georgia Tech.</p>
<p>I think I will probably be bashed for this but here are my 2 cents. Disclosure: I went to Georgia Tech but got accepted into private schools (Cal Tech specifically).</p>
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<li><p>Private schools have the ability to be more selective in their admission processes then State Schools. They generally accept only higher standardized scores (which IMO are basically worthless), and GPA’s for their engineering students. </p></li>
<li><p>Public universities of high prestige (GaTech, Purdue, UIUC, etc…) have large attrition rates in their schools of engineering (to other easier majors or out of the school entirely). When they gathered all the freshmen engineers they mentioned point blank that 33% of us would be in another major besides engineering before we left GaTech. My own small sampling of close friends in engineering validated this fact in my mind (15% left GaTech, another 30% or so changed out of engineering).</p></li>
<li><p>Private universities have similar attrition but to my knowledge the % is not as high as public universities. Private also utilize less ‘weed out’ classes then public schools because they aren’t needed to maintain integrity (which if anything makes the curriculum of public universities better but that is up to debate).</p></li>
<li><p>Rankings for these schools are heavily normalized! Large and small schools like do not have small sample sizes that determine ranking. Sure small schools have a smaller sample size comparatively but that doesn’t mean the sample isn’t large (thousands, tens of thousands…). These schools are all trying to look better in their own way. Private schools though smaller have more tricks to do this than public. </p></li>
<li><p>I would have to believe that given the relatively small changes we see in rankings over the years that their system is as solid as it can be. US News strives to maintain the highest integrity of rankings they can. If they didn’t someone else would take its place. That’s not to say that US News is infalliable…just that I trust their rankings/system better then some of the logic i’ve seen in this thread. If you think your small university is being shafted then call and complain to US News, or ask your school to research why its performing so poorly vs. the ‘inferior state schools’. </p></li>
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<p>In my mind…if you are in the top 10 engineering schools you education will be of the same prestige no matter which you go to.</p>
<p>End of rant…</p>