How much should a college's rank matter?

[Pizzagirl]

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Selectivity - Northwestern’s and UofC’s selectivity both plummeted this year, mainly because they recently went to the common app, and Case Western’s dropped because it started weeding out acceptances to people who were obviously using it as a safety school. Did those changes in policy make them better schools?

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<p>Selectivity merely reflects popularity among hs seniors, which is to say it reflects nothing meaningful at all, since hs seniors are notoriously driven by poor factors in selecting colleges to apply to (overinflated ideas of “prestige” that nerdy students reinforce with one another).</p>