How reliable is the admissions "Bubble Chart"?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Penn State
1

<p>I've noticed that the PSU admissions bubble chart (<a href="http://admissions.psu.edu/info/counselors/bubble_chart.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://admissions.psu.edu/info/counselors/bubble_chart.pdf&lt;/a&gt;) seems to be quite a bit more draconian than the actual acceptances reported by students. This has been true for the past several years, as long as I've been watching. </p>

<p>Perhaps students are less likely to report rejections, but there's got to be more to it than that - there seem to be many UP acceptances that are well below the implied range.</p>

<p>Has anyone else noticed this? What's the real story? Is the bubble chart designed to overstate the difficulty of admission at UP?</p>

2

<p>the chart is based on actual admissions data. Any differences are attributed to:

  1. The small sample size that you collect through through CC or word of mouth- put simply, yes only this outliers that get accepted bother to post. This is the real driver of your perception.<br>
  2. CC posters may not always report superstores (minor component)
  3. PSU does their own weighting of GPA</p>

<p>If anything, its in a universities’ best interest to slightly reduced the credentials in a chart like this- to encourage more applications. I don’t think this is happening.</p>

3

<p>Another issue with the bubble chart is that admission statistics vary quite a bit between different colleges (e.g. you need higher numbers to be accepted into engineering than education).</p>

4

<p>Are there any published statistics for the different colleges?</p>

5

<p>I haven’t seen any.</p>

6

<p>PSU uses unweighted GPA’s. I can use that for a fact that when I applied they said they would use my weighted GPA from high school but when I looked at my records again, it had my low unweighted GPA in their system.</p>

<p>Cheers</p>