@privatebanker I think care must be taken when comparing schools, even selectivity, as looking at the surface and marketing hype can be deceptive. Emory is still a bit higher/tougher than Tulane (Tulane selects very high scores but has trouble yielding them, and like Northeastern also struggles yielding those with high GPAs):
Let us take a look at Tulane for last cycle (2021)
https://admission.tulane.edu/apply/getting-into-tulane
*Conveniently the GPA range is ommitted, but you can get enrolled student data from collegeboard and a CDS if they have it.
Notice the shift in their bottom quartile from enrolled to admitted:
https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-university-search/tulane-university
Emory (which by the way charges $75 for an application):
https://apply.emory.edu/discover/fastfacts.php
https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-university-search/emory-university
*Emory held up well between admitted and enrolled (and actually outperformed expectations at the top end).
Comparing the two, seems Tulane is trading off on grades/class rank for high SAT/ACT scores. Emory is clearly more even handed in the statistical part and is likely more aggressive with recruiting “raw talent” and indeed ranks that higher than scores in their list of considerations, whereas it is merely “considered” at Tulane. I do not think the two are currently using the same admissions philosophy at all despite the fact that there may be indeed some cross-admits. It looks like many at Tulane have GPAs that would make them less competitive for Emory, and then Emory is less scores centric so becomes less predictable than Tulane among applicants with high scores.
*This appears to be a case where the two schools appear similar selectivity wise on the surface, but are actually still quite different. Do not fool anyone into thinking they are near the same. Traditionally Emory lagged behind Gtown, but now they look a little more the same and certainly have, in the recent past, been more comparable to each other than Tulane to either. Either way…this is super tricky. It is one thing to place things in different brackets based upon a gut feeling, but data trumps this. By using these gut feelings, one might look at the surface level stats at WUSTL and VU and determine that their admissions philosophy is identical and yields the same results as Harvard, and they don’t (post-grad success and scholarship success suggests otherwise. Same as Tulane versus…any of these places. Means that not all of these are desperate to pump up their stats as high and as quickly as possible. They are more successful at selecting for other characteristics and raw talent).
I respect Tulane academically, but I am not silly enough to suggest that it and Emory are near the same now, either in terms of overall caliber or selectivity, though a surface level look at the latter would suggest otherwise. Lump it closer to the schools it ranks near because it is more similar to more of those. I think people get confused when they see that it is less score centric than its peers. However, this is also the case for Stanford, and yet I see no one going out of their way to compare Stanford to schools who it nor anyone else considers a true peer like folks do Emory.
BTW, this is who Emory’s admins consider peers partially based upon admissions overlap and partly based upon other things:
http://provost.emory.edu/news-events/news/2014/april/benchmark-schools.html
Emory sees itself in the company of these places and is at the point where it wants these places as competitors/used as benchmarks which makes sense in terms of the overall caliber of the school (research productivity, faculty accolades, post-grad success/scholarship performance), even if things like popularity/selectivity (inputs) do not look as great as them yet (although at one point in the somewhat recent past it did. Emory fell behind some because of the weaker financial aid packages, especially to higher scoring students in the 100k+ range. Emory focused on expending lots of aid on lower income students below 50k. And this shows in that its median income is lower than basically all of its peers and even Tulane: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/emory-university Emory Advantage aid program started in 2007, so I am thinking these numbers have been affected by it).
WUSTL is more of a scores centric selection process so students need very high scores to get in. Saying “Ivy level admissions” (vague as hell-they are not all the same at all) pretty much applies to like Berkeley/Emory/Georgetown and up. And not all Ivies/Ivy Plus have the same emphasis on stats and clearly have different selection approaches (WUSTL has higher scores than Duke, Penn, Stanford, and maybe some other top 10s). What does happen is some places just get more applications, so of course cannot take many who they would if they had room. These nuances are really need to be highlighted.
@hyperton As for International students specifically. I don’t know, but Emory seems to like them as long as they don’t ask for need-aid (a very high percentage in each incoming class, often approaching 20%, on the high end for a private outside of the top 10 USNWR). There is also merit aid program that rolled out for them that is picking up funding and steam, which is something many non-Ivy schools with highly competitive admissions struggled with (as in offered extremely limited merit and need-aid to non-US citizens).
Emory is also trying to increase its global focus for undergrads, and the business school/undergraduate business program (not just ECAS) is participating in these efforts as well:
https://www.emorybusiness.com/2018/06/04/unraveling-the-intricacies-of-global-connectivity/?_ga=2.73771664.36840212.1520305431-1714552693.1496791845
https://global.emory.edu/
Now appears to be an exciting time to consider Emory whether having your interests or anything else. Despite being highly ranked, it seems to be doing more than just marketing and focusing on stats to become more prestigious. It is actually trying to do some new things and seriously working on its undergraduate programs and curricula. Furthermore, it even markets the changes it makes to its programs, which isn’t common for a research university. Usually they market “feel good” (as opposed to academic things that scream: “Hey we actually care about undergraduate education and think prospective students should care about not only what new things are happening outside of the classroom, but what happens in it” type of things to appeal to prospective students like nice amenities, food, dorms, and social life. It isn’t as “sexy” to market academic changes to prospective undergrads, so it is sort of gutsy for them to do so.
