<p>Selectivity isn’t really something you can trace precisely to acceptance rates.</p>
<p>For example, Columbia College has a lower acceptance rate than Princeton, but Princeton is a patently more selective program. Similarly, Penn, Brown and Dartmouth might appear to be significantly less selective than Columbia, but this is obviously not the case.</p>
<p>Columbia simply has a much larger applicant pool than its peers, probably due to its location.</p>