<p>Just a quick question- my teacher told me that Caltech was the most selective school in the country, mostly b/c its student body is so self-selective. Is this really true? I didn't figure Caltech was as hard to get into as, say, MIT.</p>
<p>Selectivity of Caltech and MIT are sort of the same. But Caltech is definitely not the most selective school in the nation.</p>
<p>Yale has a 10% acceptance rate -- however, Caltech doesn't even appear in the Top 5...
<a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/natudoc/natudoc_lrate_brief.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/natudoc/natudoc_lrate_brief.php</a></p>
<p>and that's not even it. i think the most selective college is deep springs, a 2 year all boys college with 26 total students in the middle of the dessert. they have about a 5% admittance rate.. i hear harvard looses students to them. if u look at overall most selective colleges, none of the common ones even make the top 5.. besides maybe one.</p>
<p>Middlesex Community College Nursing Program is more selective. (no joke)</p>
<p>Yale admits the fewest percentage of applicants among 4-year American national universities.</p>
<p>
[quote]
a 2 year all boys college with 26 total students in the middle of the desert.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's probably one of the weirdest things I've read - out of context.</p>
<p>Yale is now at 10%, but so are West Point and the Naval Academy.</p>
<p>Depending on how you define "college," Julliard is far more selective than anything else that's been mentioned (I'm guessing on the nursing program mentioned, since I can't find the stats). Its admit rate is 7%. You also figure that only people that are really talented even bother to audition.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You also figure that only people that are really talented even bother to audition.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's why % admitted doesn't mean that much: it doesn't consider how self-selecting the applicant pool is to start.</p>
<p>Consider how "self-selecting" the nursing applicant pool is.</p>
<p>mini, look at common data sets w. schools for nursing such as UPenn, Michigan, Georgetown, the nurses have lower overall stats usually....</p>
<p>i think alot of caltech is the 'self selection' thing. </p>
<p>This is true at the college of engineering at Cornell. Compared to the other schools (7 total undergrad) at Cornell, engineering has the highest acceptance rate by quite a bit. It's usually around 38% while arts and sciences is around 18 or so percent. However, the SAT scores at the engineering school are, on average, much higher than any other school within Cornell. The middle 50% range of admitted students is 1380-1550. </p>
<p>If i was in engineering and had lower than a 730 math SAT, i probably wouldn't bother with mit and caltech.</p>
<p>I think Caltech is the most selective school in the country. Admission percent by itself is not the best indicator of selectivity. Admit percent depends on how many apply, which is a function of popularity and marketing. SAT scores are more valid.</p>
<p>Caltech is known around the world as one of the best schools one can attend for science/tech/etc....my uncle actually went there....the entire state of CA has a lot of good schools which give a great education for less $$.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Admit percent depends on how many apply, which is a function of popularity and marketing.
[/quote]
Exactly.... </p>
<p>If I visited every public HS in New York City and passed out free application vouchers and urged every student to apply to their local Ivy (Columbia) I could probably get their accpetance rate down to 5%. OTOH, if I prescreened all the potential applicants to Harvard and convinced 75% of them that they shouldn't waste their time applying, and Harvard still ended up with the exact same entering class but their admit rate was 60%, would they really be any less selective?</p>
<p>I went to an Ivy "feeder" school where to top 20% go to Ivies or similar. In my class of 100 people, 33 went to top 25 schools (like Northwestern, WashU, JHU, Haverford, Vanderbilt, etc). So from anecdotal experience: the kids who got into Caltech seemed to get rejected from MIT more often than not but occasionally into one of HYPS. They also seemed to have less ECs, but higher test scores than the other Ivy kids. I would say it is about halfway between HYPS and Duke, Dartmouth, Penn, Brown, etc in admissions difficulty.</p>
<p>There are many factors to consider. Also, lets not even consider that the two school might be looking for different types of things, just like other, similar schools might be.</p>
<p>"mini, look at common data sets w. schools for nursing such as UPenn, Michigan, Georgetown, the nurses have lower overall stats usually....:</p>
<p>The subject is selectivity, not stats. And it is much more difficult/selective to get into the Middlesex Community College Nursing Program than the nursing programs at UPenn, Michigan, Georgetown...</p>
<p>Curtis?
Julliard?
Service Academies?</p>