<p>Is it? Especially if you're poor and had a terrible start at life?</p>
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<p>Harvard has a slightly lower acceptance rate, but the schools are of nearly the same selectivity, I would say. </p>
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<p>Both schools consider applicants’ circumstances. I have seen no sign that Harvard is more sensitive to them than is Yale, though.</p>
<p>thank you mr. turtle, always giving the best answers as always. but out of curiosity, is harvard’s acceptance rate so low because there’s simply a lot of unqualified applicants applying for the heck of it?</p>
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<p>Because of its name recognition, I speculate that Harvard does receive a very slightly higher percentage of unqualified applicants than Yale, which would inflate the appearance of selectivity a bit. </p>
<p>However, the more important idea here is that the combination of both schools’ ultra-high selectivity and their holistic admissions means that decisions are unpredictable enough that any given applicant has about the same likelihood of receiving an acceptance from Harvard and a rejection from Yale as receiving an acceptance from Yale and a rejection from Harvard.</p>
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<p>I’m sure Yale’s applicant pool is bit more self-selective, yes. This probably means that Yale’s acceptance rate would be slightly lower than that of Harvard, if both schools’ applicant pools were identical. However, the difference is negligible and probably changes from year to year.</p>
<p>I’ve been told that about 3/4 of Harvard’s applicant pool is equally qualified academically with the pool of admitted students. That’s why special talents or “hooks” become important.</p>
<p>I wish I was born back in the day when people with excellent academic records were shoo-ins for admission to top colleges…</p>
<p>"I wish I was born back in the day when people with excellent academic records were shoo-ins for admission to top colleges… "</p>
<p>But that describes a time when fewer high school students became excellent scholars. Today, we see the bar raised high – that’s a good thing - for colleges & for society.</p>
<p>I am not sure that Harvard draws a higher percentage of unqualified applicants than Yale. There are lots of reasons why qualified applicants might apply to Harvard and not Yale, and, honestly, not so many reasons to apply to Yale and not Harvard, although I know plenty of people who have done that. </p>
<p>One argument for Yale being tougher to get into, however, would be based on numbers. Harvard’s class is over 25% larger than Yale’s, and it accepts about 8% more applicants than Yale does. (I’m basing this on assumed 1950 Yale acceptances vs. 2100 Harvard.) I assume both of them admit about the same number of recruited athletes, developmental admits, and other superstars, that really aren’t part of the competitive admission pool – say, about 300 per class. And both are taking about 10% legacies who aren’t part of the “recruitment” group. So that leaves Harvard with maybe 11% more admissions slots for normal kids compared to Yale. But . . . Harvard gets almost 20% more applications than Yale. So it’s probably still harder to get into.</p>
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<p>Many times, I’ve read or heard variations on this, though I’ve never seen a statement this bold. It’s very hard to imagine that, if all the applicants were arranged from highest to lowest academic stats, applicants 20,300 through 22,500 would result in the same overall stats profile that we see now.</p>
<p>No, but a random selection of 10% of the top 22,500 applicants might very well look a lot like the enrolled class, and that’s more like what the statement would imply.</p>
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<p>That’s more plausible.</p>
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<p>It implies more than that, however.</p>
<p>^^^ I think the basic premise is that when you do the first cut of those applicants that aren’t competitive for admission, you only lose about a quarter of the pool. The stats of the remaining applications wouldn’t all be the same of course, but they’re supposedly close enough that non-academic abilities and accomplishments provide more compelling rationales for acceptance than modest differences in grades and test scores.</p>
<p>I would just like to add that Yale also has early action, and a very high deferral rate, which may influence its acceptance rate percentage.</p>