<p>Every school with student body capabilities in the “1-32” range (range arbitrarily, and meaninglessly selected) will have a certain proportion of Ivy League rejects. Because many RD applicants apply to several colleges whose student body capabilities seem to mesh well with their own, and Ivy league schools constitute 25% of that grouping.</p>
<p>This includes the Ivy League schools themselves, who enroll numerous students who were rejected at other Ivy League schools, and also students who were rejected from Tufts.</p>
<p>last year about 500 of the class were accepted early decision 1 - their first choice, thats between a third and half the class…food for thought…</p>
<p>I think it’s funny that when this thread was started–in 2005–it was noted then that the subject had already been beaten to death. My take is that Tufts has a lot in common with some more selective schools, so quite a few students apply to those more selective schools as well as Tufts. Some of them end up at Tufts. In my estimation, that’s a good thing, both for them and for Tufts.</p>
<p>^^^ just a thought, if 347 was the number for ED1 for class of 2013 and there is also a later ED2, what I might have seen is total early decision acceptances. adding 150 more from ED2 to the 347 from ED1 would make some sense, but again can’t find a source for it yet, just supposition. </p>
<p>again, to complete the thought if a significant proportion of the class is accepted early decision, Tufts is their first choice! </p>
<p>Dan talks about things improving or changing in the past 5 years, but I can tell you that even 40 years ago, Tufts wasn’t any more filled with Ivy rejects than Yale (wanted to go to Harvard) or Princeton (wanted to go to Yale). There were, perhaps, more Harvard wannabes than there are now. But as for Brown, Cornell, Penn, even Yale? Tufts’ near-Boston location trumped them much more it does today.</p>
<p>I’ll concede that the Harvard rejects drove me nuts. But it was 40 years ago. And they were balanced by quite a number of us who applied ED for the same reason people do today–smaller, greater focus on the undergrads, incredible access to professors, and an innovative take on how to be a small university rather than a large one or a LAC.</p>
<p>Back when D1 was considering colleges, I did an analysis of relative college selectivity, circa 2004 vs. circa 1971. Tufts’s ordinal selectivity ranking among the colleges in these two years was virtually unchanged, just two places different.</p>
<p>I am curious where you found data in the early 1970’s? The only source I know for statistical purposes is IPEDS. Yet that only stretches back to 2000.</p>
<p>I used an early edition of Cass and Birnbaum, “Comparative Guide to American Colleges” -the same edition I used for my own college search. I took it out at the library via inter-library loan.</p>
<p>Wait I am confused. The cass and birnbaum book was last published in 1991. Did you mean that you used their data then and compared it with 2004 data? I think that’s what you did–which makes sense. I know currently, Tufts is in the tied with U of Chicago, JHU, and Northwestern in terms of acceptance rates.</p>
<p>I compiled the data from the 1972 (or so) edition of Cass & Birnbaum into a big spreadsheet, then came up with my own “selectivity index”, weighting SATs vs. acceptance rate data, then sorted the 100+ most selective colleges based on that weighting. And looked ast the ordinal “ranking” of colleges on the basis of this selectivity index.</p>
<p>Then I did the same for circa 2004 data taken from US News & World report.</p>
<p>Then I compared the ordinal selectivity “rankings” of 1972 vs, that of 2004.
This enabled me to see which schools had changed their place in “the pecking order”, becoming relatively more selective, or relatively less selective,vs. the other schools, in 2004 compared to the time I was making these decisions, and developing my ideas about the schools, for myself.</p>
<p>This was in response to D1 telling me that none of my comments about colleges were worth listening to, since my views were all outdated and obsolete and everything was different now.</p>
<p>YES!!!I can tell you my son,a now Tufts grad, spent his first week at Tufts discussing where everyone got rejected from(he was a waitlist at Harvard )It’s a great school,and he had a great time there,and is successfully employed now, in a related field to his major.He spent weeks telling me last year that his little sister would also get rejected by Harvard,but she is thrilled to be a freshman there now !My son graduated 2009, so this is recent.</p>
<p>Interesting idea. I always had hesitation utilizing acceptance rates (to a certain extent). For example, it’s all based on the number that apply. There are some schools that actually have lower acceptance rates than Tufts, yet they have more undergraduates. This is because of the number of people who apply. Tufts has a big essay process which distracts some students who want to send to many schools via common application. I think this creates a distortion. Like if you look at liberal arts schools, perhaps like 2K apply but only 500 get in. It creates distortions. The solution would be to standardize things, yet that has its own problems. Last year, tufts and U of chicago had the same acceptance rate: 27%. This fall, tufts is about 24.5 and U of chicago is 18. Why the sudden change for U of chicago? Because the number of people applying jumped from like 12K to 19K. Math is fun!</p>
<p>I also think the story of your son is funny considering how he graduated in 2009 (meaning he enrolled in 2005). I also think that if people get rejected from Harvard and go somewhere else, that doesn’t mean said school is an ivy reject. Plenty of people have gotten rejected from harvard, wait-listed at Yale, and accepted to princeton. But we can’t have ivy’s being rejects of each other, can we? :)</p>
<p>At the end of the day, I don’t think it really matters because you will find stories saying people picked x college for y college or were rejected from x college and are attending y college. But the quality of education and what you make out of college really will determine your path in life.</p>
<p>I think the idea is when a person is rejected by H<em>Y</em>P ,and goes to a non ivy school.That is an Ivy reject.Tufts ,although a great school is not an ivy.I think that is what OP was asking,plain and simple.</p>
<p>From what I have read, Tufts is competing on an even playing field with the “lesser ivies” - Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth & Penn. Students accepted into Tufts and one of these schools, chooses Tufts a significant portion of the time. </p>
<p>In many cases students who use Tufts as a “safety” when applying to H<em>Y</em>P, also use the lesser ivies in the same way. If Tufts is a Ivy reject school then so are Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth and Penn for the same reasons. </p>
<p>Bottom line - they are ALL very good schools.</p>
<p>Very funny. Tufts is NOT in the same league with any of the Ivies. Never has been and never will be. Tufts is a good school, but it is not in the same league with the most selective schools, especially now that it has abandoned need-blind admissions. T is in the same league with schools such as Boston University and New York University, and not even close to Penn. So yes, of course it is still the school for a lot of Ivy League rejects, but rejects from all of the Ivies as well as other selective schools that are also more selective than Tufts.</p>
<p>^^classclown, you are clearly right, given that “admissionspro” felt it necessary to revive a 2010 thread for the purpose of offering gratuitous insults bereft of constructive commentary. And, moreover, s/he doesn’t know what s/he is talking about. By way of example, Tufts’ middle 50% of SAT scores is comparable to the most competitive schools in the country, and I know for a fact that some of the top high schools in the US have found that it was easier for their students to get into Cornell than into Tufts. The suggestion that Tufts is comparable to NYU and BU, rather than, e.g., Cornell, is simply the nonsensical chatter of an uninformed person, who is clearly not a bona fide “admissions pro.”</p>
<p>Wow! There is a new grouping of schools that are very attractive for the intellectual and academic, maybe even this side of quirky. Put the following into that group:
Tufts
Uchicago
JHU
Brandeis
WUSTL
CMU</p>
<p>Crossovers are Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Penn. It’s not necessarily the same KIND of student who applies, but rather an individual looking for their kindred spirit. According to stats, my S should have applied to Brown & Cornell, but didn’t like either school. Again, kids today are far more independent thinkers and are free to pick and choose what feels right.</p>
<p>I think of BU and Northeastern as backups for NYU, GW and the above listed. Tufts is a powerhouse now. I avoid using the term Ivies since it is a bit of an anachronism in 2012.</p>