<p>Hey I made a list of colleges I want to go to from easiest to hardest to get into, are these actually in the right order: </p>
<p>U of Michigan
Stanford
Cornell
Johns Hopkins
Duke
U Penn
Columbia
university of Chicago</p>
<p>If they say it’s very official… it must be VERY official.</p>
<p>please help bump</p>
<p>It’s basically correct, but I would switch Chicago and Stanford.</p>
<p>Michigan
Chicago
Johns Hopkins/Cornell A&S
Duke/Penn
Columbia
Stanford</p>
<p>thanks can people verify that</p>
<p>IB: whats A&S stand for?</p>
<p>I disagree. Chicago is in a league of its own. You might be able to get into every college on that list EXCEPT Chicago. Its standards are different, in that they are more like those of top liberal arts colleges. They want something distinguishing from every candidate, and they are more willing to bend the typical standards for such candidates.</p>
<p>kthanks any more help. do u agree with stanford being the hardest? can any1 confirm wat kwu says?</p>
<p>if any1 is willing to, this is the entire list. itd help a lot if you can verify:</p>
<ol>
<li> University of VA </li>
<li> Rice University </li>
<li> U of Illinois </li>
<li> Emory </li>
<li> U of Washington </li>
<li> U of Wisconsin Madison </li>
<li> Dartmouth</li>
<li> Boston </li>
<li>NYU </li>
<li>California Berkeley </li>
<li>Northwestern </li>
<li>UCLA </li>
<li>Brown </li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon </li>
<li> Chicago</li>
<li> U of Michigan </li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li> Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>U Penn</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
</ol>
<p>
I disagree. Sure, Chicago places more emphasis on its essays than test scores. When it comes down to it, though, it admits 28% of its applicants – which is a lot higher than most of the other colleges listed. While admit rates can be deceptive (e.g. College of the Ozarks 12%), Chicago’s applicant pool is relatively self-selecting. Chicago’s reputation for “bending” standards is vastly overrated; the test score ranges and class ranks of its incoming students are largely in line with those of students at other top universities.</p>
<p>Chicago could afford to be more selective if it adopted ED, but until it does, it remains one of the easier elite universities to get into. Not that this is a bad thing – the more the merrier, in my opinion. ;)</p>
<p>Out of the schools I know enough of (assumign you are applying into general studies):</p>
<p>U of Illinois
U of Wisconsin
U of Michigan
UCLA
Emory
JHU
Northwestern/UC Berkeley (depending on major and location, OOS and engineering are tough for UCB)
Rice
Carnegie Mellon/Cornell (again, depending on major, engineering is difficult at both)
Brown
Duke
Chicago
UPenn (Wharton is very difficult, rest isn’t as hard)
Dartmouth
Stanford
^This is just my opinion, so don’t take this as official or anything. In general, this is relatively close (Stanford is the hardest, the state flagships are the easiest), although between schools this may be wrong. It’s hard to tell, as admit rates don’t tell the entire story.</p>
<p>so we all agree stanford is the hardest</p>
<p>My counter question to you is – does it matter if they are in the right order? All of those schools are reach schools; I think it’s more important to group them into “low reaches” and “high reaches” than to give them a strict linear order.</p>
<p>In any case, speaking by the numbers Chicago has a 28% acceptance rate. By comparison, Columbia has an 11%, Stanford has a 9% admissions rate, Michigan has a 42% acceptance rate (but this will be lower if you are OOS), Cornell has a 21% admissions rate, Johns Hopkins is 25% Penn is 17%, and Duke is 22%.</p>
<p>So assuming that admissions rates hold steady (the same amount of people apply for relatively the same amount of slots), the order would be (from easiest to hardest) Michigan, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Cornell, Penn, Columbia, Stanford.</p>
<p>However, admissions rates aren’t the chances that you might get in. Your chances may be higher or lower depending on your student profile. So from that, it is impossible to actually order the schools because whether or not two very close schools are harder in your specific case to get into depends largely on who you are competing with that year, and what sets you apart.</p>
<p>Based strictly on acceptance rates, here is the order of your full list. You did not specify which U of I you meant or which “Boston” you meant, so I included both.</p>
<ol>
<li>UIUC: 69%</li>
<li>U.Wash - 61%</li>
<li>UIC: 60%</li>
<li>Boston U - 54%</li>
<li>Wisc. - 53%</li>
<li>MIchigan - 42%</li>
<li>CMU - 38%</li>
<li>U.Va - 37%</li>
<li>NYU - 32%</li>
<li>Chicago - 28%</li>
<li>Emory - 27%</li>
<li>Northwestern - 26%</li>
<li>Boston College - 26%</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins - 25%</li>
<li>UCLA - 23%</li>
<li>Rice - 23%</li>
<li>Berkeley - 22%</li>
<li>Duke - 22%</li>
<li>Cornell - 21%</li>
<li>Penn - 17%</li>
<li>Brown - 14%</li>
<li>Dartmouth - 13%</li>
<li>Columbia - 11%</li>
<li>Stanford - 9%</li>
</ol>
<p>Of course, selectivity is no indication of how good a school is – all of the schools on this list are excellent schools.</p>
<p>ok thanks ill take that into account</p>
<p>so is chicago around the end next to stanford?</p>
<p>Here is how they stack up based on SAT scores:</p>
<p>1340 1540 Duke University
1330 1540 Columbia University in the City of New York
1330 1540 Stanford University
1330 1520 University of Pennsylvania
1320 1510 Cornell University A&S
1310 1530 University of Chicago
1290 1510 Johns Hopkins University
1220 1430 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</p>
<p>Duke doesn’t publish Common Data Set, and that leads me to not trust their self-reported numbers.</p>
<p>As far as OP’s last question, that list looks fine.</p>
<p>Based on nothing other than aggregated impressions of who got in where over the past couple of years, I would put Chicago about 4th or 5th hardest to get into on that list, behind, in order: Stanford, Columbia, Dartmouth/Brown/Penn/Duke/Chicago</p>
<p>Selectivity says something about quality (e.g., I can’t think of a highly selective school that is not pretty good), but it says more about the school’s popularity among the 17 year old high school students who are applying. Some schools get more applicants than they might otherwise simply because they are in the Ivy League, and the perceived “prestige” that the name endows. Other schools get fewer applications than they might otherwise because of reputations (deserved or not) of being too academically challenging, having less grade inflation, being too intellectual or nerdy, or because of location issues. </p>
<p>So Chicago is clearly less selective than, say, Brown University—but few people familiar with both institutions would argue that Brown is a stronger university than Chicago is. In fact, comparing the schools department by department, Chicago would win almost every time. Brown is more popular because it has the Ivy cache, has an open curriculum (compared to the core at Chicago), and is located in a New England neighborhood that is perceived to be safer than Hyde Park.</p>
<p>
Can you explain this statement? Duke isn’t going to lie about the information. Most universities do have a code of honor to abide by. Duke has one of the most stringent ones in the country in fact from what I heard in my college visit.</p>
<p>EDIT: I ranked hardest to easiest.</p>
<p>Stanford
Columbia
Penn
Cornell
Duke
Johns Hopkins
Chicago
Michigan</p>
<p>I produced this ranking by dividing the 25th percentile SAT scores (out of 1600) by the admissions rate. A quick caveat: all these schools consider more than test scores. Chicago is especially well-known for placing a huge emphasis on the essay.</p>