I have seen Southerners insulted by generalizations and stereotypes. I have seen Midwesterners offended by the term ‘flyover country’. If it offends someone, respect that. And remember, the East Coast is a very big place. The characterizations are likely exhibited by a minority, not a majority.
Further, the Midwest flagships are close to elite if not in that category, particularly considering certain disciplines. Wisconsin’s Chem E is top notch. The rest of their engineering is highly ranked. Same for Michigan, followed by Illinois and Purdue. An engineering student is not exactly settling by choosing Michigan or Wisconsin. Good for them if it’s their state school. And plenty of Pennsylvanians are proud to attend their state flagship, and it’s in the east!
Cal Poly SLO was the one that surprised me how selective it was, especially for many of the engineering majors. I’ve learned a lot in the last 2 years about that school. USC is another one - even the admissions rep at a college night admitted that if you could breathe you used to be able to get in. How things have changed!
Schools that have surprised me since I started following this site a few years ago are all the east coast LACs I’d never heard of that are highly thought of (didn’t know what LAC was). We have so many good public schools in CA that it was surprising to see how many people turn their nose up at their state flagship.
If just using admit stats, are there any colleges that aren’t using higher stats and probably have lower admit rates than 30-40 years ago? ‘Back in the day’ most of us only took the SAT or ACT once, and the score was the score. Very few perfect scores. APs and honors were more limited, and many schools didn’t give weighted GPAs (mine didn’t, and it was one of the most elite high schools with lots of APs and honors courses). Would I still be accepted into my flagship today? I think I would, but my gpa and scores would probably be higher (so I’d still be in the same 75% or whatever I was), as I’d be judged against current students. I assume I would have done the things in high school the current students are doing, like taking the ACT three times, or joining 5 clubs, or being on academic teams.
Some of the statistics are caused by students applying to 10-15 schools. If a school used to get 5k applications and accepted 1000, but now gets 10k applications but accepts 1500, it has suddenly become more selective even though it accepts more students.
Good point @twoinanddone. Not only did we only take the SAT or ACT once, but there wasn’t the availability of preparation tools. On the other hand, it has become harder to get into, say, some SUNY schools, just in the last ten years. I am sometimes surprised to hear of some very good student who did not get into engineering at Binghamton.
Through time, comparisons between schools become even more interesting. URochester, for example, once occupied a selectivity tier (by SAT scoring) equal to that of Stanford and higher than that of Penn and Duke. (There’s an available link in the Tufts forum.)
@OldFashioned1, well, Ivy/equivalent acceptance percentages are below or close to 10% these days, though UMich OOS probably has lower numbers than those listed.
UIUC CS numbers are even crazier. Median ACT of 34 for accepted students. Acceptance rate below 20% now. Probably close to 10%.
A decade ago, both UMich and NYU (outside of it’s elite specialized schools) probably could still have been safeties for a top 1% kid.
These days, of the Ivies/equivalents and even the near-Ivies I have
(http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1893105-ivy-equivalents-ranking-based-on-alumni-outcomes-take-2-1-p1.html), maybe only some of the LACs (Reed, Bryn Mawr, Oberlin, Smith, Vassar for guys, definitely NCF) as well as UW-Madison may be considered close to safeties for a top 1% kid.
Also some top unis in the UK (Imperial, Edinburgh, KCL, UCL, St. Andrews if they get a lot of 5’s on AP’s) though they’re a bit different and McGill and UToronto in Canada.
Essentially, UW-Madison is the UMich of 10 years ago. The scary thing is if UW-Madison becomes as competitive to get in to as UMich is now 10 years hence.
Final numbers aren’t out yet but Michigan’s overall admit rate for 2016 will probably be about 25%. But its in-state admit rate has been hovering around 50%, which means that its OOS admit rate is probably somewhere around 18%—and both figures lower for engineering. It gets far more OOS than in-state applicants because the in-state pool of HS grads has been shrinking, and because in-state GCs generally advise all but the most highly qualified not to bother applying.
But then I would hardly classify Michigan as a “middle tier” school. Back in the day, many highly qualified OOS applicants viewed it as a safety. That would be a foolish assumption these days.
Exactly @twoinanddone. I took the SAT once, took the one and only AP class at my school, had an average but not exceptionally high unweighted GPA with medium rigor, decent EC’s. Only two years of a foreign language and worse, only two of high school math!!! My school didn’t rank. As a result, salutatorian was a honorary position shared by two who auditioned for it as a speaking part if you will. I was one.
Fwiw my school district still doesn’t rank or weight actually but there are a lot more AP’s now.
I applied to two schools. A safety and a reach. I’d also like to think I too would have stepped up to the plate to get into my school with today’s standards. I did what I needed to do to get in back then and I might have a chance now even why today’s standards but it wouldn’t be a safety. It isn’t for anyone locally anymore.
It never occurred to me to be remotely concerned about admittance at the time.
And yet I know kids this year who were waitlisted at Harvard, accepted to Notre Dame yet only given pre engineering and not direct admit, and a high stats kid going for a non impacted major waitlisted.
Applications were up 18% this year. Insane. And that’s at a barely “below” middle tier flagship by the latest rankings as it slid a few points.
@PurpleTitan Acceptance rate doesn’t really mean much to me, is subject to gaming, etc. I was more-so looking at ACT and GPA, which are 9 percentile for U-M’s College of Engineering.
@oldfashioned1 “I was more-so looking at ACT and GPA, which are 9 percentile for U-M’s College of Engineering.”
Michigan’s numbers do look good, and continue to improve rapidly, but that data is for admitted students, not enrolled students, so it may not be representative of the students who attend. idk
@oldfashioned1
“Median HS GPA for Admitted First Year Students 3.9
Median ACT for Admitted First Year Students 33
Median SAT for Admitted First Year Students 1450”
Perhaps the wording is confusing but each of these says “Admitted.” If they meant “Enrolled” I am pretty sure they would have said that.
@twoinanddone You can’t compare NE public schools to the midwestern publics. There is a history that led to a very different culture in these areas. Long ago, when there were very few colleges in the US, when the first publics were being created, colleges like Harvard, Yale and others lobbied hard against creation of competition in MA, NY etc. This restricted funding for SUNY and UMass etc whereas in other places such as MI there was no such lobbying effort. One would think by now the northeastern publics could have overcome this, but they are not fully recovered. Just yesterday the NY Times published a report on CUNY
NY 's goal is to educate many at low cost, but not always with such high quality. I tried sending my kid to CUNY honors college, and the info in the above article was true. He transferred to an elite private and I am paying now. Other SUNY schools we looked at, spent on dorms more than academics. Believe me, wish I could spend < 1/2 the cost of education and have my kids in CUNY/SUNY. Not an elitism issue, an issue of opportunity at a price, the question is if one can afford the opportunity and/or gets aid/scholarships. If we could not afford, could have lived with an adequate education, but that is what it is, adequate. Having same kid in a top private and underfunded public gave us first hand insight. S2 going straight to elite private too, not going to waste a year experimenting again.
i just graduated from my university and I have no idea what my SAT/ACT scores are. I just know I took the SAT twice and the ACT once. I never really thought about how competitive schools are. I didn’t even know until recently that UVA was such a big deal around the country ha. I didn’t know that University of Richmond existed/ that it was competitive. Its hard for me to decide what “middle tier” is.
Well, I think you really CAN compare NE attitudes toward public schools with Midwestern (or southern, or California) attitudes. In NE, children may not be brought up expecting to go to UMASS or UCONN or a SUNY, but in other areas that’s exactly what happens. In Texas, UT is often the first choice. In Michigan and Wisonsin, the flagships are the goal. Not everyone goes to the flagship, but no one thinks those who do have made a lesser choice.
No judgment. I know people from NE, and have seen many who post here, who consider the big publics in the NE states as unacceptable, as horrible schools they’d never send their kids to. That attitude just doesn’t exist in Wisconsin or Michigan or Texas. When I lived in Florida, same thing. UF or FSU was the first choice, not a fall back if a better school didn’t come along. Did everyone go to UF? No, but those who did were considered the smartest kids, not those who can’t get into or afford other schools. Kids do go to Duke and Emory and MIT, and that’s great, but there aren’t big oohs and aahs that those are better than UF, just different choices.
I just know I took the SAT twice and the ACT once. I never really thought about how competitive schools are. I didn’t even know until recently that UVA was such a big deal around the country ha. I didn’t know that University of Richmond existed/ that it was competitive. Its hard for me to decide what “middle tier” is.