<p>The new December, 2005 version is now online</p>
<p>About 20% longer than the earlier version, at 52 pages, there is greater analysis of the impact of ED programs, and a breakdown by intended majors in addition to the overall ranking. They now show separate rankings for those interested in the sciences and the humanities respectively.</p>
<p>I think the authors are trying to box USNews etc into incorporating some of their findings and measures, which, it is argued, would counteract the manipulation of "selectivity" numbers via excessive use of ED programs, and "strategic admissions" practices, in order to affect USNews rankings, etc.</p>
<p>Go to THIS site... scroll down to near the bottom, and you can open up/download the September, 2004 version in a PDF file by clicking on the "Stanford Law" button:</p>
<p>Before people put way too much stock in this, here is a sentence from their first paragraph:
"Because we do not have a fully representative sample of college applicants, we rank only about a hundred undergraduate programs
and our ranking is an EXAMPLE, not definitive."</p>
<p>PLEASE, reread that sentence a few times!!!!!!</p>
<p>In other words, they show how one, in principle, can construct such a ranking, and then proceed to use it on incomplete data to show you
an EXAMPLE of what it would look like... IT IS NOT DEFINITIVE.</p>
<p>So please, ignore small differences in rankings... they are NOT SIGNIFICANT.</p>
<p>Not all differences are small, particularly at the top. As one moves down the food chain that becomes more true, as the authors' point out, and would remain true even with a great deal more data.</p>
<p>This study is interesting, but still not very useful to any one particular
real applicant... if one were admitted to both Harvard & Princeton, say... one would still have to decide for oneself which was a better personal fit.
The fact that the majority (but not all) of people in your situation chose Harvard in the past, is a VERY rough guide, but still does not mean one should choose Harvard for oneself.</p>
<p>Also, seeing how some of the 17 and 18 year-olds on this site make decisions, I'm not convinced that their collective "wisdom" as measured in this study (though better than any one given individual) is necessary dispositive of anything.</p>
<p>99 out of 100 college applicants will be prefectly happy wherever they wind up.</p>
<p>For most of the ablest applicants, the only "fit" that really matters is whether the school at which they enroll will have a sufficient concentration of equally able fellow students with which to interact.</p>
<p>It is THIS quite reasonable consideration that causes the top applicants to disproportionately seek a place at an institution at or near the top of the academic food chain.</p>
<p>Nonsense... you just pulled that stat out of your azz...
99 out of 100? Not even close.
And I'm NOT talking about the difference between Harvard and Bunker Hill Community College. Between Harvard & Princeton, or Harvard & Stanford, or Harvard & Brown, or Harvard & (fill in any school in top 25), it is just splitting hairs.</p>
<p>I think Byerly is pointing out a common truth: most students really are happy wherever they end up. That is overwhelmingly the case with college students, especially at top ranked universities.</p>
<p>Odds are that the student choosing between Harvard and Princeton will be happy at either school, no matter which he or she chooses, so the differences in what people refer to as "fit" are probably minimal.</p>
<p>Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but weren't the surveys upon which this study were based conducted in 1999-2000? If this is the case, than Princeton's apparent preference for strategic admissions is obsolete - Byerly himself has admitted that Janet Lavin Rapelye seems much more comitted to going head to head with competitors for top students than was her predecessor, Fred Hargadon, allegedly a notorious promoter of strategic admissions.</p>
<p>candlize...
I don't think that is all Byerly is implying... he's trying to make the case that since a student, in principle, will be happy at Harvard or Princeton, then that student should choose Harvard.</p>
<p>Sure, a student could be very happy at Harvard or Princeton... but if the student prefers Princeton, and feels that he/she might be slightly happier there, then the student should choose Princeton. Same goes for any two schools in roughly the top 25 or so... it should not matter to a particular student that the majority of cross-admits choose Harvard over Princeton... if the student could be happy at either but happier at Princeton, go for it.</p>
<p>I think Byerly is trying to imply that since a student will most likely be happy no matter where he/she ends up, thenm one shouldn't prattle on about "fit" and go for the "best", as revealed in this study.</p>
<p>Zephyr...
Don't worry about it... it is insignificant difference...
do you really think such small differences are that significant?
They admit they are using incomplete data, and the rankings are NOT definitive... so why worry over small differences which are most likely just statistical noise?</p>
<p>Remember that this is a remassaging of the same data, and note that with students headed for the sciences Stanford did very well.</p>
<p>The slight upticks for Caltech and MIT in the latest version were (if you read the text) explained by the extreme "self-selecting" character of the applicant group at Caltech and the slightly less "self-selecting" appplicant group at MIT. </p>
<p>In other words, those applying to those schools had already decided that they were willing to accept a school with a narrower focus - sometimes to the exclusion of factors important to more typical top students. </p>
<p>Stanford on the other hand was also competing for students interested in the humanities who very likely decided not to bother applying to Caltech or MIT.</p>
<p>This is the answer, and not anything the prior poster is saying.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that Harvard's Cambridge/Boston location is an important factor in the overwhelming edge it enjoys over Princeton with common admits.</p>
<p>Yale has long understood that it was important to improve the image of New Haven in order to improve the yield rate generally and the cross-admit numbers in particular.</p>
<p>Stanford's weather clearly provides it a recruiting advantage, even if Palo Alto, as a "college town", does not.</p>