<p>The</a> Most Popular National Universities - US News and World Report</p>
<p>I didn't realize these numbers were public...when did USN start publishing this?</p>
<p>Looking at yield without considering whether a school uses early decision, and to what extent, is hardly relevant.</p>
<p>Geography and demographics also are important in interpreting what “popular” means.</p>
<p>BYU is a geographic and demographic outlier. It has something of a captive market. So do public universities in underpopulated Western states with fewer in-state options.</p>
<p>Top students are the students with the most choices (because they can get admitted to the most colleges, with the best aid). All the Ivies (and other highly selective private schools) attract many applications from top students from all over the country and the world. I assume the University of Alaska does not.</p>
<p>^ agreed. BYU and Yeshiva have high yields because of their desirability to a small portion of the population, i.e. those whose religious affiliation is the same. States where there is really only one “main” public university (or where the students don’t have many other options) will tend to have higher yield rates, like the Dakotas, Florida, Alaska, etc. For that same reason, Berkeley and UCLA have comparatively low rates (both around 40%), because they eat into each others’ yields every year. (In another world, where California were divided into two states and you got preference/in-state tuition only for the one you live in, both yields would probably be much higher.)</p>
<p>^That wouldn’t explain why schools like caltech, JHU, Carnegie Mellon, UChicago have relatively low yields since those schools should qualify as being desirable to a smaller portion of the population</p>
<p>Those schools may be desirable to a small portion of the population, but that population may find several other schools to be similarly desirable (or at least within range where differences in financial aid can swing the decision).</p>
<p>For example, someone who applies to Caltech may also apply to MIT, Harvey Mudd, and a few other schools which s/he also considers desirable. And, for many of the subjects that students attend these types of schools for, many less expensive state flagships, or other highly selective private schools with super-generous financial aid, are also very good options.</p>
<p>Yield has been a public data point via IPEDS for a long, long time. I’ve got a paper I’m trying to publish now that compares yield to consumer sentiment regarding the economy at large.</p>
<p>It is impossible to compare with any real meaning the yields of such disparate universities which serve different populations, have different acceptance policies etc.
-Some schools lock in almost half their class ED with virtually 100% yield so schools that only have EA can’t compete with those numbers since there is no one group that will get close to such a high yield.
-Other excellent schools (JHU, CM) are often used as a safety for Ivy type schools and end up with lower yields despite their outstanding reputations and education.<br>
-Other schools (BUY, Yeshiva) are the most attractive, or even the only viable option for a small population.
-And some flagship state universities are just where virtually everyone in the state goes.</p>
<p>But what you can do with real meaning is compare the trends of each school’s yield rates over time and then relate the trends with external variables. Doing so takes out of the equation reasons that some schools’ yields will differ from one another.</p>
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<p>I don’t think this is true anymore for JHU, maybe 5 years ago, but JHU’s acceptance rate has declined a lot over the past few years.</p>
<p>^ There’s a category of school I call not a “safety” but a “back-up,” where high-stats kids with Ivy aspirations apply, thinking it’s a reasonable fallback if they don’t get into any of the super-selective schools of their dreams. They’re not safeties because they’re highly selective in their own right, but they do end up accepting a lot of high-stats kids who end up going elsewhere, and their yields suffer for it. Johns Hopkins is in that category, along with schools like Emory, WUSTL, Carnegie Mellon, and to some extent even Duke. My impression is that these schools are not the first choice of many people who end up there, but they’re seen as an acceptable 2d, 5th, or Nth choice. Among publics, Michigan and UVA also play this role for some OOS applicants, as well as for some high-stats, high-aspiration in-state applicants.</p>
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That’s true of almost any school in the country outside of Harvard, MIT, Notre Dame, Yeshiva, BYU and possibly Stanford. I would say over 50% of Yale and Princeton students would jump ship to Harvard if they were given the opportunity initially before they began freshman year and Harvard’s yield figures confirm this notion. Most students luckily end up loving the college they enroll in and couldn’t imagine being anywhere else but during the application stage senior year of high school, they’re highly fickle creatures.</p>
<p>I’ve observed among my friends that there exists a distinct tiering of institutional prestige among the USNWR Top 30 schools for the high-achieving student with no financial concerns in a major urban area like New York City who wishes to conduct a truly national search of college destinations. It goes as follows:</p>
<p>Tier 1
Harvard</p>
<p>Tier 2
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT</p>
<p>Tier 3
Brown
Columbia
Dartmouth
Penn
Cornell
Caltech
Duke</p>
<p>Tier 4
Georgetown
University of Chicago
Johns Hopkins
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Washington University in St. Louis
Vanderbilt
Rice</p>
<p>Tier 5
Emory
Carnegie Mellon
Berkeley
UCLA
USC
UNC
Michigan-Ann Arbor
Wake Forest
Tufts</p>
<p>I predict that Chicago will move into Tier 3, Columbia will move into Tier 2 and Stanford will move into Tier 1 in desirability in the coming decade but it should be interesting to see what happens.</p>
<p>That’s cute goldenboy, but you have no idea what you’re talking about. These aren’t based on actual yield rates (otherwise, Chicago > Caltech, Georgetown > Duke) - they’re based on your own silly ideas of how students pick. Do you know enough students that have actually chosen between these schools to know how they actually pick? You don’t, so stop pretending that you do.</p>
<p>Also, stop advocating for Chicago. You’re trying to boost Duke’s prestige by showing how it’s on-par with Chicago by advocating for both in a high-school message board that highly underrates Chicago. Guess what? Chicago and Duke aren’t even in the same tier. Chicago has literally over 10x the Nobel Prizes that Duke has, ranks way over Duke in the Forbes’ Richest Alumni list, KILLS Duke in every single respected national and internationally ranking, and is generally regarded as a better school among the vast majority of highly educated people (which no, does not include the high school or college students who post here). So stop it. Chicago might have a 2% lower yield, but its students’ average SATs are the same as Harvard’s and WAY above Duke’s - the same reason that Caltech is a better school despite having a lower yield. So please. Stop it.</p>
<p>Jeez, phuriku. Take a chill pill! Everyone on these boards is entitled to his opinion. That’s one of the major problems with CC lately; there is one “right” opinion, and it must be proven even if it takes 20 pages. It’s really not necessary. If you’re a Rice student and you see someone posting about how Georgetown is more prestigious than Rice, you either shrug your shoulders and move on or you politely interject your own opinion. There’s no need to bludgeon someone with rankings and statistics until he “agrees” (i.e. concedes to avoid another 20 pages of discussion). </p>
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This was once the case but no longer. Several years ago, sure, it wasn’t terribly popular on these boards and was primarily known for its high admit rate and quirky essays. The attitude toward Chicago today is nearly the complete opposite, since many CCers are falling over themselves to apply. (It helps that many high schoolers style themselves intellectuals or nerds for understanding some jokes on The Big Bang Theory or having read Atlas Shrugged. :rolleyes:)</p>
<p>Chicago has been mentioned in the same breath as the Ivies for several years now, and several people have even placed it above all other colleges up to and including Harvard. The general differences in attitude toward the recent US News ranking of Columbia (“Columbia above Stanford? This is crazy! Overrated! Ivy bias!”) and Chicago (“Good for it! It’s so underrated! It’s the best undergraduate education in the country!”) in the top 5 were quite telling. I’d say Chicago’s reputation here is right about where it should be. In the CC dream colleges poll, for example, [Chicago</a> placed #6](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13739746-post1119.html]Chicago”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13739746-post1119.html).</p>
<p>One can make an argument for poor Tufts being underrated, forever associated with the eponymous syndrome, or WUStL, forever scorned for marketing and use of the waitlist, or W&M or Olin. Heck, Hopkins arguably has the most justified shot at “the most underrated” title these days. Chicago? Far from it.</p>
<p>I wasn’t trying to make the point that it’s underrated. It IS underrated on CC (although not nearly as much as some other schools), but that’s not the point. The point is: goldenboy needs to stop using Chicago in every single one of his goddamn posts. It’s condescending and annoying.</p>
<p>He’s always making posts saying “Oh, Chicago’s on its way up!” Chicago’s not on its way up, you idiot. It’s already there. For instance, look at the list he just posted. Somehow, Duke’s in Tier 3 but Chicago’s in Tier 4. This is despite the fact that Chicago has a much higher % of students in the top 10% of their classes and much higher SATs. By US News standards, Chicago’s winning a whole lot more of the best students than Duke is (and this is also true by a number of other measures). But no… goldenboy wants to say that Duke is Tier 3 and Chicago is Tier 4, and then he justifies this absurd placement by saying that he thinks Chicago is on its way up! He wants to look like he’s unbiased by standing up for the little guy, when he’s actually just trying to boost Duke’s rep by associating it with Chicago and placing Duke above Chicago in every single post that he makes. Just look at his other posts, for Christ’s sake!</p>
<p>And look, it’s not like he’s doing Chicago a service… goldenboy is often lambasted for his ridiculous viewpoints. Did you see him whine about Duke (and Chicago) not being part of the Ivy Plus? (Of course, his claim was that “Duke is always considered an Ivy Plus, but look… Chicago is often seen as one too, so include them both!” Actually, it’s the other way around, as another poster pointed out; he was just trying to use Chicago as a stepping stone for his own Duke trollery.) I’d much rather him leave Chicago out of it and be the candid, shameless Duke supporter that he really is.</p>
<p>“The general differences in attitude toward the recent US News ranking of Columbia (“Columbia above Stanford? This is crazy! Overrated! Ivy bias!”) and Chicago (“Good for it! It’s so underrated! It’s the best undergraduate education in the country!”) in the top 5 were quite telling.”</p>
<p>Also, that’s ridiculous. More people think that Chicago’s place is undeserved than people who think that Columbia’s place is undeserved. Next year, Chicago will almost surely be #4 though, and you’ll start to hear more and more complaining.</p>
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<p>wouldn’t that include opinions which convey that they don’t like the opinions of others? lol.</p>
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<p>He also placed Cornell as a tier 3 school even though it, brown, and dartmouth should probably be tier-4 schools. (notice how none of the ivies are below tier 3; also notice how his tier-5 basically corresponds to the USN 20-30) And Columbia should probably be tier 2 (along with Chicago and Caltech.)</p>
<p>But you should note in his OP that he said these are based on what he’s “observed” with his friends. Although it makes one wonder exactly how such a thing would be observed. My guess is it was something like “I heard Derpy McDerp chose Columbia over Chicago so i guess that means that Columbia is more prestigious than Chicago.”</p>
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There are multiple sources I have seen including sites that contain self-reported data like Parchment, the Revealed Preference Ranking, information directly from Duke Admissions office as well as my own personal observations that show that Duke and even Georgetown are preferred to Chicago by high school seniors. The pendulum might be swinging to Chicago’s side but it hasn’t swung yet so there’s no reason to act so defensive and insult me.</p>
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Whatever phuriku, we can all pick and choose the statistics that best suit our agenda. Chicago’s average SAT scores aren’t higher than Duke’s by the way-I wish Duke would release the most recent Common Data Set so I could prove you wrong but they haven’t yet.</p>
<p>Duke has much higher placement into professional schools (law, medicine, business), enrolls more NMSC winners, has produced more top fellowship winners (Rhodes, Marshall, Goldwater, Truman, Churchill and Udall) than Chicago.</p>
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You’re taking things way too literally. All I was referring to with that tier system was the desirability of colleges to American high school seniors-nothing more and nothing less. I’ve said this for but I’ll repeat it: Stanford, MIT, Caltech and Duke are the only non-Ivies that win a majority of the cross-admits against Cornell which is the “least desirable Ivy” to high achieving HSers. That’s why I placed Caltech and Duke in Tier 3 and not Chicago. I fully expect for Chicago to win the cross-admit battle against Cornell and possibly other Ivies like Dartmouth in the future so that’s why I added a disclaimer stating that I think it will move up to Tier 3 soon.</p>
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For the nth time, I wasn’t referring to academic quality but rather desirability. Brown, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia and even Cornell win the majority of cross-admit battles against Chicago. Please don’t take things out of context and yes, most high school seniors are slaves of USNWR.</p>
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No, these are mostly Vals and Sals are you would expect would constitue the majority of the demographic choosing between places like Columbia, Duke and Chicago.</p>
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Absolutely, Chicago gets a ton of love from CC. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen the same praise being showered upon in in real life in the U.S. although it’s pretty well-known in India from what I’ve observed.</p>
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We should be joining forces to fight against Ivy bias instead of attacking each other. I have plenty of friends who go to UChi and think its a fantastic school. If you feel that Chicago is a better school than Duke, then so be it. I think that’s a perfectly valid opinion to have. I’d think you were delusional if you were referring to UCLA, Emory or Michigan but you’re not. You and I both know that xiggi was being ridiculous by claiming that applications at “Ivy Plus” were flat when you include Chicago and Duke’s numbers, applications to the top schools were up by a nontrivial amount.</p>
<p>“I’d think you were delusional if you were referring to UCLA, Emory or Michigan but you’re not.”</p>
<p>Another snide statement from a Dukie. I agree with every remark that was made by phuriku. He has goldenboy8784 pegged right down to a tee.</p>
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<p>No. You’re not talking about the desirability of colleges to “American high school seniors” or “high-achieving high school seniors.” You’re talking about the desirability of colleges to one particular elite private high school in NYC that you attend/attended, which is of little use or relevance to students in the remaining 29,999 high schools in America, because believe it or not, elite private high schools in NYC aren’t really all that important except to those who attend them - they are not some bellweather that we all have to admire. Most high achieving high school seniors aren’t such dorks as to categorize the nation’s top 20 or so schools into even finer distinctions.</p>
<p>Moreover, most high achieving high school seniors are smart enough to realize that there is no one universal Platonic ranking that all must follow, as in Harvard > Yale > Brown > Georgetown or whatever. In the real world, there are kids who love Georgetown and wouldn’t give Harvard the time of day. (Insert any other random pair of two from the list.) And that’s exactly as it should be. It’s too sophisticated of a decision to arbitrarily put things into tiers and decree that one must love any and all of a given tier that is above another given tier.</p>