<p>The toughest schools to get into in order are:</p>
<ol>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Cal Tech</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
</ol>
<p>What are these rankings based on?</p>
<p>Straight from P. Review's website:</p>
<p>"Admissions Selectivity Rating
This rating measures how competitive admissions are at the school. This rating is determined by several institutionally-reported factors, including: the class rank, average standardized test scores, and average high school GPA of entering freshmen; the percentage of students who hail from out-of-state; and the percentage of applicants accepted. By incorporating all these factors, our Admissions Selectivity Rating adjusts for "self-selecting" applicant pools. University of Chicago, for example, has a very high rating, even though it admits a surprisingly large proportion of its applicants. Chicago's applicant pool is self-selecting; that is, nearly all the school's applicants are exceptional students. This rating is given on a scale of 60-99. Please note that if a school has an Admissions Selectivity Rating of 60*, it means that the school did not report to us all of the statistics that go into the rating by our deadline."</p>
<p>So what, exactly does that mean? </p>
<p>An what happened to your claim that they take into account the median SAT score of the applicant group, (a statistic that is not generally available?)</p>
<p>You seem very concerned with Harvard's selectivity rankings in US News and PR. I think that there are much more important things about a school than rankings, which change from year to year (except, remarkably, for pton, which has held at least a share of #1 in u.s. news for 5 years in a row). Of course, as a future tiger, I like seeing that princeton is rated as more selective than harvard in usnews and p.review, but I definitely recognize that such small differences are basically meaningless, and likely to change, and that you'll find much more of a difference between the schools in real-world, tangible areas, like campus environment, classroom size, etc. Rankings change. Don't put TOO much stake in them.</p>
<p>As for my original comment about P.R.'s methodology, it was pretty on target. What happened to your claim that the rankings were done by student survey? To answer your question, reading the paragraph that P.R. provides, it sounds like, when factoring in the admission percentage, and quality of admitted students, Princeton is the 2nd most selective, behind MIT, and Harvard is #5. For US news, i think they use a similar method, and I think they have pton at #2 and harvard at #4. Something like that. Don't shoot the messenger. Please :(</p>
<p>The only "rankings" issue about which I am "concerned" is that any applicant take the silly PR rankings seriously.</p>
<p>As for Harvard, I'm not concerned about what USNews or anybody else decrees to be the true measure of "selectivity", as long as it continues to get more than its fair share of the top students every year. From what I can tell, it is continuing to be quite successful in this regard.</p>
<p>As for your point about the "survey", aspect, I read the vague and elusive PR explanation of its rankings as confessing that most are based on the silly, non-scientific "surveys" of people not asked to (and certainly not capable of) comparing schools.</p>
<p>PR goes on to say that the remaining 6 "rankings" - including "toughest to get into" - are based "in part" on the surveys and in part on information obtained from the colleges. As we know, that information could not possibly have included an accurate comparison of the academic strength of the applicant pools at the respective ccolleges, since such information is not generally available.</p>
<p>USNews - while imperfect in many ways (and certainly in the way it calculates "selectivity") at least does its best to rely on real statistical data for its markers, and is forthcoming about how its formula works and the precise weights given to various factors.</p>
<p>You are only attacking USNews for its selectivity rankings because Harvard wasn't put number 1......</p>
<p>agreed.....</p>
<p>I'm hardly "attacking" USNews, which is far more responsible than PR in preparing its rankings. More often than not, over the last 15 years, Harvard has been #1 overall, and Harvard and Princeton have tied for #1 the last two years.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, its "selectivity" rating formula is becoming harder to credit each year because of problems with each of the markers used:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>They dropped "yield" a year ago because of political pressure from people who accused them of encouraging the spread of ED programs;</p></li>
<li><p>The "% of students in the top 10% of the class" number is becoming increasingly meaningless, as fewer and fewer high schools rank their classes, and the disparity between the quality of schools skews the results. Just look at the California state colleges.</p></li>
<li><p>GPAs are less and less significant, due to extreme grade inflation at the high school level;</p></li>
<li><p>SAT scores are flattening out, and rising overall, as the College Board reacts to loud criticisms that its test rewards well-to-do-and white applicants and discriminates against poorer applicants of color;</p></li>
<li><p>Many observers have noted that certain schools "play games" in order to lower their "acceptance rate" by increasing the number of applications - often from unqualified students who they can then reject. Nobody really polices what constitutes an "application" and in some cases it is suspected that merely returning a card requesting information counts as a "application" - and that announced totals include many "applications" that were either withdrawn or never completed.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The top schools for each are the same.</p>
<p>Atlantic Monthly top 10 & PR Selectivity top 10</p>
<ol>
<li>MIT </li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>California Institute of Technology</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
</ol>
<p>I appreciate the detailed back-and-forth about evaluation of undergraduate math programs, which is what I wanted to hear more information about. I'm not so sure that the difference between Harvard's and Princeton's math programs is so much an ordinal difference of excellence ("this is the top program") as it is a qualitative, multifactorial difference of fit ("this program is my kind of program"). Plainly Harvard's math concentration is sought after by many strong math students, and plainly both H and P are in a completely different league (as to what classmates they draw into one's first-year classes) from many other schools that are nonetheless considered to have strong math departments. </p>
<p>Good luck to everyone waiting for admission decisions this year.</p>
<p>Byerly, there really is no way to talk to you if you whine about every ranking that doesn't place Harvard at the top and only believe in the ones that do.</p>
<p>I've defended USNews for years as the worst ranking there is "except for all the others" - to paraphrase Winston Churchill. </p>
<p>And while they've ranked Harvard and Princeton jointly #1 the last two years, they had Princeton as #1 and Harvard as #2 for a couple of years before that.</p>