Would you consider UCB, UCLA, Michigan, Virginia, UNC-CH, University of Toronto to be world class universities? They all get more than a third of their undergraduates from their own state or province.
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At our HS, while UChicago is respected, it is also seen as somewhat sketch because of all the games it plays, similar to what you describe. In terms of elo ratings (i.e., where would they go when paired against Cornell, Brown etc), kids rate Chicago below many schools that show up under Chicago in terms of USNews rankings.
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An important aspect to consider in any current discussion of yield protection is how both students and colleges have been impacted by all of the confusion and changes over the last two years.
The short-term result so far has been some abrupt differences to an already stressful process: students applying to 20+ schools due to uncertainty/opportunity over TO policies, burden of more applications on admission offices, inadequacy of historic yields in guiding number of offered places, increased deferrals perhaps entering future classes…or not, students remaining on campus all terms rather than studying abroad, and fewer available transfer places as some universities resort to using hotel and libraries as dorms.
The result of all this unpredictability makes it difficult to ascertain whether some colleges are strategically, intentionally protecting yield or just trying to figure out how to manage in this new environment. The uncertainty is also pressuring applicants to struggle with the decision/regret of committing early or not.
The publics don’t count for this criteria for the world class determination because they have a public mandate to serve their state. The privates better cater to a wider audience. Otherwise they are just a regional school.
Yes, attrition out of engineering is likely to be higher at a less selective school like The University of Alabama compared to a more selective school like Georgia Institute of Technology, simply because the former school has more students who were admitted but have difficulty handling the academics of an engineering major.
This does not, however, mean that a specific student necessarily has a greater or lesser chance of leaving engineering at one school versus another. (There could, however, be non-academic reasons as well as academic reasons that could influence whether the student leaves engineering, or leaves college entirely.)
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I’d say this to that. Magazines make up rankings. Students don’t.
Judging by the top students that are applying, schools like NEU and Tulane are outperforming their level of magazine ranking.
In other words, the market and not a magazine is determining the difficulty of admission
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There is a layer of complexity here . Each school has a different pool. Just because MIT may have a higher acceptance rate than some school like Columbia (I don’t know the numbers; I am trying to make a point) it doesn’t mean Columbia is harder to get into than MIT. Kids self select to apply to particular schools. Pools are very different. NYU is in that bucket — very popular if you poll the country at large . I am not sure whether strong kids apply here for anything other than business or the performing arts.
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Enrolled freshmen:
Northeastern
Current Students mid 50%:
SAT Math 720-780
SAT R/W 690-750
ACT 32-35
Cornell:
SAT Math 720-800
SAT R/W 680-760
ACT 32-35
Northeastern has gotten very competitive in recent years. There is no shortage of top students attending, and we don’t know why “lower” students are accepted over “higher” ones. As noted above, magazine rankings don’t always matter.
I wish your daughter luck- she is clearly an amazing student.
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The numbers for Harvard are not that different.
710-770 on the EBRW section and 750-800 on the math section; on the ACT the range was 33-35.
It doesn’t mean Northeastern is comparably competitive as Harvard. It just means these numbers are not that relevant for top schools. Not a binding constraint. Likewise less relevant for Cornell than they are for Northeastern.
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Regardless, top students are still enrolled at Northeastern.
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Top SAT/ACT scoring students are still enrolled at Northeastern.
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1NJParent, I have to disagree with your statement that most applicants don’t even know what major they want. For starters, students need to apply to a given college within a university, and they have wildly different requirements. The requirements for say, an art program, are very different than those of an engineering school. In fact, to be competitive for some programs students need to take specific classes in HS - think AP science classes and Calc for engineering - so they need to have a college major in mind early in their HS career. I’ll grant that you might have a STEM kid who is undecided between MechE and EE, but they still have a good idea where they want to end up.
Granted, many students do change their minds about their major once in college, and some programs make the decision for them (again, engineering). And I think a humanities student might be less certain about their major than someone pursuing a technical or pre-professional degree.
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Thank you . Presently college admission
it’s a twilight zone . We tell our kids - work hard at school , take hard classes , prep for SAT , assume leadership position at school, do EC that stand out , spend your summer interning or taking summer classes at community college . Well , not enough apparently … not enough ))).
For example -
McGill is in 30 top world school that accept bright and academically advanced kids from all over the world . They do not consider any EC , essays about student personality or hardships . They don’t care if you play trumpet or participate in lacrosse . they don’t really care “ what you going to bring to the campus “ . Student there to study . They accept from the top . Faculty of science cut off acceptance an average A in all science classes from 9-12 grades. The minimum requirements are clearly stated on their web site , that is why their acceptance rate is higher than NEU for example . McGill produced 12 Nobel laureates.))). how many NEU produced? ))))… zero . US education system need to take a long and hard look at their admission practices IMHO.
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I agree 
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Thank you
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Thank you , it’s very kind of you
Your last paragraph may be a common situation. There are probably many college frosh who are undecided on major, but undecided between a small number of majors or a particular grouping of majors, rather than undecided between a wide range of majors.
Almost without exception any highly selective private college has a large overrpresentation of applicants from their home region. They also tend to have a higher yield and larger rate of hooks among applicants from home region, all of which contributes to a larger portion of matriculating students from home region.
For example, I attended a HS in upstate NY. In my upstate NY HS, Cornell was by far the most popular Ivy. Cornell probably received far more applications that the other 7 Ivies combined. There were also a significant number of Cornell legacy kids within my HS. It should not be surprising that we also had far more Cornell matriculations than the other 7 Ivies combined.
My upstate NY HS was not alone in favoring Cornell. According to the Class profile, Cornell gets 38% of its domestic matriculating undergrads from New York State (only including students who are not “unknown”). Only 6% of the US population is from NYS, so this is a tremendous overrepresentation. In contrast, southern states, midwest, and nearly anywhere outside of northeast + CA appears to have an underrpresentation at Cornell. This pattern is not limited to just the land grant colleges. For example, 32% of domestic engineering were from NYS.
Which colleges did you have in mind that do not have a noteworthy overrpresentation from their home region?
I agree that a student deeply interested in STEM is unlikely to major in art, and vice versa. However, there’s a wide range of very different subjects in STEM (and similarly in humanities), which few HS students have had exposures to. Not only they typically haven’t made up their minds between MechE and EE, they probably don’t even know whether they should be in engineering, or math, or one of the sciences (CS may be one of the exceptions right now because of its current popularity).
For many of the large universities (both public and private), students may have to pick the college/school/department that has their potential majors (they may even have to pick the major if their potential major is so popular that it’d be nearly impossible later at some public universities). In those cases, they’re compelled to choose because they don’t want to lose their opportunities, not necessarily because they know what they want to major in.
I never told my kids this except the work hard at school part. No SAT prep unless they were motivated enough to open a review book; leadership position- you think colleges care about being vice president of national honor society or getting yourself elected president of Prom committee? summer classes at community college? what about getting a job- a plain vanilla minimum wage job or lifeguarding or working at a summer camp? And EC’s that stand out- no. EC’s that INTEREST you, because they enrich your life, not to impress some adcom.
This is your beef- not with yield protection. Why would you tell a kid to do an EC which will “stand out” because how the heck can you predict what else other people are doing???
Your D will likely be in great shape come April with wonderful decisions to make, but I think your “formula” is the problem.
One of mine wrote a “kick-%^&” essay about getting grease stains out of a polyester uniform (the uniform you wear mopping floors at a fast-food restaurant when the store closes late at night). Did that stand out? Probably. Did he claim to cure cancer during his “internship”? No. Did he do exotic EC’s? No.
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