<p>Hey so these are my top schools, some are ED worthy and some are not. Im not asking what school is best or whatever, simply what schools based on your knowledgeable opinion are the most selective. Now, we can go based on acceptance rate alone or SAT average alone, for that we have collegeboard, but I want to know based on other things. For example, Tulane which has an acceptance average of 24% is my safety, but another school with the same acceptance rate is a reach for me. I think that some of the reasons may be that the applicant pool for Tulane is a lot less "elite" than other colleges. So based on applicant pool, SAT/ACT, EC's, applicant pool, acceptance rate, and among other things, please rank these schools from most selective to least selective:</p>
<p>1) Georgetown: Really old, Ivy, therefore elite.
2) UPenn; Same as GTown.
3) Cornell; most of my friends who applied got in (they are however, all valedictorians, etc)
4) Duke
5) Vanderbilt</p>
<p>I think Upenn and Duke is basically a tossup for the most selective. However I might put UPenn more because of wharton, but for non-wharton students, and if you take that out of the mix, it would then be a toss up. Then I think Cornell lowest ivy, but still an ivy. Followed by Georgetown since its a backup for the elite ivy applicants and a match for the one belowe them. I don’t think vanderbilt is at the same level. </p>
<p>For some reason I have this misconception in my head, it may be right or wrong, that Vanderbilt is the Harvard of the south, the dream school of the SEC, and that everyone in the south, in Tennessee, and sorrounding states, or that every southern belle automatically applies there. Do you think that this is true. Do alot of people, a lot of ***** heads that wouldn’t even think about applying to say Duke or Georgetown do they apply to Vandy?</p>
<p>If my top two choices are UPenn(CAS) and Duke, which one would be more selective and by how much? Also if I’m thinking Vandy as an ED, how good is there Financial Aid, and does being a low income URM help more at Vandy than compared to the other schools on the list? Is Vandy really lack that much diversity and do they really need URM applicants?</p>
<p>Here’s some insight into how Duke competes vs other top schools. It’s a couple of years old, but I would imagine that it’s still directionally accurate…</p>
<p>[Duke</a> Magazine-Top of the Crop by Jacob Dagger-January/February 2006](<a href=“Duke Mag”>Duke Mag)</p>
<p>You can see in here that UPenn falls into the “50%” category…</p>
<p>“Based on acceptance rates, Duke continues to fall behind a few choice schools in terms of selectivity. Against five of those schools in particular, Duke faces substantial recruiting obstacles. According to matriculation data, Duke is successful in wooing to campus only about 15 percent of those admitted students who are also accepted to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, or Stanford. Against the next group–Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Penn–Duke does better, enrolling about 50 percent. In recruiting battles against the third five–Georgetown, Chicago, Washington University, Northwestern, and Cornell–Duke is successful about 80 percent of the time.”</p>
<p>Here’s something else that you should really consider if you are trying to decide between Duke and UPenn for Early Decision - while their acceptance rates are comparable for ED applicants (last year Duke was 28%, while UPenn was 26%), Duke filled only 37% of their class with ED applicants (645 out of 1705), while UPenn filled nearly 50% of their class with ED applicants (1195 out of 2420). </p>
<p>Though I’d say that UPenn & Duke are really too close to call, and so are Georgetown and Vanderbilt. Cornell’s right in the middle though, either way.</p>
<p>1) UPenn
2) Duke
3) Cornell
4) Georgetown
5) Vanderbilt</p>
<p>I’d put Penn slightly above Duke, just because UPenn may have a slightly better applicant pool because of its Ivy-League status. Academic-wise, it’d be a toss-up.</p>
<p>@Dukedad, thank you so much for your information. That was more than helpful for me. I will deffinetly consider that. Based on the college board the acceptance rate for UPENN ED, is 32.5 percent, almost 1 in three students. I did not know however that they filled that many kids with their ED plan.</p>
<p>Another thing to take into account is that different colleges within these colleges have different admission rates, therefore it is difficult to paint the whole colleges selctivity with a single brush stroke.</p>
<p>Not that it matters much, but it looks like the College Board stats are from 2010 (they show 1201/3851=31.18%), while the article from the NY Times shows the more recent data from 2011 shows the ED accept rate for UPenn dropped to 26% (1195/4571).</p>