<p>Soshi:</p>
<p>I think that top-5% in the traditional suburban Long Island, NJ, Westchester, CT, Boston feeder high schools is still quite plausible for admission to Brown, Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, etc.</p>
<p>These high schools have some of the highest median SAT scores of all public high schools in the country. They are massively over-represented in the elite college admissions pool.</p>
<p>Interesteddad:</p>
<p>You may well be right. But one reason why BU and NYU have been able to improve their academic offerings very substantially is their desirable locations. Profs are the same as undergraduates in this respect. And the increased desirability of NYC and Boston has made it possible for BU and NYU to raise the quality of their students. I believe that, in fact, Silber decreased the size of the student body.</p>
<p>According to a lengthy feature in the Globe a while back, Silber also did a good job selectively building up a few high-profile departments and then leveraging those into increased status for the university. That's the kind of thing that a school has to do to increase prestige.</p>
<p>I think he also made heavy use of target merit-aid incentives to bump median SATs.</p>
<p>I think that top-5% in the traditional suburban Long Island, NJ, Westchester, CT, Boston feeder high schools is still quite plausible for admission to Brown, Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, etc.</p>
<p>See, I don't think so. I live in one of these markets and the kids coming out of our high school are not faring nearly as well as we did a generation earlier. I was startled by how few seniors were admitted to top tier schools this past year--none to Harvard, none to Yale, none to Stanford. It's not a phenomenon limited to the Ivies either. I hear that kids are not getting in anywhere at all and that BU and BC in particular are extremely competitive.</p>
<p>Interesteddad:</p>
<p>You are right about Silber's strategy. I know someone whose child turned down a 1/3 tution offer from BU to attend NYU, paying full freight :(</p>
<p>I have to say I believe it was easier in our day to get into a very good school. And we didn't prepare for the SAT's, didn't start a soup kitchen...we weren't savvy like the prep school kids and their gc's and parents of 30 years ago. The exception for our average at best NJ hs was Princeton...Penn, Cornell, Duke, Michigan, Lehigh, Georgetown were no big deal. Relatively smart kids from my class went to those schools but they weren't the superstars of today we read about on CC. Class rank of 20 or 30 with 1200's (before recentering) got you in these schools, but Princeton was reserved for the really brilliant (or the savvy prep school kid).</p>
<p>The val of my hs class (still one of the smartest people I've ever known) was accepted to Princeton. He turned it down for a $10,000 scholarship to WashU in SL...that was $10,000 for the 4 years, not one!</p>
<p>Set me straight here. Are we talking about "competitive" colleges or "selective" ones? Isn't the difference this: that colleges are 'selective' to varying degrees in their admission policies, while the students enrolled at these colleges are 'competitve' with eachother (as in "cutthroat"), again to varying degrees?</p>
<p>Obviously, applicants are "competing", albeit passively, with others to gain admission but it is not the same thing as being "competitive" once the applicants have been accepted and are on campus. Then it becomes 'active' competition. </p>
<p>A college can be one, both or neither, but the two terms are not interchangeable.</p>
<p>Shoshi,</p>
<p>Going through the college process for the second time in 3 years I have noticed that much has changed since I went to college in the mid-70s. Quality and competitiveness is not reserved for the Ivy league schools. NYU, BU, BC and USC all receive more applications for their freshman class than any of the Ivy league schools. All have excellent and improving reputations in their areas of expertise. Note the increasing number of Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, etc. scholars that are coming from these and other schools as another measure of quality.</p>
<p>The acceptance rate at these schools and many others is well below what it was at many of the Ivy league schools in the mid-70s. These schools have the following acceptance rates for the class of 2008, USC - 27%, NYU - 35%, BC - 32% and BU - 55%. Further, if you can rely on SAT scores as a measure, the top 25% of the entering freshman class at all these schools scored 1400+ on their SATs (higher than George Bush and John Kerry even after compensating for re-centering). USC has one of the largest populations of National Merit scholars attending and over 650 students with an SAT score over 1440. 650 students is a little more than half an incoming class at Princeton and more than the whole incoming class at Williams College.</p>
<p>With tuition continuing to increase well beyond the inflation rate I suspect more and more students will investigate merit aid as part of the equation. With merit aid perhaps they will have something left for a grad school of some type.</p>
<p>I have cited a number of private universities inthis post, I would also look at how competitive the state universities are. Particularly in engineering programs. US News lists 4 state schools on their top engineering school list before the first Ivy league school (Cornell). I guess the bottom line is that there are a lot of great schools out there . . . how to sort them is the real problem. ;-)</p>
<p>Vanderbilt</p>
<p>Year / Acceptance / Yield / Number of Apps
2005 / 35.1 / 39.3 / 11643
2004 / 38.2 / 37.5 / 11148
2003 / 40.3 / 35.7 / 10981
2002 / 46.0 / 35.1 / 9674
2001 / 46.4<br>
2000 / 55.2<br>
1999 / 61.4</p>
<p>I just reviewed the sat scores for the last decade for a selection of the top colleges (I'll try and do the same for some of the more average colleges when i get time) and the results were quite surprising - some schools, Hamilton, Trinity, Middlebury, Amherst had considerable rises in SAt scores, while others, Haverford, Carleton, reported little change. A few, Smith College, showed considerable decline. So as far as SAT scores as a measure of selectivity, there seems to be no real pattern among the top schools.</p>
<p>Yet, Vanderbilt gives merit aid (an average of $17,000) to a whopping 13% of its students. That tells you that, depsite the rapid rise in the raw number of apps (thank you on-line common app), they still do not feel that they can attract the class they want without discount incentives.</p>
<p>If doubling the number of apps were generating real additional quality instead of filling the trash bins at the admissions office, they'd drop that merit aid in heartbeat.</p>
<p>I doubt if the real odds for a solid Vanderbilt applicant have changed much at all. Top 2% class rank, 1400 SATs - admitted every time five years ago at Vandy. Admitted everytime, today. Bump the SATs up to 1500 and get a nice fat merit-discount to sweeten the pie.</p>
<p>Where did you see that 13% of students recieve merit aid?</p>
<p>Vanderbilt's website:
"Each year, Vanderbilt awards honor or merit-based scholarships to approximately 5% of all applicants based on exceptional accomplishment and high promise in intellectual endeavors. These awards range from $5000 to full tuition..."</p>
<p>And I doubt that a top 2% class rank and 1500 would be sufficient to get a "nice fat merit-discount." I'm in the college scholar program (where everyone has 75% to full tuition - what I would consider a "fat" discount) and the average SAT is 1561, the vast majority were ranked first in their class, with a few ranked second, and there were other impressive curricular and extracurricular accomplishments. </p>
<p>I'd like to make reference to an excerpt of an article from the Vanderbilt Torch:</p>
<p>"Everybody wins when merit-based aid is available: the student through receiving a low-price, high-quality education, and the university by retaining a scholar and increasing its prestige. The only losers when merit-based scholarships are available are those universities unwilling to compete for bright students without regards to their financial need.</p>
<p>"Most fads that start in California eventually end up sweeping the nation. Lets hope that the trend against merit-based aid only amounts to a brief flash in the pan."</p>
<p>Of course the most prestigious universities don't have to award merit aid since their applicant pool is already incredibly strong. But for a school outside of the top very few spots, merit aid allows it to improve the quality of its student body, which causes a higher caliber of students to matriculate in later years.</p>
<p>Also, I take issue with your assertion that the selectivity of Vanderbilt has not increased. Looking at the "stats" of incoming classes shows dramatic increases in SAT scores and class ranks, two solid indicators of the academic strength of the student body.</p>
<p>to answer the original question, average schools that are now competive, in terms of LACS, Muhlenberg, Hendrix, Southwestern, Skidmore and Dickinson come to mind.</p>
<p>I have pretty good data on comparative admit rates, SATs,etc for circa 1971 vs. circa 2003. However 1971 is a lot more than ten years ago.</p>
<p>monydad, your info available on the net? I have stats from 1997
<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/19970129081622/www.usnews.com/usnews/EDU/COLLEGE/cat01_1.htm%5B/url%5D">http://web.archive.org/web/19970129081622/www.usnews.com/usnews/EDU/COLLEGE/cat01_1.htm</a></p>
<p>So, Swarthmore's acceptance rate was 45-50% in the early 80's. Didn't the US News rankings start in the mid-80's? I guess being near the top of the LAC list has helped them move from mid-pack to the top. Probably the marketing and admissions and public relations people there recognized early that they could capitalize on this and tailor their numbers to the rankings criteria so they could stay on top.</p>
<p>....could also be that some schools (like Swarthmore) have historically been considered to be safety schools to some of the more select schools, and we are seeing a "trickle down" effect. The two kids that matriculated to Swarthmore from S's school had it as their number 3 choice. They were both rejected from their first and second choice schools.</p>
<p>Speedo I have similar data for about 100 schools, for circa 1971 and circa 2004, but they are not posted on the internet.</p>
<p>The data from your link, if you had it for more schools, could easily be used to answer the OPs questions, since the recent data is readily available.</p>
<p>When I compiled my data I was interested in seeing how the relative standing of the schools, from an admissions standpoint, had changed from when I was a student. I wanted to update my own impressions of the schools. I wasn't interested in looking at any time periods in between.</p>
<p>So I can tell you where the big changes are from 30+ years ago, but from 5-10 years ago I don't really know.</p>
<p>monydad. from that link you can access most LACs and universities and their stats in 1997, 9 years ago. By comparing SATS you can get a good impression of which schools are becoming more competitive, but it's on a case by case basis, Amherst has had a large rise in scores, while Swarthmore has risen only moderately. Middlebury scores have risen rapidly while Colgates have shown only a modest growth. Demographics may explain some of it, but the differences between schools is interesting - why should scores at two similar schools not show the same pattern.</p>
<p>As for the comment on Swarthmore back in the eighties, S was a very different place back then and although it was a top rated LAC, the emphasis was not quite so high on scores. They had a change in administration and philosophy in the mid eighties. Got rid of football in the 90's etc. I really doubt they have to manipyulate their numbers. When you have a billion dollar endowment you are going to attract top students - it's just how you define top students - that's essentially what it's all about.</p>
<p>Top students can only be found at schools with lots of money? That's how you define top students? What an elitist notion/reality/proposition/whatever. Not saying that you are an elitist, but it is sorta sad that this implies that only the wealthy, or only those who are even aware of the wealth of schools like Swarthmore, Pomona, Williams, etc, schools the general public doesn't know about, really get to participate in that level of quality education.</p>