<p>Thought this might be helpful for the class of 2016 applicants</p>
<p>Student</a> Profile - Office of Undergraduate Admissions</p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<p>Interesting - SFS has the highest SAT scores and percentile rank, but also the highest admissions rate (20.7%). Those admissions rate numbes are deceiving. I don’t think SFS is the easiest school to get into.</p>
<p>^ I agree that those numbers could be very deceiving to prospective applicants. The numbers don’t really correspond with other stats we’d heard at the Parent’s Open House about how selective the SFS was due to the caliber of applicants each year. I read somewhere that the SFS applicants tend to be HYPS caliber. I don’t know that there is really any way to quantify that claim. </p>
<p>Admissions is this sort of nebulous black box and it is hard to say how or why the admit rate was so high for SFS. Perhaps they had an extraordinary number of very high achieving applicants and decided to admit more than usual (knowing that Georgetown was probably #2 or #3 on their list). During the GAAP weekend Dean Kaneda talked about how most SFS applicants have also applied and quite possibly received admission to an Ivy and Georgetown knows they have heavy competition when recruiting SFS admitted students.</p>
<p>Based on feedback and information we and the new students received during New Student Orientation weekend, the College was slightly harder to get into this year than was SFS and the referenced profile stats support it.</p>
<p>Not included in the profile is an interesting stat that was provided in the Convocation address. Of the 1,624 new students in the Georgetown class of 2015, 791 of them were ranked either 1st, 2nd or 3rd in their graduating classes.</p>
<p>I read somewhere that the SFS applicants tend to be HYPS caliber. I don’t know that there is really any way to quantify that claim.</p>
<p>The main quantifiable variables for making such cross-comparisons are standardized test ranges (25%-75% being the most common) and class rank rates. The admissions office puts out a very detailed statistical profile of its admissions each year that it sends to high school counselors nationwide. If you’re really curious, you can ask your counselor to see it (if the counselor doesn’t have one, (s)he can ask the admissions office for one).</p>
<p>The basic story on the SFS admit rate is that it is a very self-selecting pool: very few people apply to the SFS on a lark or indifferently. If you’re undeclared, you’re automatically in the College’s pool, which serves to drive down its admit rate. By contrast, the SFS is a pretty specialized school, so by and large the people applying to it are either truly interested in International Affairs or are simply picked it because it has the most ‘name value’ and is often viewed as being the most prestigious. Either way, the people who fall into those groups tend to be more affluent, more well-informed, and with higher quantitative credentials - hence the higher admit rate.</p>
<p>Having said all that, the ‘gap’ between the schools continues to close.</p>
<p>^ Lots of good points dzleprechaun… AvonHSDad you are also absolutely correct that this year the Collge acceptance rate was lower than the SFS acceptance rate. No doubt there was tough competition for all the schools, especially with so many accepted students ranked in the top 3 of their respective classes. </p>
<p>Across the board all the schools are quite selective but what I was trying to point out by agreeing with 1789 was that traditionally the SFS has an extremely high-achieving, competitive applicant pool that perhaps wouldn’t translate as clearly to prospective students seeing 20.7 acceptance rate (highest among all the schools this year). If a prospective student were playing a numbers game to simply try to get into Georgetown (just a terrible, terrible idea), it would seem that their very best “odds” would be with SFS. My hope is that students will research, research, research, if they are at all undecided, and not rely solely on acceptance rates.</p>