The TRUE Top 25 Universities in the US

College Search & Selection
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<p>No one can ever use Forbes for support to any college ranking argument. It’s so BS. The first public school is UVA at 46. Do you honestly think VMI (65) is superior to NYU?</p>

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<p>No. Would you honestly claim that X and Y are equally selective if they have the same average SAT scores and GPAs? All of us who’ve been through admissions at elite universities know this isn’t the case. The numbers get your “foot in the door,” but what distinguishes those accepted tends to be non-quantifiable factors like their accomplishments and leadership. (Of course, plenty of those who are rejected have these as well.) And I think you’re kidding yourself if you think that the 8k students accepted at USC are inferior on average to the 14k students accepted at NYU. (I would say that the top 8k at each are probably about the same on average; NYU just accepts a lot more students.)</p>

83

<p>No, of course there is more to selectivity than GPA, SAT and so on and so forth. But you asserted that, unquestionably, NYU’s student body is inferior to USC’s; and you don’t meet the epistemic standards for asserting that. It may very well be your opinion that USC’s student body is superior to NYU’s, and of course, by that token, someone else can equally hold that NYU’s student body is superior to USC’s. It all depends on what you mean by ‘superior’, who’s the person making the assertion, what their epistemic standards are and so on and so forth. </p>

<p>Without having absolute knowledge of the actual student bodies at each school, your best measures available to you are objective ones (GPA, SAT and so on and so forth). As such, you ought only make assertions based on widely available objective figures; as your subjective opinions have not met epistemic standards for being asserted. That is to say that, if you’re going to state the “USC’s student body is superior to NYU’s” you need to make it clearly specific that it is a subjective opinion you are stating; as you have no objective factors to prove that your subjective opinion is correct.</p>