<p>The scores are similar but the admit rates are less for Brown/Dartmouth. So Brown/Dartmouth are more selective. It's just simple as that.</p>
<p>But due to the subjective nature of admission, there will be a minority of (but not rare) people that can get into Brown/Dartmouth but not Northwestern/Chicago.</p>
<p>northwestern and uchicago are way easier to get into.</p>
<p>I disagree with the last statement of Post #21 based on actual cases during last year's admissions cycle. I know of one very elite private school that had only one of six or seven applicants accepted by Northwestern (all the others were rejected & not waitlisted) yet several of these same applicants were accepted or given a guaranteed transfer option by several Ivies. Historically, however, this school places about a third of each class in the Ivies & well over 40% of each class gets accepted to at least one Ivy.</p>
<p>Coldwind, when you mention guaranteed transfer I assume you are referring to Cornell, which arguably is at the same selectivity level as NU. Interestingly I know many students at NU who didn't get into Dart, Brown, Penn, and Columbia, I think this is the truthfully the more honest reality. They aren't that far off and Northwestern has gotten more competitive recently, but the fact speak for themselves.</p>
<p>Slipper, please reread my last post in this thread & note that I am referring to more than one Ivy including those offered GTOs from Cornell. Of course more are admitted to NU as it is a much larger school. P.S. Slipper, you have not offered any "facts", just your opinion--which is fine if you do not refer to them as "facts"--and personal anecdotes. Mine are facts, granted just a small sampling of a handful of students.</p>
<p>Acceptance rates? Top 10% of class? Avg SAT scores. Revealed preference...all in favor of Dartmouth and Brown, in most cases strongly in favor of them. No other Ivies except Cornell offer guaranteed transfers. None. </p>
<p>I've offered up the facts, you just care to ignore them. And you offered up an anecdote yourself. Heck I'm one of the people who walked into NU and got rejected from practically every Ivy out of high school!</p>
<p>slipper1234,</p>
<p>I don't want to get into your fight with ColdWind. I agree with you that its harder to get into Brown. </p>
<p>However, I want to point out that the SAT average is no longer in favor of Brown (I think NU is now barely ahead). Not to mention the average of Northwestern's college of arts and science students is another 15-point higher than the university average. </p>
<p>As for top-10 percent, please note that Div-1 athletes (~5% of the population) and the music school students (~6% of the population) play a significant role in dragging the stats down for Northwestern. The average percentile for students at the music school, which is a performance-based Conservatory, is 87. This means most of them were not in the top-10 percent. The class rank for arts&sciences/engineering students is probably pretty close, if not on par, with those for the Ivies. </p>
<p>Brown is more selective but the gap is probably not as wide as you might think.</p>
<p>Sam, these minor differences mean something, however. Compare Dartmouth and Princeton. The acceptance rate difference is 4% between them (13% vs. 9%), the SAT difference is only 15 points (1440 vs. 1455), the top 10% of class difference is 3%. Yet I'm not even going to begin to argue that Dartmouth is as selective as Princeton. Similarly the small differences between a Dartmouth or Brown vs NU exist. I think you are right to say the differences between any of these incredibly selective and prestigious schools is not that wide, however.</p>
<p>Sam Lee: A correction - the Music School at Northwestern is not a conservatory, though it doesn't change your point. I would also surmise that the theater program brings down the SAT's/ACT's a bit, as it certainly is not necessary to have a math SAT of 800 to be an outstanding actor or actress. But why sweat the small stuff, that's what makes NU more interesting than many other schools -- the fact that they have that high-caliber level of arts that other schools don't.</p>
<p>I see that someone's insecurity is showing itself, again.</p>
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I think in the world of academia Chicago is considered more "prestigious."
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total myth Chicago likes to perpetuate.
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<p>Actually, in the world of academia (which is graduate school-focused), UChicago is more "prestigious" than Brown or Dartmouth (or NU for that matter).</p>
<p>Now, to answer the OP's question - yes, the chances of getting into NU or UC is better than that for Dartmouth or Brown.</p>
<p>Dartmouth and Brown have the advantage of the Ivy League cache (not to mention the East Coast bias), plus, NU has a significantly larger student body and UC's applicant pool is largely self-selecting.</p>
<p>NW and Chicago are less well known than the Ivies, so they probably attract more serious and better qualified applicants (not to say the Brown and Dartmouth don't, but these are big name schools; out of the 650 seniors in my graduating class, only a handful have heard of Chicago, and I am sure this is not the case with Brown and Dartmouth).</p>