<p>I welcome comments on how to differentiate among Ursinus, Moravian and Susquehanna, as I do not know students at any of them. Ursinus makes a big point about a high rate of graduate school acceptances--is it more oriented toward students very focused on their GPA?</p>
<p>Are any of these schools more dominated by preppies, or drinkers or intellectuals?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>Of those three, I'd pick Ursinus. Susquehanna accepts 79% of all applicants and they only get 2,300 applicants. Morvian accepts 65% and receives only 1,800 applications.
Ursinsus admits 47% and receives close to 5,000 applications.</p>
<p>Princeton Review gives the three schools the following academic and admissions selectivity ratings:</p>
<pre><code> Academic Rating Selectivity Rating
</code></pre>
<p>Moravian 84 80
Susquehanna 82 79
Ursinus 94 89</p>
<p>I don't think there's any doubt which is the better, more challenging college.</p>
<p>How do you think Ursinus stands up to Muhlenberg, Bard and Union?</p>
<p>Ursinus vs. Union is really, really close. Union has a higher selectivity rating: 95 to 89, but Ursinus has a higher academic rating: 94 to 91. This might suggest Union is slightly more competitive to get into (43% applicants accepted vs. 47% for Ursinus), but Ursinius is a bit more rigorous once you're inside. Not much daylight between the two. A tossup.</p>
<p>Ursinus vs. Bard? Bard wins in almost every category except one: They have identical academic ratings (94), even though Bard is definitely more difficult to get into. </p>
<p>Urinsus vs. Muhlenberg is more interesting to me because my daughter was recently admitted to both. Ursinus clearly has the better academic rating: 94 to 89, while Muhlenberg is a bit more selective in the admissions process, although SAT scores are almost identical. </p>
<p>Comparing all four, then, I'd say Bard is the most difficult to get into and Ursinus is the most challenging once you're in. If you were to plot these four schools to a two-axis scattergram, they would be probably be clustered very close together.</p>
<p>I dunno. Flip a coin or play spin the bottle. Better yet, go to the one that's least expensive. </p>
<p>Then again, there may be another more important criterion. Is this for your son or daughter? Union is the only one of the four that is majority male. The others are majority female, and Muhlenberg is skewed female more than Bard or Ursinus. If this is your son, maybe he doesn't want to pick Union. :)</p>
<p>Susquehanna has a four-year graduation rate of 79%. Ursinus has a four-year graduation rate of 76.3%. Probably not statistically significant, but both are well above average for private schools nationwide.</p>
<p>Susquehanna had a yield of 29.4% according to Education Dept. statistics.</p>
<p>Ursinus had a yield of only 16.1% according to Education Dept. statistics.</p>
<p>Therefore, even though Ursinus gets twice as many applicants, a large percentage probably have only a mild interest in going there (perhaps treating it as a safety school).</p>
<p>Seems to me that yield is a pretty good statistic of students that actually want to attend a particular school.</p>
<p>Plainsman thanks for your comments. It is my understanding that Bard is much higher rated than the others acadmically.</p>
<p>You are welcome, soozi1. It is unlikely that my daughter will enroll at Ursinsus unless they knock her socks clean off with a spectacular financial aid award, something we totally don't expect. But that has as much chance of happening as a snowball in hell...you know the rest. She would almost certainly go to Muhlenberg or Dickinson before Ursinus. She might even go to Penn State-University Park.</p>