Why Tufts is now ranked on US News as “more selective,” when it used to be ranked as “most selective”? At #29 on US News, Tufts is reported as accepting 16% of applicants. Yet NYU, ranked at #30, accepts twice as many applications – 32% – yet is listed as MOST Selective.
What is going on at US News that they would rank selectivity like this? It makes no sense.
I don’t know the answer to your question; my guess is that more schools are paying attention to whatever factors go into the US News system and gaming them accordingly.
I’m not particularly a fan of NYU, but note that NYU’s acceptance rate for Class of 2022 was 19%, down from 28% just last year. https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2018/march/NYU_Class_Of_2022.html NYU total apps were up 12% over last year, which is not unusual among selective schools. Tufts apps increased only 2% and Tufts accepted 14.6% this year. https://tuftsdaily.com/news/2018/04/11/tufts-admissions-admits-class-2022-record-high-applicant-pool/ Of course, none of that explains the US News selectivity designation, as older numbers would have been involved.
Tufts was ranked 15th-17th for the U.S. News’ selectivity metrics, and this plummeted to 57th after Tufts stopped reporting the class rank for its incoming freshman class.
According to the U.S. News, Tufts is now far less selective than BU, BC, Brandeis, Case Western, Wake Forest, Northeastern, and Lehigh which doesn’t make any sense.
If Tufts fails to correct next year’s ranking which will be released this September, no one really knows what the repercussions might be.
Perhaps, Tufts alumni or the Board of Trustees can bring up this issue to the administration and admissions team. It seems as though they are not really taking the student body’s concerns – few students have reached out to the admissions team, etc – seriously, which is quite unfortunate.
repercussions will be huge. I don’t think they can be understated. You can complain about the rankings until the cows come home but the reality is that they matter a lot. Particularly for attracting students outside of new england, notably from the south, west and overseas.Those students often key in on schools in the USN&WR. It would be the height of arrogance to intentionally ignore the rankings thinking you’re above them. What a huge disservice to every grad and future grad to be allowing the value of the degree to be degraded.
Maybe they don’t think they are above them.
Maybe they feel that reporting on class rank when so many high schools have decided to do away with them and when many students at schools that have kept them make educational decisions that prioritize rank over their learning goals is ethically right. My guess is that a huge # of students at Tufts didn’t go to high schools that ranked.
Maybe they care about attracting students who have done their research and feel like Tufts is a great school for them, not about attracting students who decide based on rankings.
Maybe they admit kids who were in the top half of their class from super selective high schools that prepare students really well and have been happy with how well they’ve done. In other words, the kid at the 30th percentile at Bronx Science is preferable to the higher ranked someplace else.
Tufts is a school. Usnwr is a magazine trying to sell ads and boost circulation. Tufts can, and should, do what it believes serves its educational mission best. It’s always going to be disadvantaged in the rankings because while it competes with LACS for many students, its not a LAC. yet it really can’t go head to head against huge research institutions either. I would hope that the administration is focused on the delivering a top notch education to its students, which I think it is.