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<p>Then I guess I don’t understand what you mean. Penn discloses the numbers on its own web site after the admissions season has concluded, and also discloses the numbers to and through the campus newspaper DURING the admissions season. What am I missing? Isn’t this similar to how Penn’s peers disclose their admissions numbers during the admissions season?</p>
<p>45 Percenter, I am not trying to be nebulous here. Just over 1,200 is not a number disclosed by Penn’s office. It’s a speculative number posted by the DP journalist. If that number happens to be in the ballpark is not relevant. ANYONE can use a figure of 1,200 or a range of 1,150 to 1,250 for Penn’s ED.</p>
<p>How hard would it be for Penn to issue a press release, or give A number to the campus reporters. Fwiw, this attitude makes no sense, considering the effort made by the DP to change the lack of transparency of that sorry office at Penn. All it would take is to start posting their CDS online and issue timely press releases. They’ll get to it … in the future.</p>
<p>xiggi, the 31.4% ED acceptance figure the DP reported for the Class of 2014 (and perhaps the exact number of acceptances, although the DP says just over 1200), was provided by Penn’s admissions office–where else do you think the DP got it? And Penn DOES publish the exact numbers on its web site at the end of the summer–posting the CDS on-line wouldn’t accomplish that any sooner. Also, as I said before, most of Penn’s peers release admissions numbers during the admissions season via their campus papers. Official press releases are the exception, not the rule.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, even private universities that publish CDS reports tend to “work” the system. For example, although the CDS indirectly requests that universities include graduate students enrolled in such programs as Engineering and Arts and Sciences, most private universities clearly ignore that request and choose to only include undergraduate students enrolled in such programs. Virtually every single public university will include graduates students. This usually ends up adding 2-3 students per faculty in the case of the publics or, alternatively, slashes 1-3 students per faculty in the case of private universities.</p>
<p>Also some private universities resort to strange SAT/ACT reporting tactics. Not only do private universities superscore, but somehow, some of them, like Dartmouth, will have a perfect 100 percent taking the SAT AND/OR the ACT. In Dartmouth’s case, 75% supposedly took just the SAT and 25% took just the ACT. At virtually all public universities and at most private universities, when you are the % who took the SAT and the % who took the ACT, the total would add up to 120%-130% because naturally, many students submit results in both tests. I am not sure how this affects average SAT/ACT ranges, but I assume there are benefits associated with this practice.</p>
<p>xiggi, pretty soon every university will be publishing admissions statistics like UC’s Stat Finder. Customized user-defined tables for all to scrutinize! ;)</p>
<p>[University</a> of California: StatFinder](<a href=“http://statfinder.ucop.edu/]University”>http://statfinder.ucop.edu/)</p>
<p>Conspiracy theory or no, Penn’s #4 ranking in the USNWR is one of the greatest indictments against its credibility. Penn is not the #4 school in the Ivy League, let alone the country. You’d be hard pressed to argue that Penn’s meteoric rise in the USNWR rankings since the 1980’s has not been at least partially (if not mostly) due to gaming, unless you want to make the counter-intuitive claim that Penn’s institutional “improvements” since the 80’s just happened to have greatly corresponded with “improvements” in the USNWR rankings criteria.</p>
<p>Pity the fools who choose Penn over other peer urban institutions (Columbia, Chicago) due to the rankings. If Penn students and alums use the USNWR ranking as a means of self-validation (which seems to be what some of them are doing), then that’s another (sad) story altogether.</p>
<p>FWIW, there is no #4 school in the Ivy League. All the lower ivies are peers (with the possible exception of Cornell). So if one of them is “#4,” they are all “#4.” In other words, #4-#8 (or at least #4-#7) are highly interchangeable.</p>
<p>“Pity the fools who choose Penn over other peer urban institutions (Columbia, Chicago) due to the rankings”</p>
<p>No one should be making a choice between two institutions adjacent on the USnews (or I daresay, any other) list based on the placement on the list. No ranking is that accurate at that level of fine tuning, nor do I think it can be. </p>
<p>Thats not really what the list is good for.</p>
<p>Personally, I’ve seen few, if ANY, Penn students or alums arguing that Penn is better than any of its peers because of its US News ranking (which would be silly in any event because that ranking changes from year to year). High school students, yes, but not Penn students and alums.</p>
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<p>I love it when people talk out of both sides of their mouths in order to suit their poorly constructed and inherently biased arguments (in the SAME thread):</p>
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<p>I’m sorry–did I miss something? Where in those quotes did I state that Penn is better than its peers because of its US News ranking?</p>
<p>Talk about poorly constructed arguments. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Uni of minn will become first</p>
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<p>You said that it’d be “silly” for Penn students and alums to assert Penn’s alleged superiority to its peers due to the USNWR rankings “because that ranking changes from year to year.” But your anti-conspiracy & anti-gaming argument rests almost entirely on the fact that Penn’s range of ranking (#4-#7) has NOT changed since 1997. So you are clearly talking out of both sides of your mouth!</p>
<p>^ Sorry, but those statements are neither inconsistent nor mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>You’re really reaching here, and it’s kinda obvious. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>And by the way, I agree with you that the non-HYP Ivies are generally equivalent in terms of overall quality as undergraduate schools, so I’m not quite sure why you’re on the attack.</p>
<p>Some of your pro-Penn arguments are not (necessarily) illogical, but simply biased (not to mention, misleading and disingenuous).</p>
<p>Just some friendly advice: your constant use of the “rolling eyes” emoticon does make your less than compelling arguments any more compelling.</p>
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<p>You’re certainly entitled to your opinion.</p>
<p>I think our posts speak for themselves. :)</p>
<p>No “rolling eyes” emoticon this time? I’m glad you learned something, but the “smiley face” emoticon doesn’t help your arguments either.</p>
<p>JohnAdams12, is that you? :p</p>
<p>(The stuck-out-tongue is a favorite of mine, also.)</p>
<p>:rolleyes: <----------and that one’s just for you. ;)</p>
<p>Nope. Plenty of people (not just Princetonians) think Penn games the rankings.</p>
<p>Of course Penn games the rankings, but one would have to argue that Penn is a peer of HYPSMC.</p>
<p>Of those members of the Class of 2012 who had attended schools that rank, nearly 99 percent were at the top of their classes. A significant amount of weight is placed on this silly metric, which doesn’t take into account the discrepancies between the quality of high schools and immediately robs students who aren’t at the top of their classes the hope of attending Penn.</p>