How can Northwestern be less selective than Emory when:
Northwestern has higher SAT range
Northwestern has lower ED and RD acceptance
They seem to have similar # of applications per size of class
Any thoughts?
<p>Northwestern's overall acceptance rate is 30%, Emory's 39%. Please explain the question.</p>
<p>hopeful, i too am quite befuddled by the selectivity rankings that place emory as more selective than NU. No doubt in my mind that Northwestern is much tougher to get into, perhaps emory has a greater concentration of students in the top ten percent of their hs graduating class (although that is very hard to believe)?. I dont think you should be too concerned with that though, as Northwestern continues to be the preeminent school in the Midwest along with Chicago.</p>
<p>USNWR ranks schools, but it isn't just by selectivity. Many factors go into it. At any rate, nobody really takes USNWR college rankings that seriously anyway.</p>
<p>Are you talking about the 2006 rankings?</p>
<p>The strange thng about Emory being slightly more selective than Northwestern is that Princeton Review 2005 ranked Emory as # 19 on their top 20 of schools hardest to get into. Northwestern was not on the list but I assume it was in the low 20s.</p>
<p>Emory has a much higher acceptance rate and lower 25/75 SATs. Perhaps the fact that 90% of Emory students are in the top 10% of their HS class may play a role. Also, Emory's top students are in the scholars program and receive mucho merit aid.</p>
<p>I am still a bit perplexed?</p>
<p>It could happen mathematically due to the general uselessness of the %-accepted and 50% SAT Range measures.</p>
<p>The %-accepted number is totally useless as a measure of "selectivity". There are a LOT of colleges in Barron's Guide of 1650 Colleges that have accept less than 20%, but the mean SAT score is around 1050. The service academies like West Point and the Naval Academy have %-accepted numbers in the same area as the ivies, but their SAT ranges are much lower. Using %-accepted, the Coast Guard Academy is typically the most selective US college at about 7%. So, forget using that.</p>
<p>The problem with the 50% SAT ranges is that they represent the scores of the accepted applicants. There is no way to determine the 50% SAT range for the applicant pool. Emory could be more "selective" than NU if the SAT ranges for the applicant pool were higher at Emory than NU, but the SAT ranges for the accepted students were higher at NU than Emory. This basically means that the applicant pool at Emory is stronger than NU, but the students who actually go to Emory have lower scores than at NU.</p>
<p>I'm just trying to make sense of it. I have no idea how USNWR did it.</p>
<p>It is interesting, though, that if the colleges published the 50% SAT Ranges for the applicant pool and the %-accepted, you could get a pretty good idea of your odds of acceptance (based solely on the SAT score). That won't happen.</p>
<p>Don't go with the Princeton Review's rankings on selectivity. I'm not sure how they rank the selectivity, but the had UVa in the top twenty when there are many private schools that are harder to get into.</p>
<p>BTW, does anyone know when the new PR rankings come out? I personally find them much more enjoyable to peruse than US News!</p>
<p>UVa is much harder for out-of-state. For the state schools, they need two numbers, one for in and one for out.</p>
<p>I guess the take away from stats and rankings are that they should be used as a guide. There is no exact science whether right or wrong about selectivity ranking between similar schools. I would think twice if the selectvity rankings stated that American U was more selective than Northwestern.</p>
<p>We need to use all of this info to make our judgments and conclusions.</p>
<p>Dufus wrote, "The %-accepted number is totally useless as a measure of 'selectivity'. ... The service academies like West Point and the Naval Academy have %-accepted numbers in the same area as the ivies, but their SAT ranges are much lower."</p>
<p>The service academies use a whole different set of criteria for admissions, the "whole candidate score." They are just about the last places still looking for the proverbial "well rounded" applicant. Thus, they have very many candidates for their very few spots. As an old friend of mine in Harvard admissions once told me, "there are a lot of cadets at West Point who couldn't have gotten into Harvard ... but there are also a lot of students at Harvard who couldn't have gotten into West Point."</p>
<p>For anyone interested in the Harvard-West Point comparison, you might read this brief Harvard Crimson article from a few years ago at <a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=353512%5B/url%5D">http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=353512</a>. Look especially to the quote from an '05 Harvard student in the last paragraph.</p>
<p>Bottom line, just about the only significance to any "selectivity" measure is what it means about YOUR chance of admissions. Finding the right match in a college is infinitely more important than someday being able to brag that the college you attended was more "selective" than the college someone else attended. Moreover, "selectivity" is only one factor in a school's reputation and the relative value of its degree upon graduation and later (I have no intention of reopening here the endless thread on the value of an "elite" college degree). Don't get hung up on "selectivity" rankings. </p>
<p>Personally over the years I've found that the Princeton Review's selectivity, academic, quality of life, financial aid, etc., indices (not their rankings) are very useful. They recognize that there can be significant differences in the nature and quality of the experience within clusters of schools with similar indices. The in-depth write-ups seek to identify those qualitative differences to help applicants make informed decisions.</p>
<p>Emory and Northwestern are very different schools, and I'd be surprised if both were on many applicant's lists unless those lists are based solely on one or more of the rankings services ... which is a sad thought.</p>