USNews selectivity ranking

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Ever looked at it like this? I was bored and happened to click on it; I don’t really understand how they got some of these numbers, but it does make you wonder: why did anyone ever think WashU was their safety?</p>

<p>2007 Selectivity Ranking</p>

<li> Harvard</li>
<li> Yale</li>
<li> MIT</li>
<li> Princeton</li>
<li> CIT</li>
<li> Columbia</li>
<li> Washington University</li>
<li> Stanford</li>
<li> Penn</li>
<li> Brown</li>
<li> Duke</li>
<li> Dartmouth</li>
<li> Rice</li>
<li> Berkeley</li>
<li> Emory</li>
<li> Georgetown</li>
<li> Northwestern</li>
<li> Notre Dame</li>
<li> UCLA</li>
<li> USC</li>
<li> Tufts</li>
<li> Chicago</li>
<li> Cornell</li>
<li> JHU</li>
<li> Michigan</li>
</ol>

<p>etc.</p>

<p>Why does this look weird?</p>

2

<p>Washington at St. Louis is high up there because they wait list enormous amounts of people to artificially lower their admit rate while still maintaining a bubble of safety in case they under enroll.</p>

<p>Although I'm surprised to see UCLA up there after seeing some of friends with pretty sub par stats (for UCLA/Cal) get early engineering likely notifications.</p>

3

<p>So the story goes (not disagreeing). But then why did anyone ever think they were a shoo-in or, as one CC member did, call it a safety? Craziness.</p>

4

<p>They were probably basing it off average entering class stats. Many people delegate Wash. as a second, third, etc choice so while these people are offered admissions, they often decline in favor of a stronger school they were also admitted into. Which causes Wash. to dig into the wait list that contains less competitive applicants who are more likely to accept the offer.</p>

5

<p>From the USNews</a> Methodology Page:</p>

<p>Student selectivity (15 percent). A school's academic atmosphere is determined in part by the abilities and ambitions of the student body. We therefore factor in test scores of enrollees on the SAT or ACT tests (50 percent of the selectivity score); the proportion of enrolled freshmen (for all national universities and liberal arts colleges) who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes and (for institutions in the universities-master's and comprehensive colleges-bachelor's categories) the top 25 percent (40 percent); and the acceptance rate, or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent). The data are for the fall 2005 entering class.</p>

6

<p>FOR ANYONE WITH US NEWS ACCESS......
How do you check rankings by major. Im trying to figure out UC Davis V. UC Irvine Business/Economics thanks!</p>

7

<p>I have access (obviously) and never could figure it out. There are business rankings by major but they only go to about #20 (sorry to say that UCD and UCI are not in the top 20).</p>

8

<p>This is going on acceptance rate, which isn't an accurate measure. UChic is much more selective than UCLA, for example, but is ranked far behind it since UChic's applicant pool tends to be pretty self-selective.</p>

9

<p>The USNWR measures quality of student body, not selectivity. Those two aren't the same thing. Qualit of student body does not consider acceptance rates or quality of applicant pool. Just go to the MIT forum are check out how many students with 2300+ SAT scores, 3.9+ GPAs, top 1% of their high school class, 800s on SAT II subject tests and 5s on AP exams have been rejected. Do you think such students would be rejected from WUSTL?</p>

10

<p>
[quote]
Do you think such students would be rejected from WUSTL?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>No. I think they would be waitlisted and then rejected. Go check the WUSTL forum. ;)</p>

11

<p>How on earth is WashU above Stanford...?</p>