Im deciding between Villanova, Lehigh, and a state school (SUNY stony brook) and was wondering what exactly is Villanova’s prestige?
I mean my friends who are in ivys told me that villanova is overpriced and has a high acceptance rate (which it does at 48%) so i was just wondering why should i pay nearly 60,000 a year for Nova when I can go to my state school and pay a third of the tuition and graduate debt free?
Good question.
The atrociously high acceptance rate is something I take serious issue with. The acceptance rate for the incoming class in 2010 was actually decent- 38%. I remember this because this is the figure I saw posted on CollegeBoard when I was applying (I entered Fall 2011, so I saw incoming class of 2010 data). After that it increased each year… 45%… 46%… and now almost 49%.
This is something that really bothers me, especially considering how easy it is to fix/game acceptance rates like other schools are doing. The acceptance rate for most people is the biggest indicator of prestige, because it implies exclusiveness. Nothing about “We accept half of our applicants” screams exclusive or prestigious.
The biggest issue with this is that the acceptance rate shouldn’t BE so high. From what I gleaned off CollegeBoard just now is that the median SAT scores and the breakdown of students who were in the top 10%, top 25% and top 50% of their class is similar to many schools who have significantly lower acceptance rates- including
NYU - 35%. Slightly higher median SAT scores, slightly lower HS performance.
BU - 35%. Slightly lower median SAT, slightly higher HS performance.
Lehigh - 34%. Slightly lower median SAT, slightly higher HS performance.
It appears Villanova simply has trouble attracting applicants; which is surprising because their yield is pretty good (22% of admitted applicants enroll), this indicates that most of the people who apply to Nova seriously consider attending. Villanova should work harder to attract applications from those with no intention of attending. They can pull a Case Western (38% acceptance rate, higher SAT medians but lower HS performance than nova) and reduce the price of their application to 0%. If the application is free, people will apply anyways. They should also make it very easy to apply by dropping the supplemental essay which probably intimidates people who dont want to come anyways. I feel like supplemental essays should be reserved for schools like NYU which have built a large and organic applicant pool through effective marketing and branding or a very prestigious Ivy/GT/ND/Duke/Vandy type school.
Let’s be honest, the economic impact of making the application free (loss of $1.2 million in revenue per year) is probably worth getting an extra 5,000 applicants; which would drop the acceptance rate to a respectable 35%- making the school look more exclusive; thus attracting more applicants naturally for the next cycle.
Or just give HS students who have no chance of admission (barely graduated from inner city schools) admission waivers and allow them to not do the supplemental essay and brand this as some sort of community outreach effort or diversity thing… but in reality 98% of these students will get rejected and help out the accept rate 
But what Villanova admissions office needs to realize is that top students don’t take schools with a 50% acceptance rate seriously, regardless of how good your academics or how talented the enrolled class actually is.
The admissions office is poorly run and don’t employ tactics like ivies or UChicago.
Villanova is becoming more prestigious. In fact, it will be a nationally ranked University on US News next year.
^ Where did you hear this from? I’m a little concerned about that, I don’t want us to debut in the 80s… or even anything below 50. But knowing Villanova- they wouldn’t make a move like this unless its favorable to them (being ranked around the 30s/40s)
You are all a bit off your rockers. “fixing” applicant rates does nothing for prestige - it is all smoke and mirrors. It is a very good school with a very good reputation, bogus acceptance rates are meaningless.
^ Must be someone from the admissions office tbr
I assume you didn’t mean to be overtly racist and that you are kidding, right? All of you on this thread need to get a grip.
Alumni network, overall experience, professors at the top of their field doing cutting edge research.
That is what you are paying for at Villanova. Yes the acceptance rate is high (and why are you listening to your friends in the ivies? of course they will tell you it is overpriced and not as good because they are at the most pretentious schools in the nation) but that does not mean the education is not superb. A Villanova education is still highly regarded in the general public, and especially if you want to go on to grad school, it is a great option.
However, if graduating debt-free is the most important thing to you, I think the decision is obvious. My two best friends grappled this problem last year- one decided she loved Nova (especially the professors in the business school) and was willing to take on the debt. The other wanted to have no debt and is now at SUNY Binghampton (assuming that you’re from NY, you know that this is the “Harvard of the SUNY system”)- both got competitive internships in NY for the summer (Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo maybe? Can’t remember exactly).
Acceptance rate doesn’t indicate quality, exclusivity or prestige. Some schools don’t recruit students for the sake of rejecting them. The yield is more important since that tells you something about how desirable the school is to those it accepts. The lower the yield the larger the percent of students who opted to take a different offer.
You can look at scores and grades of the incoming class to see the achievement levels of those that are accepted. Sometimes the grades and scores of students at a school with a 60% acceptance rate are far higher than those with a 25% acceptance rate.
A school that does not use the common app may have fewer applicants than those that use the common app. More of those that complete the separate application are likely to be serious candidates compared to schools that use the common app. Some schools count as applicants almost anyone who expresses interest in the school. Some count all those that checked if off on the common app even if they did not send any information beyond that. Other schools require a completed application before they will consider a student as an applicant. So consider these two scenario school that uses the common app and counts as an applicant anyone that checks off interest in the school versus a school that has its own application and considers only those with completed applications. The 2nd school may have a smaller pool of applicants but they are likely a much stronger group.
There is no Harvard of the SUNY system. That would be like suggesting that Spam was Filet Mignon in a can or that a Chevy Vega is a Jaguar of family cars. Spam and Chevy’s still have value. But best to be clear on what they are and what they are not.
What’s interesting about Villianova is that their acceptance rate is 49% in 2014, yet their average ACT scores are 30-33. I think just a ton of really qualified people apply, and they accept them because it’s a large school. Honestly, thought this school would be easy to get into because of the acceptance rate, but after seeing the scores, I had a lot of doubts and ended up not applying.
Another factor leading to the high ACT scores for accepted students at Villanova is the reality that many students that enroll at Georgetown, ND and Boston College also apply to Villanova as a safety school. Villanova accepts virtually all of these students (and their high test scores boost the accepted student average for Nova) but enrolls very few of them.
That actually makes a lot of sense. ND has the highest yield of all these schools (i think it’s around 50%- basically you get in, you go.) These are like the catholic schools that they apply to lol. explains why NOVA has a low yield.
I can vouch for that, because I did the exact same thing, and am also going to ND.
48% acceptance rate is NOT high. Only 3% of all college students attend a school that accepts less than 1/2 the people who apply.
Actually my high achieving daughter did choose a school with a 65 percent acceptance rate over Villanova. The reason? Cost! Villanova did not offer any merit even though her scores were in excess of their range. Some of us make a conscious, deliberate decision to attend smaller honors programs in large universities instead of paying more than double for a school that does not offer any aid.