What makes people say Penn "works" the USNews #s??

<p>I think people focus too much on selectivity. Its only 15% of USNEWS. All the gaming is happening in the other areas.</p>

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2. penn has a bunch of special "programs" like huntsman that aren't scholarships per se (since the ivy league can't do academic scholarships) but are marketed that way anyway

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2. These programs have nothing to do with financial aid, and are not "marketed" as such, making this assertion a complete non sequitur.

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<p>I think what he/she meant to say is just like other top schools give out merit scholarships to attract the best students possible, Penn uses this as a way to attract the best students possible, and steal cross admits from Harvard, Yale and Princeton.</p>

<p>So... you're implying that them creating those programs is purely to just steal students from other schools?</p>

<p>^^ I never implied any such thing, I was simply interpreting what dcircle was saying.</p>

<p>They get 50% of their class through ED, making the number of slots available for RD less, making their overall aceptance % lower and their yield higher.</p>

<p>getting half the class through ED is NOT in line with other ivies.</p>

<p>collegeconfidential will block the "college consulting" website that i would have linked here (starts with hernandez and ends in consulting), but the numbers are widely available on the net</p>

<p>early acceptance rate at penn is on average ten percentage points higher than brown, yale, columbia, etc. (34% acceptance rate at penn vs. 18% at yale, 22% at brown and columbia)</p>

<p>in the last round,
brown admitted 20% of the incoming class early (555 of 2742 admittances)
penn admitted 48% early.
etc. (yale has early action)</p>

<p>there's no comparison. penn is in a league of it's own when it comes to goosing numbers</p>

<p>can someone define "goosing" numbers?</p>

<p>

Your numbers are all mixed up. First of all, you need to look at the percentages of each ENTERING CLASS--not the percentage of all accepted students--that was admitted ED. Second, instead of using another college consulting site, you should use the more reliable "official" numbers provided on the College Board site:</p>

<p>::</a> College Planning Made Easy | Inside Source for College Admissions Requirements</p>

<p>If you do that, and compare apples to apples, you'll find that for the Class of 2011, Penn accepted 49% (1,178 out of 2,385 entering students) of its entering class ED, Columbia accepted 45% (599 out of 1,333 entering students) of its entering class ED, Brown accepted 35% (525 out of 1,479 entering students) of its entering class ED, and Dartmouth accepted 34% (379 out of 1119 entering students) of its entering class ED.</p>

<p>You'll also find that Penn's ED acceptance rate was 29% (1,178 ED acceptances out of 4,001 ED applicants) , Dartmouth's ED acceptance rate was ALSO 29% (379 ED acceptances out of 1,285 ED applicants), Columbia's ED acceptance rate was 25% (599 ED acceptances out of 2,438 ED applicants), and Brown's ED acceptance rate was 23% (525 ED acceptances out of 2,324 ED applicants).</p>

<p>So, as clearly indicated by the hard data, Penn's ED acceptance rate of 29% is indeed in line with Dartmouth's 29%, Columbia's 25%, and Brown's 23%. Furthermore, Penn's taking 49% of its entering class through ED is in line with Columbia's 45%, Brown's 35%, and Dartmouth's 34%. Moreover, as I previously stated, Princeton also took almost 50% of its entering class through ED before it dropped it this year.</p>

<p>Penn is hardly "in a league of its own" in this regard and, if you read my post #12 above, you'll see that acceptance rate and yield have little, if any, impact on Penn's relative US News ranking vis-a-vis its peers.</p>

<p>45 percenter, </p>

<p>great post with the stats to make an apples to apples comparison. Can you please check the CB Link and repost? I just get to the main CB page with that link. </p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

<p>45percenter, the reason you can't use matriculated students as the denominator is because
1. this number includes ED students (mandatory 100% yield) as well as regular students
2. therefore, it biases the admit rate and ED class share (effective yield) numbers towards overstating the return</p>

<p>i think most would agree, the important number is the fraction of all acceptances that are given out ED. if it is a large fraction, it means the school is "goosing" their yield and admit rate since these folks have to come anyway.</p>

<p>using total acceptances, the numbers i report above are correct. it can be verified on multiple sites with a quick google search</p>

<p>here is brown and penn quickly from their respective newspapers
U.'s</a> early decision acceptance rate remains low - Campus News
Admit</a> rate increases to 16.4 percent - News</p>

<p>

Sorry, but I think you're missing the point. ED acceptances as a percentage of total acceptances is an irrelevant metric, because it doesn't account for the RD yield. For example, Penn's RD yield for the Class of 2011 was 50% (i.e., 50% of all applicants accepted RD ended up enrolling). Brown's RD yield for the Class of 2011 was 44%. In fact, for some time now, Penn has had the highest RD yield in the Ivy League after HYP.</p>

<p>So again, if you want to compare apples to apples, compare the RD yields of schools to see how they perform on the "open market" of noncommitted applicants, or compare the percentages of their entering classes comprised of ED admits to see how big a role ED plays in their admissions. However, given the variance in sizes of entering classes and applicant pools, ED admits as a percentage of total admits really doesn't provide an apples-to-apples comparison.</p>

<p>

Actually, I only linked to the main CB page. To get those specific numbers, I did a search for each school, obtained the entering class size from the "Size" section on the "At a Glance" page for that school and the ED admissions data from the "Early Decision and Early Action" section on the "Admission" page, and then performed a few simple calculations to determine the numbers I posted.</p>

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These are the areas UChicago "adjusted" when it shot up in the ranks. WashU games these bigtime. So USNEWS can be worked - I'm not saying Penn does however.

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Keep in mind, though, that acceptance rate is only 1.5% of the total US News score (10% of the 15% allocated to "Student Selectivity"--see the link in post #8, above).

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<p>The scores are so close that even a tiny advantage in any category, even if it's just 1.5% or whatever of the total, can push one ahead a couple spots, if not more. It reminds me of the scores in gymnastics competition (Go China!!!).</p>