<p>1down</p>
<p>If I am not mistaken, you can do that at any school if you are admitted and attend. It is part of one of those federal disclosure laws. You don't have the right to see it if you're rejected. Not sure how they handle the waivers of the right to see the recommendations, although there probably is not a long line to see the files from those who got in.</p>
<p>"Look at all the lists with completely disparate schools on them (like NYU & Hamilton.) People are just scattershooting all "prestigious" schools." Well, yes, of course there is scattershooting, but I think we have to remember that kids are multi-dimensional. My daughter, for instance, was going to apply to both NYU and Hamilton. She adored Hamilton. She didn't adore NYU but she liked it well enough and thought she could be happy there. Most importantly--and how it got on her list in the first place--it has great depth in her intended major.</p>
<p>searching, no offense, I was just picking an example... tiny snowy LAC, big Urban U... </p>
<p>Better to say the two would be on extremely <em>few</em> well-thought out lists...</p>
<p>Some of the lists you see these kids come up with you really got to wonder and the number of schools they are applying to is a little out of hand. Whats driving it all? I blame US News and World Report as much as anyone. They make acceptance rate an important criteria of their rankings and it is one of the easiest for schools to control. Use the common app, waive fees, flood mailboxes, and without really changing the quality of the students you are getting you drive the acceptance rate way down.</p>
<p>I'd really like to see the schools make the process more self-selecting the way Chicago does with its essays but few schools even among the very best have the courage to something that could hurt them in the rankings. </p>
<p>The SAT scores have also assumed undo importance because again this is an easily measured metric that is heavily weighted in the rankings. These college boards were originally designed to uncover potential in places and individuals were schools didn't normally look. They were democratizing. Now they are simply misused. Perhaps it is time for schools to go back to writting their own admissions exams. It would be a lot harder to apply to ten schools if you had to take ten exams and the applicant would doubtless give more thought to which schools s/he applied to. Unfortunately the first school to do something like that will take a major hit in the ranking when their number of applicants plummets.</p>
<p>" They make acceptance rate an important criteria of their rankings and it is one of the easiest for schools to control. The SAT scores have also assumed undo importance because again this is an easily measured metric that is heavily weighted in the rankings."</p>
<p>Patuxent, do you REALLY know how important those two criteria are? For that matter, are you aware that certains schools like Harvey Mudd are PENALIZED for having scores high SAT. </p>
<p>The only scandal perpetrated by USNews is its insistence of using subjective elements to ensure the protection of perennial favorites. That is where manipulation and geographical cronyism are shining! </p>
<p>PS To avoid a "trip" to the USNews site, here it is:</p>
<p>The acceptance rate, or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent of ... 15% is 1. 5%)</p>
<p>Student selectivity (15 percent). </p>
<p>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 who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes for all national universities and liberal arts colleges, and the top 25 percent for institutions in the master's and comprehensive colleges categories (40 percent);
the acceptance rate, or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent).</p>
<p>patuxent you are so right about this topic!</p>
<p>while my school list was very wide and diverse(22 schools) I applied to that many because I felt it would give me more control over the application process. With acceptances from several schools I could try and "play off" one another for increased FA. In addition, I feel that I would be better able to pick the college I wanted to go to when I had an acceptance in hand. </p>
<p>Unfortunately(or perhaps fortunately) fate does not always turn out the way one expected. I have been accepted to a clear top choice of mine (Duke) and I am planning on matriculating. Also, after having sent in my apps I felt guilty that I might be taking away someone else's spot who has really wanted to go there. But, I feel better now because I personally have an overall acceptance rate of 31.8% acceptance rate. :)</p>
<p>I'm very happy with the results and am glad I dont have to make a difficult decision right now or have an embarassment of riches</p>
<p>I know you meant no offense, SBmom. I just meant to say that it's hard to tell from the outside if a list of applied-to schools has some sort of coherent underpinning to it. </p>
<p>When we got the questionnaire from her guidance office, D really couldn't answer questions like, "Which would you rather see outside your dorm window--a skyscraper or a tree?" She likes both scenarios.</p>
<p>I think the bottom line is that she would have been happy at any of the schools on her list, even if they didn't share an obvious commonality. And given some of the unhappiness being expressed by kids about the schools they were accepted at, I see even more now how important that is.</p>
<p>Xiggi 1.4% is a lot when it is one of the factors a school can easily control and when there isn't much separating you from the schools a few steps above or a few steps below. You drop a couple of spots and all of a sudden applications decline and your need only financial aid office has to start reconsidering exactly how needy everybody is or loose them to the school one rung up. If US News and World report suddenly put Maharishi University in the top ten they would have every kid in Scarsdale applying to it.</p>
<p>Patuxent, take a few USNews reports and compare the changes from one year to another. You'll quickly see that selectivity has little to no bearing on the rankings. Harvard could move up to 100,000 applications or drop to 10,000, and nothing would change. Out of a ranking of 100, what is the difference between 80% of 1.5% and 99% of 1.50%? A mere rounding error.</p>
<p>Why would colleges spend a lot of resources playing the selectivity game for US News, when much better alternatives exist. Want to keep your high rating that reflects last generation's glory? Just make sure the obscure secretaries of your "friendly peers" remember to fill in the form with a lot of 5 for peer reputation. Why mess with a paltry 1.5% when there is an easily rigged item worth 25%? Oh, by the way, who is bringing the cookies at the next tea party of the consortium? </p>
<p>Want to go on for more rigging? How hard is it? USNews rewards grade inflation and fluff graduation rates ... that is worth 16%. Oh, let the tough grading schools wonder what happened to them! And while we are at it, let's spend money through the nose. Who cares if parents complain about rapidly rising tuitions? Don't those silly parents love to brag about the rankings while licking their financial wounds? Or while we are it, let's cut some faculty but pay the remaining much better ... USNews loves that! And last but not least, let's make sure to fiddle a bit with the numbers of alumni giving, that ever so important yardstick of education excellence! </p>
<p>Oh well, feel free to trust the integrity of USNews Report or the Princeton Review that gives a selectivity rating of 99 to UC-Davis and 97+ to almost every school in the country. </p>
<p>FWIW, here's the full list. </p>
<p>Peer assessment 25%
Avg Graduation Rate 16%
Financial Resources 10%
SAT Scores 7.5%
Faculty compensation 7%
Class Size 1-9 6%
HS - Top 10% 6%
Alumin Giving 5%
Graduation Rate Performance 5%
Avg Freshman Retention 4%
Faculty Degrees 3%
Class Size 50+ 2%
Acceptance rate 1.5%
Percent Full Time 1%
Student/Faculty Ratio 1%</p>
<p>Much of what you say is true or at least I happen to agree with it. The US News Rankings are flawed because the metrics that are easy to measure are very meaningful. </p>
<p>But WUSTL didn't decide to end the careers of many a letter carrier early with the back breaking load of promotional literature they started firing off a couple of years back just because they love their local printer. And Tulane didn't have as a specific goal in its development plan to get the admit rate below 50% just because they wanted to send more rejection letters. Both schools wanted to gain on their self-defined "peers" in the rankings game and both have rapidly reduced admit rates primarily by rapidly increasing the number of applicants.</p>
<p>I only pick those two schools because I know a little about and I know they both think they should be higher on the list but they are hardly the only ones pumping applications in order to appear more selective than they really are.</p>