These are some of the TOP engineering schools in the nation, with GA Tech being a worldwide recognized top engineering school, and Purdue falling in the top 10 and even close to 5. However, their requirments, SAT and GPA, are low compared to Cal Tech, Stanford, Duke, Harvard, etc even though they’re just as good (You can get into GA Tech with a 3.7 GPA and a 1950 SAT). Why is that? Also, their acceptance rates are a little higher too. (44% for GA Tech, like 55%+ for the other three.)
Have you compared how large they are? If they were to shrink down to Stanford’s (et al) size, their acceptance rate would decrease too.
You are comparing public universities to private. Public universities have an obligation to accept a certain percentage of applicants from the state they are in because they are funded from taxpayers in that state. That could impact the statistics you are citing. I would imagine that the stats for OOS admissions at the public universities are comparable to the private universities overall stats.
Also, admissions is a numbers game. Those universities need to accept a higher percentage of students applying to get the number of enrolled students they need to fill their incoming class. As they get more applicants, that percentage will go down. However, because they have large freshmen classes to fill (of several thousand, versus a very small number at CalTech, e.g.), they will always accept more students.
I’d like to think the reason is that admissions are based on more important criteria than GPA and SAT. If a university looks holistically at an application, and considers but does not overweight GPA and SAT, the university will end up with better students and lower GPA and SAT averages.
OP, for GTECH the mid 50 SAT is 2060-2250 and the admit rate is 32%. If you are OOS, you need over 2200 for a favorable chance to get into Engg. and CS. The GPA and ECs have to be very good as they are considered more important than SAT/ACT scores.
http://admission.gatech.edu/images/pdf/2015_freshman_profile_web.pdf
Public vs. private. Large freshman classes to fill. The overall stats for engineering admits tends to be higher than for admits to most other majors. In other words, it tends to be harder to be admitted into engineering, even when a public university has a higher overall admit rate.
Engineering itself can “weed out” less motivated students due to curricular rigor (at any school). Some schools have another admission process to the engineering majors after one enrolls (at Purdue, first year pre-engineering frosh need to get a 3.2 GPA to be assured admission to most engineering majors; lower GPA students may be admitted if there is space available in the major).
Also, public schools generally tend to favor the mission of giving more students a chance to prove themselves in college (although not all will succeed), rather than saying that an imperfect high school record makes a student unworthy.
Actually, as one gets away from the super-selective admission schools, academic qualifications (courses, grades, rank, test scores) tend to become more important, since they provide more differentiation among applicants than at super-selective admission schools flooded with 4.0 / 2250+ / 34+ applicants.
I’m curious as to where you got your info on GT and admissions. Has GT recently changed their admission policies? I thought they were one of the schools which did not admit based on intended major. I couldn’t find a 2015 statement confirming that though. This is from 2013: Our admission committee does not use your choice of major, as listed on the application, to make the admission decision.
According to the COE’s website, admission to engineering is through admissions:
http://www.coe.gatech.edu/prospective-students/undergraduates
@Mom2aphysicsgeek, it is common sense. The demand to do Engg or CS is higher at GTECH than for the other streams. Higher caliber folks apply to these streams and therefore the cutoff is expected to be higher. It does not require specific statements from GTECH as this practice is commonly followed by other elite Engg. streams at state schools (UTA, UIUC, UMich, etc.) as well. I wish GTECH would openly declare the stats of their Engg. or CS school admits and put this question to rest.
You’re also comparing some schools with radically different requirements. To cite a liberal arts school, UNC Chapel Hill must accept 60%+ of their class from in-state. They’re smart kids. But the 20% from OOS are amazing kids. They’re held to a higher standard. In the case of GA Tech, I’d be very surprised if an OOS kid could get in with a 1950.
@io12575 Unless I am confusing schools, I am pretty sure that when my ds applied to GT that the policy was that anyone who was admitted to the university was admitted into any major. The individual colleges within the university did not have separate admission criteria. If I am remembering correctly, they are being upfront.
I did a quick google, I do not think I am remembering incorrectly. According to the ME website:
@Mom2aphysicsgeek, I am well aware of the option provided by GTECH to change branches once accepted. My D2 (she is a Sophomore now at GTECH) chose GTECH over UCB for this very exact reason. At UCB, it is very difficult to change from the College of Chemistry (for a ChemE major) to a branch in the COE. She wanted to have the freedom to change to another branch of Engg. easily if such need arose.
However, when D2 applied, she had put in ChemE as her first choice. I am fully certain that she would not have required the high credentials to have gotten into, say the College of Architecture as an OOS applicant.
@SouthernHope, actually, UNC has to fill 85% of its freshmen class with NC residents (so the acceptance rate for OOS to UNC is pretty low).
And at a place like UIUC (that accepts by major), the CS in engineering acceptance rate is a small fraction of the overall acceptance rate. So yes, looking just at the overall acceptance rate may not be very useful for some schools.
What you are stating about GT admissions is false. GT admits without regard to intended major.
Selectivity is essentially a popularity contest, so the question you are asking is really “Why are fancy private colleges more popular (and hence able to be more selective) than public colleges?”
One big factor is marketing. Private colleges spend considerably more on marketing than publics.
I’m not sure whether Georgia Tech does or doesn’t take major into account in admissions. I know they used to; when I applied back in 2003, we were required to specify a major on our application, and different majors had different high school requirements for admission. (I don’t remember what I put. Civil engineering?)
However, I will say that it’s kind of silly for a university that makes it easy to transfer schools within it to consider major in the application for admission. A student who wants to major in CS, for example, could just put psychology on his application, get in, and easily change his major to computer science. And from poking around, it seems that before you earn 60 credits at GT, changing your major (or adding a second one) is as easy as filling out a form at the registrar’s office.
Anyway, OP, don’t confuse acceptance rate and required SAT scores with school quality. The quality of a university is much more dependent on its outputs than inputs. GT, Purdue, UW, and VT have some of the best professors in engineering; they have cutting-edge research in the field going on; they are widely recognized for turning out some of the best engineers. Those things are a lot more important in evaluating a university than what percentage of people get in. (Remember that acceptance rate is directly affected by how many people apply, and far more people simply want to apply to Stanford, Harvard, et al. - some just want to be able to say they got in; the financial aid is way better at these schools than at OOS publics; and Stanford and Harvard spam students with their literature, including students who have no prayer of admission.)