IU was my dream school. It has the best program and research the subject that I want to study among English-speaking countries at least. That made me give up my degree of a 985 school in China and apply to transfer to IU. I only added IU in my desired schools list. When I submitted application transcripts, I even mailed them my original research paper of 30 pages length funded by an undergraduate research initiative (I have just presented this paper at a conference of Columbia University recently) as part of suppliant application materials. Much of my effort proved to be unnecessary. I heard later kind of joke like that you can be admitted into IU as long as you have a pulse. It’s absolutely true. IU really does take everyone. This makes me feel a big unbalance between world-class faculties and average students. What is more worse. Quite a few students who have been denied by other big name schools (like Umich, UCLA, Berkeley) can not only be accepted, IU also provided with them generous scholarship and invited them into honors college. What;s wrong with IU?
Indiana University Bloomington is certainly a good school. It is the flagship for Indiana’s public university system (Indiana University system). Acceptance rate and name isn’t everything. Public schools, IMO, tend to take more people than your average private but that doesn’t knock the quality, experience or the education at IU. There’s nothing WRONG with the school. Other students’ denials and acceptances are null in this point because college admissions is so subjective. Just because a person was denied from UCLA, UMich or Berkeley doesn’t mean that he’s not smart. He could have very good grades and SAT/ACT scores.
Nothing’s wrong with IU. It is what it is.
Why do the strength of the faculty and difficulty of admissions have to be correlated in your mind? Keep in mind that the academic talent in the US is very deep. A lot of top-notch faculty teach at unis that aren’t very difficult to get in to (usually because they are very big schools).
What subject are you studying?
The “problem” for Kelley is its size. 1200 plus for an incoming class means they have to be less selective.
I’m sure the top students are very strong. IU is generous to high stat, OOS applicants. They also benefit from the trickle down effect of a strong MBA program.
@88jm19, did the OP mention Kelley?
If your program at IU is the best – e.g., has some of the best faculty, resources, prominent research, strong placement, etc. – you should not be concerned about the selectivity of the overall institution. The admissions process for large state institutions, and their consequent rankings, result more from the missions of the state: they must accept a certain (much larger) number of applicants from their respective states. Often this doesn’t match up well with the prerogatives of selective private institutions in popular rankings.
It can be a mistake, per above, to correlate the selectivity with the quality of education on offer. One thing you should be aware of: at large state institutions, you may need to be more self-motivated and focused to extract the very best out of what a strong department has to offer to undergraduates. But don’t allow the admissions selectivity metric to cloud your judgement regarding whether that educational quality is available: it is.
And I agree with PurpleTitan’s statement on the depth of academic talent in the U.S. Consequently, that talent is spread widely across many different types of institutional structures, and it requires discernment on just how and where one may take advantage of it for their specific discipline and goals.
oops! good catch @PurpleTitan. Sorry OP! I guess I assumed Kelley, because when I think of IU I think business and music.
“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.”
– Groucho Marx
The USA has about 3000 4-year colleges
(http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_005.asp).
In 2011, about 1.9 million students entered degree-granting 4-year public+private colleges as first-time, full-time students
(http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_232.asp)
However, in 2014, only about 74,000 HS students had SAT CR+M scores of 1400 or above.
(https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/sat/sat-percentile-ranks-composite-crit-reading-math-2014.pdf)
Presumably, many of them did not have grades and class rank, or other qualifications, commensurate with those high scores.
So, it would appear that the number of “top” students is only enough to populate about 50 “top” colleges … assuming the average “top” college enrolls about 1000 freshmen per year, and assuming most “top” students want to attend “top” colleges, and if we define “top” students as those with SAT CR+M scores >=1400 with correspondingly strong grades and ECs.
Clearly, even if we relax some of these assumptions a bit, only a small fraction of American colleges can be highly selective. Relatively few large public universities, which draw the majority of freshmen from inside their own states, would fall among the ~100 most selective colleges and universities. By my reckoning, about 15 of them do (including 5 schools in the University of California system, Michigan, UVA, William & Mary, UNC, GA Tech, Wisconsin, UIUC, Washington, Florida, and Penn State).
Indiana does not seem to be among these ~100 most selective schools. However, I’d attribute that to demographics as much as anything else. It is still probably among the top 5% or so of American colleges for selectivity (and perhaps for overall quality as well). For some departments/programs, it may well be among the top schools. Note, too, that many of the ~100 most selective colleges are schools most international students have never heard of … and would never even consider attending.
IU admits about 3/4 of its applicants. That’s not unusual for a state school. Comparing to more unique 'top publics" like Cal and UMich isn’t really fair.
The mission of public univs is to educate their instate students. Becoming “hard to get into” really shouldn’t be the goal. I imagine that the UC system isn’t all that happy that their UCs (nearly all of them) have become very hard to get into.
“IU was my dream school. It has the best program and research the subject that I want to study among English-speaking countries at least.”
Then why do you care what is happening in the other programs at that university? The only thing that matters for you is that your program is indeed the best. The people who matter for your career will still say, “Wow! You graduated from Program X at IU!”
Not to mention of course that while IU may indeed admit anyone with a pulse, your program might not. Even if your program does admit anyone with a pulse, that certainly doesn’t mean that all of those students are still enrolled in that program at the end of the first semester, let alone graduate in that major.
The UC system has added 3 new schools in the past 60 years (most recently Merced in 2005). If the USA wasn’t spending so much of its wealth on other priorities, maybe more states would be following California’s lead. Ideally, we’d have thoroughly excellent colleges for every good student who wanted to attend. Some people might argue that the USA isn’t all that far from such a goal. We have many colleges with solid programs that admit the majority of applicants. That’s a good thing.
I don’t want to get too off topic, but I just wanted to add a comment concerning (@mom2collegekids):
“The mission of public univs is to educate their instate students.”
This is definitely evolving with state budget cuts at many public universities. For anyone interested, here are 2 articles on the subject…the first is from 2012, the second from this year.
So to bring it back to the OP, IU has to balance funding needs with trying to strengthen their programs by attracting a portion of the “top” students (@tk21769)…usually specific colleges/majors within said university will benefit, while others suffer. (at least that’s how I see it.)
Enjoy your experience at IU! Listen to @happymomof1’s advice. Good luck!
The universitywide acceptance rate for the UC was over 58% last year (of course, try telling that to the students who applied only to UCB and UCLA).
@UWfromCA, well, if they want to get in to a UC, they shouldn’t apply to just Cal and UCLA.
@mom2collegekids, as you know, CA has 2 large public university systems, and while the UC’s were designed to take in the top 9-10%, the CalStates are there to offer a 4 year education to a larger group. CA also has a massive CC system that serves as a feeder to the 2 4-year systems. And CA is also a huge state.
Contrast that with IN, a medium-sized state with 2 massive flagships at the top, a CC system that until recently was solely focused on providing vocational training, and not as much in between (there are IU & PU & IUPU branches as well as Ball State, but I don’t believe that they are as extensive as the CalState system).
Considering that IN has roughly 1/6th of CA’s population yet both IU and PU have more undergrads than the 2 top publics in CA (Cal and UCLA), it’s not surprising that they are less selective (one way to look at it is that kids in CA who would be heading to a UC, from Cal/UCLA to UCR/Merced as well of those heading to top CalStates, if they were in IN, would be heading to IU/PU, so IU & PU would have a greater range of students than the 2 top UC’s). However, that doesn’t tell you much about the quality of the faculty or the quality of the education that you may receive.
Different states have different systems.