<p>ive noticed that yale is more selective than harvard, for both the scea and rd round. for the scea round, does yale have a lower acceptance rate because yale scea applicants are not as strong as harvard scea applicants? since you can only apply to one school, does yale want to compare with the harvard scea applicants when they apply rd?</p>
<p>thanks in advance for any input</p>
<p>there already is a thread on this.
and there is more to selectivity than just the % accepted...
For example, Harvard has a higher SAT average.
Check the other thread.</p>
<p>All top schools receive roughly 20,000 applications. Yale's class size is around 1300, Harvard's around 1650. </p>
<p>Assuming the same number of applications and the same matriculation rate, Yale will have a lower admit rate.</p>
<p>Harvard's matriculation stands at 78% (lat year) and Yale's at 67%</p>
<p>What is matriculation?</p>
<p>Matriculation is the percentage of accepted students who decide to enroll.
I stand by the reasoning that both schools are equally as popular among applicants, but yale has a smaller class. Things could easily have gone the other way (take last year for example...)</p>
<p>Yale's was 72% last year. </p>
<p>Much more informative is to compare the characteristics of the applicant pool for each school. I have yet to see any careful study that puts Harvard in second place once that issue is taken into account.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there are many things than put Harvard into second place. Unless you want to become as pedantic as Byerly, I suggest you forget all this yield, admit, and ranking business and focus on what makes Harvard great. No one applying from highschool really knows anything, so if you really want to convince more/better people that Harvard's best, give them a real reason. The horror.</p>
<p>Ok was accepted Yale Ed and Harvard RD- was 100% sure Yale until Harvard decision- now agonizing over what to do- help?</p>
<p>Aww I feel sooooo sorry for you. Do you need a shoulder to cry on?</p>
<p>Yale cut their class size by over 50 people this year because they over-admitted last year. That accounts for almost all of the drop in percentage from last year.</p>
<p>Certainly I would recommend that any student who has been admitted to more than one of America's selective colleges do his or her utmost to visit the campuses (as I did, years after my undergrad days, on business trips) and see what they are like. All of the colleges usually debated about in threads on this Harvard Forum are fine colleges, and reasonable minds can differ about what one prefers, but take a close look at the colleges you are admitted to and decide what criteria of selection are most important to you. </p>
<p>One criterion of selection that is important to me, based on my undergraduate experience at a research university with a huge</a> library, is a really excellent, well-staffed and well-stocked research library on campus. Any of the Ivy League and Ivy League-peer research universities have great libraries, but you might want to compare Harvard's</a> online catalog to that of some other college you are considering if this criterion is important to you. </p>
<p>Another way to compare colleges is to look at specific courses they offer in subjects that are of interest to you. In the specific subject of mathematics, although Yale is no slouch of a school, it is generally agreed that Harvard's Department</a> of Mathematics is the superior of the two. Perhaps the opposite school would be superior if compared on the basis of some other subject. </p>
<p>In general, I think it is wisest to dig deeply into the abundantly available information about each college, including searching the college online library catalog, reading the college newspaper online, and reading third-party college guidebooks before deciding one college or another is the best for you. If the various colleges have active alumni networks in your town (as they do in my town), so much the better. It happens that my oldest child is genuinely undecided about the issue of where to apply to college (a decision that is a few years off for him) and I participate in CC college forums mostly as a way of updating and modifying impressions I gained of colleges after making business trips to their campuses in the 1980s and 1990s. All I suggest, with respect for each participant here, is that easy formulas for comparing colleges such as that suggested in the opening message in this thread almost surely miss valuable information that will help cross-admitted students make a fitting decision for their own educational plans. </p>
<p>Best wishes to all of you who have more than one choice for next year in making a suitable choice based on accurate information about the colleges and about yourselves.</p>
<p>Thank you for a helpful answer, unlike the one posted earlier.</p>
<p>Awwwwwwwwwww</p>
<p>The actual yield rates last year:</p>
<p>Yale: 70.2%, Harvard: 78%</p>
<p>The currently <em>projected</em> yield rates this year:</p>
<p>Yale: 74%, Harvard: 79%</p>
<hr>
<p>For choices made by top students who <em>have</em> a choice, see the "Revealed Preference" study - <a href="http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf</a>
- and other discussion on this site of the cross-admit data.</p>
<hr>
<p>In the 2006 USNews "Best Colleges" , the top ranked schools in "selectivity" according to their formula are as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>(tie) MIT, Yale</li>
<li>(tie) Princeton, Caltech</li>
<li>(tie) Penn, WUStL</li>
<li>(tie) Brown, Stanford</li>
<li>(tie) Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Rice</li>
</ol>
<hr>
<p>Ranked by SAT score median, the most "selective schools are:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>(tie) Columbia, Rice</li>
<li>(tie) Duke, Chicago</li>
</ol>