<p>only 3% for Harvard? Wow.</p>
<p>Penn increase I read due to THE DONALD TRUMP factor (TV show The Apprentice) - How funny is that?</p>
<p>I doubt that you could accredit it to that. Everywhere besides Yale went up.</p>
<p>I'm personally a little confused about the drop, but it works out very nicely for this year's applicants!</p>
<p>As Clinton, Bush Sr, Kerry and especially GW Bush, have all had their stock fall , so is Yale benefiting less from the White House halo effect.</p>
<p>re: Taliban Man, it is somewhat shameful that having admitted him and given a principled defense of the admission (this may be the one and only time that it wasn't BS when a college mentions "diversity"), Yale did not help him try to obtain a visa to return to the US and complete his studies. I believe they would have helped had it been another student.</p>
<p>sisreune, I don't think Clinton went to Yale. Didn't he go to Georgetown?</p>
<p>President Clinton's law degree was from Yale Law School (where he met Hillary). He did his undergraduate degree at Georgetown. </p>
<p>Moving back to the main topic, what was the increase last year in the number of high school graduates </p>
<p>a) in the United States </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>b) worldwide?</p>
<p>He was Georgetown undergrad, and Yale Law School.</p>
<p>Penn went up so much partially because of joining the common app. Northwestern went up 19% for this reason...</p>
<p>I honestly don't think there's any record of the number of high school students worldwide, you could find something along those lines in the US, but nothing that'll encompass the whole world. Estimates maybe, actual values, I doubt it.</p>
<p>The yield factor may decrease for almost colleges this year because kids have on an overage applied to more places than in past years. So it makes sense for Yale and other IVYs to increase their acceptance rate.</p>
<p>if you applied RD to Yale last year, you had a 5.8% chance of being admitted... how could that continue, really !? that alone would scare a few people from applying, i should think... anything under 10% is just incomprehensible to me... </p>
<p>last year it was harder to get into Yale than any other institution; it will be interesting to see what happens next year to the school that accepts the least percentage... </p>
<p>seems a little insane to me... but i think the insanity is why kids are applying to more schools & i agree w/ beantowngal, yields should start decreasing.</p>
<p>
[quote]
last year it was harder to get into Yale than any other institution
[/quote]
</p>
<p>A LOT of people would disagree with that statement, both in reference to the United States (think Harvard) and in reference to the world as a whole (think the most prestigious national university in countries like India, China, Taiwan, Japan, Russia, etc.) Yale is definitely hard to get into. It would take more work to show that it is the MOST hard to get into, and I don't think it is.</p>
<p>ta - sorry but i was only talking about these numbers in the nat'l context. internationally, of course, it would be like comparing apples to oranges. as for harvard... last year H had an overall acceptance rate of 9.3%, while Yale set an Ivy record at 8.6%.
frankly, any school that accepts even 20-25% of its applicants is difficult to get into, imho. my point is that i wouldn't be surprised if next year we saw a drop in apps to this year's (statistically speaking) most difficult u.s. school to get into.
as for stats, i'm in the school of thought that says all stats can be manipulated... which is why i would like to see all universities require a stats class for graduation. but of course, that's a diff. subj.</p>
<p>What you would need to do to compare colleges with similar base acceptance rates is to look at the applicant pool of each college. The base acceptance rate by itself is NOT sufficient to establish which college is hardest to get into--surely even a high school level of statistics knowledge is enough to take that into account.</p>
<p>The applicant pool to Harvard/Yale is strikingly similar, though a .7% difference in acceptance rates is hardly enough to make such an assumption.</p>
<p>Among the math-avid students I know, there is MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more interest in Harvard than in Yale. It may be the other way around (as other participants on CC have suggested) for aspiring humanities majors, but that is why I say we have to look beyond base acceptance rates and see which students apply to each college. </p>
<p>I would love to see comments on comparing Yale to, say, the Indian Institutes of Technology or other colleges that are legendarily difficult to get into.</p>
<p>Meh, it's hard enough to compare the selectivity of US schools with "holistic admissions" (like Harvard vs. Yale).
It's impossible, I think, to compare the selectivity of Yale with that of IIT (standardized testing-based admissions) or Curtis Institute of Music or Juilliard (other examples of specialized, singular talent-based admissions--in their case it leads to a 7% acceptance rate at each, significantly lower than Yale or Harvard's rates).</p>
<p>Has anyone here thought about how freakishly selective colleges are going to be in the future? For example, my parents and teachers all have stories like "I applied to 2 colleges and went to the one w/ the prettier campus." Normal, non-CC kids now apply to about 3-4 (from what I've seen). Meanwhile, more and more kids are applying to college than ever before. </p>
<p>Way back in the day, you'd get into Yale w/ connections and a handshake from the director after a closed-door meeting. Now, you apply, and more are applying every year. More and more bright, but not well-connected kids are also taking a chance and applying, and many are getting in (thru luck+Yale's love of diversity) </p>
<p>When my kids apply to college, I'm guessing Harvard's acceptance rate will be down to about 2%, Yale and Pton 3%, and the rest of the Ivies hovering around 5%. Maybe even less.</p>
<p>Billybobby, there are plenty of other extremely good colleges out there. Up-and-coming universities will increase everyone's choices and therefore keep your "2% selectivity" out of the picture. Think of Ivy-level, decently selective institutions like Olin developing, plus places like Wash U and other top non-Ivy privates coming up as well.
Way back in the day, it was easier to get into Yale because fewer people could apply--fewer people did. That's what prompted Yale and other Ivies to look into "holistic admissions" and start marketing to schools that weren't Exeter, Andover, etc--because back in the day, Yale and the Ivies were a place for wealthy upper-class males, not necessarily "bright students from all walks of life with diverse accomplishments and passions," the latter being what they look for now.</p>