<p>Everything you say, as usual, is utter nonsense and widely recognized as such. No two elites have a greater overlap among applicants than Harvard and Yale.</p>
<p>
Actually, Yale Law is significantly more selective than Harvard Law and enjoys a significant advantage over Harvard Law with cross-admits. I don't think even Byerly would dispute that. It's the inverse of the relationship between the two colleges.</p>
<p>a phenomenon almost solely attributable to u.s. news.</p>
<p>uh oh, looks like the troll wars are starting again!</p>
<p>Yup, Byerly vs. PosterX, round #105</p>
<p>Byerly, how are you even associated with Harvard? Are you a student or an alumnus? This is the third time I've asked yet I've received no answer.</p>
<p>PosterX is wrong again.</p>
<p>It is my view that U.S. News really has less to do with actual admissions choices. It has a huge impact on public perceptions, etc, but observe the case of Duke, which has been top-5 pretty consistently since the genesis of the rankings, yet is out of the top 15 in the Revealed Preference Rankings. The rankings have little impavt on students actually choosing where to go. Same would be the case of Penn, which is consistently higher ranked then peer Ivies Columbia and Brown yet consistently loses cross-admits. </p>
<p>HOWEVER, in graduate school, when the pecking order is much more clear, that is not the case. </p>
<p>"Yale undergrad now enjoys a significant advantage over Harvard in applications per spot and in acceptance rate, and Harvard has seen a massive drop relative to its competitors in other measures (like NMSC-sponsored National Merit Scholars)"
That's simply not true. As a well-known Silicon Valley business executive told me, the only rankings that matter are cross-admit-based ones. Unless Yale cannot stop losing students 80% of the time to Harvard, it will never be considered the top school. Yale seems to be going to the waitlist pretty heavily this year, eh? Acceptance rates can be misleading (especially in the case of Columbia). Is Columbia a better school than Stanford because it has a lower acceptance rate for the College? </p>
<p>No. Because students who get into both, for whatever reason, will choose Stanford most of the time. Until Yale can do the same to Harvard, it can't be more selective than Harvard. </p>
<p>National Merit Scholars are irrelevant. The PSAT is meaningless. Only 1/8 of any top school's class is NMSF. It doesn't matter.</p>
<p>Zephyr, I don't get why you bash Yale when you wanted to get in so badly...</p>
<p>he's probably more againt posterx's fallacious arguments than with yale per se. or maybe he realizes that four seasons are over-rated.</p>
<p>zephyr, while i agree that the graduate rankings have much greater impact on actual applicant behavior than do the undergraduate ones, the latter still do have an effect. a cornell study a couple years ago showed how an increase in a school's individual ranking leads to an immediate increase in applications to that school. and while penn and duke still lag far behind their lofty u.s. news rankings in rankings based on cross-admit behavior, you cannot deny that penn has gotten much more selective and, really, "better," during this last decade of steadily climbing rankings. brian leiter, texas law prof and rankings guru of sorts, has written about the "echo chamber" effect whereby a school's academic reputation gravitates towards its overall ranking.</p>
<p>as for the bit about national merit scholars, 1) the fraction at the top end is closer to one-fifth or one-sixth than one-eighth, and 2) the actual fraction, however small or large, is hardly "irrelevant." the fractions, in fact, are large enough to make comparisons between schools meaningful. just look at the rankings by NMSers and see how closely they correlate with cross-admit selectivity.</p>
<p>"Only 1/8 of any top school's class is NMSF"</p>
<p>Actually, about 20% of Yale's entering class is NMSC-sponsored National Merit Scholars - the same fraction as Harvard's. That compares with much, much smaller fractions at almost all of the other Ivies and top schools. For example, at Cornell it's usually about 1%. It is important to distinguish between Scholars and NMSC-sponsored scholars.</p>
<p>School: 2002 2003 2004 2005 (20042005 change) estimated 2005 percentage of class </p>
<p>Harvard: 396 378 312 287 (-25) 17.5% </p>
<p>Yale: 180 228 224 232 (+8) 17.5% </p>
<p>Princeton: 149 165 192 180 (-12) 14.7% </p>
<p>MIT: 139 151 134 131 (-3) 12.2% </p>
<p>Stanford: 223 217 217 194 (-23) 11.9%</p>
<p>I'm not bashing Yale! I agree with pretty much everything crimsonbulldog says when he posts. </p>
<p>I do, however, value a reasonable argument. PosterX hasn't presented any, and I don't want people to take his views as anything even remotely approaching truth.</p>
<p>I disagree with Byerly just as often.</p>
<p>As for NMSF, how would the choices of those students be different than the choices of other top students? NMF types might be wooed by the full-package scholarships made just for them. I don't they they would behave differently than any top student.</p>
<p>As for the echo chamber effect, it's interestingm but it's hard to distinguish cause from effect. Is Penn getting better because its ranking is rising, or is its ranking getting better because Penn itself is improving as a school? And Chicago, for example, maintains a high academic reputation while being crushed in the rankings. And Notre Dame is usually perceived by the public to be in the top five while it barely cracks the top 25 of USNews.</p>
<p>Based on the NMSC-sponsored National Merit Scholar figures, shown below, it's pretty clear that Yale has been moving up quickly in desirability among this cohort, while the other schools (particularly Harvard) are stagnating or declining. This wouldn't be that interesting on its own, but combined with the fact that Yale's applications have skyrocketed and its acceptance rate has been cut in half in the period of a few years, making it now the most selective college in the United States, it is quite significant.</p>
<p>School: 2002 2003 2004 2005 (20042005 change) estimated 2005 percentage of class </p>
<p>Harvard: 396 378 312 287 (-25) 17.5% </p>
<p>Yale: 180 228 224 232 (+8) 17.5% </p>
<p>Princeton: 149 165 192 180 (-12) 14.7% </p>
<p>MIT: 139 151 134 131 (-3) 12.2% </p>
<p>Stanford: 223 217 217 194 (-23) 11.9%</p>
<p>It's also worth noting that beyond the top five or six schools, the NMSC percentages are quite low.</p>
<p>i don't deny that yale's made some inroads (thanks largely to the pseudo-reform of switching to SCEA), but it's still not "the most selective college in the united states." of course, you know this, but you persist in your strenuous efforts to tell others otherwise.</p>
<p>Has had the lowest acceptance rate for 2 of the past 3 years.</p>
<p>but only the (distantly) second-highest RD yield in all three.</p>
<p>The main trend is that Yale College is the hot school now due primarily to exposure via national election candidates, and Harvard College is in a slump due to a rep for the U's favoring its grad schools over undergrads. Among the elites, Yale and Harvard Colleges are in a dead heat as far as I can tell.</p>
<p>"The main trend is that Yale College is the hot school now due primarily to exposure via national election candidates, and Harvard College is in a slump due to a rep for the U's favoring its grad schools over undergrads. Among the elites, Yale and Harvard Colleges are in a dead heat as far as I can tell."</p>
<p>All speculation. Presidential candidates? Al Gore was a Harvardian. GWB went to HBS. Schools are "hot" for more than just presidential candidates, seriously. Penn is hot for a reason other than that; Yale must be as well. Nor is Yale that particularly "hot"--it's at the top and has stayed there, and hasn't gained much relative to Harvard. </p>
<p>Harvard is in a slump...why? Because the administration favors grad schools? Summers certainly didn't (Byerly will be the first to tell you). And Harvard always has, so what changes now? </p>
<p>"Dead heat" is a meaningless term if there is a significant statistical difference. Dead heat in terms of what?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Dead heat in terms of what?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, in terms of American politics. Check out this thread: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=198304&page=1&pp=15%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=198304&page=1&pp=15</a></p>
<p>A debate errupts towards the end these numbers are exposed:</p>
<p>"....Furthermore, when you add up all of the Harvard and Yale Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices in America's 230 year history, you get the following break-down:</p>
<p>Yale College - 60
Harvard College - 22"</p>
<p>and:</p>
<p>"YALE VS. HARVARD - Undergrad Perspective</p>
<p>PRESIDENTS:
Yale College: 3
Harvard College: 5</p>
<p>VICE-PRESIDENTS:
Yale College: 3
Harvard College: 2</p>
<p>US SENATORS:
Yale College: 26
Harvard College: 9</p>
<p>GOVERNORS:
Yale College: 20
Harvard College: 2 (about 15 if you include grad schools)</p>
<p>SUPREME COURT JUSTICES:<br>
Yale College: 8
Harvard College 4"</p>
<p>Now, some people dispute that since these numbers are from wikipedia, they are inaccurate. They serve as an excellent indication and the data from wikipedia went back clear to our nation's founding. As the article pasted in the first post indicates, Yale has always had a lead on Harvard politically because it was first at recruiting people from around the country rather than just focussing in the North East. </p>
<p>Keep in mind this is for Yale College. Harvard as a grad school (particularly its law school) does better than Yale; however, when it comes to an undergraduate education, Yale College takes the cake for American politics.</p>
<p>That is absurd.</p>