slipper1234

Flippy,

Where are you forming your opinions? You cite accept rate as a reason for Columbia's selectivity, yet you discount it when positioning B/D vs. Duke/Penn. Make up your mind.

Brown and Dartmouth (Dartmouth particularly) are much more self-selective than Penn and Columbia which draw tons of Tri-state area applications. If you live in NYC (and maybe SoCal which tends to have an interest in NYC too for some reason) then there is a difference, but overall around the nation there isn't one. Also, Columbia and Pen take a huge percentage of their classes ED, which helps with a lower RD rate. Dartmouth's RD is about 11%, but remember only about a third of its class is ED which the admissions office thinks is fair.

Columbia has lower SAT scores than Dartmouth (by a wide margin) and is about the same as Brown. How can you argue its much more selective? Ane PENN???? Penn loses to Dartmouth in almost every selectivity metric including accept rate and SAT scores. Only in perhaps SoCal and NYC are Columbia and Penn more selective than Dartmouth, in the rest of the country I would argue the opposite.