<p>Ack! Again, Stanford is shafted…and Penn is an extremely good school but we’re tied with them? W T F? Well it could be worse, we could have been 7th…ech :/</p>
<p>I’am more surprise to see Wisconsin tied with Illinios, never would have guessed that one, Illinios really seems to be competitive reguardless of high acceptance rate.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the LAC rankings… How is Pomona not top 3? It’s more selective than Williams, Midd, Well, Swarthmore, and last year was more selective than Amherst, with only very minimal selectivity difference with Amherst this year. It’s endowment per student is also higher, as well as the average SAT per student. It appears to me that US News Portrays an East Coast bias.
And on an anecdotal note, I know an asian, unhooked applicant who got into Midd with less than a 1900 SAT. What’s going on here??</p>
<p>U.S. News is run by East Coast-educated staff writers. What do you expect?</p>
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<p>Stanford shoots itself in the foot. Their selectivity rank is only 9. Their applicant pool is similar to the HYP applicant pool, and yet they consistently turn down kids with top rank/scores in favor of people with lesser academics who wrote “better” essays about roommates and “intellectual vitality.”</p>
<p>what do you guys mean US News penalizes schools for being public?? that doesnt make sense</p>
<p>big publics actually get boosted by the PA which counts for 25% of the whole rating</p>
<p>I think (most) publics get treated fairly. I would perhaps grant an exception for Berkeley and Michigan.</p>
<p>Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Stanford is also more region-biased than other top schools as they accept a disproportionate number of Cali students (as compared to Harvard/MIT and Mass. kids, for instance).</p>
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<p>But it’s because of an admissions process that puts more emphasis on character and personality that makes Stanford stand out from its peers (amongst other things). I wouldn’t trade that experience at Stanford for having 99% in the top 10% like Penn to game the selelctivity rankings. </p>
<p>Just goes to show that the selectivity ranking is bogus-I mean would anyone really say Stanford is only the 9th hardest school to get into? Easier to get into than Penn? I mean it’s sort of undisputable that unless you’re applying to Wharton or a combined program at Penn that Stanford is more selective. You can’t just use the average SAT and top 10% to determine that. Oh well, just goes to show how dumb this ranking is.</p>
<p>nj<em>azn</em>premed, not true. California is a huge state population wise and most of Stanford’s legacy students live in California for obvious reasons. Harvard gets its legacies from all over the Northeastern seaboard, making the comparison sort of moot.</p>
<p>Holy… 36% of Stanford students are from California? I never noticed that, but that’s ridiculous.</p>
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<p>So it said by the usnews. BTW, it is Penn moving up, not Stanford moving down.</p>
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<p>Yup, similar to Penn looking for the kids in PA/NJ.</p>
<p>Last year UW was tied with 5 at 35 with Illinois just one point behind. Very small swing really but the ties are a wildcard. UW’s score was unchanged at 61 but UI gained 1 point to tie.</p>
<p>sandra_ny2011, Berkeley (4.7) and Michigan (4.4) have high PA scores but they are not even ranked in the top 20. (Personally, Michigan’s PA should be tied with Berkeley but that’s another discussion.)</p>
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<p>At the risk of being pedantic…</p>
<p>I only mentioned the 75th percentile; you’re the one who tried to generalize it. In fact what I said only works for any percentile above the median. Below that, the upper bound is found not in the case where the xth highest scorer in M is also the xth highest scorer in V, but rather the xth highest scorer in M is the xth lowest scorer in V.</p>
<p>California has over 10% of the US population. It isn’t out of line for it to be 36% in-state.</p>
<p>On the issue of stanford’s ranking…what about the 300 or so varsity athletes accepted every year? They definitely bring down the average for GPA, SATs, etc., yet are a vital part of what makes Stanford so special.</p>
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<p>I wasn’t just generalizing. I was saying that your statement is incorrect. There’s nothing special about the median. Quick counterexample for the case of 75th percentile:</p>
<p>24% of a college’s students have 800 M, 600 CR.
Another 24% have 600 M, 800 CR.
The rest (52%) have 400 M, 400 CR.</p>
<p>Then the 75th percentile CR score is less than 600, the 75th percentile M score is less than 600, but 48% have M +CR = 1400, so that 75th percentile of M+CR is 1400, which is more than 1200 = 600+600 > 75th percentile of M + 75th percentile of CR. </p>
<p>Like I said, your statement seems correct, just by intuition, but it’s not necessarily true. I’m a mathematician, and even I had to think a bit before I decided it was incorrect.</p>
<p>is st. olaf really number 49? what happened there? i thought they were on the rise?</p>
<p>Boston College didn’t move up or down the rankings any bit. I have expected this.</p>
<p>And Williams is now number 1 for good? Wow.</p>