<p>I wouldn’t say that the rankings are so much flawed because of ‘how’ the data are collected, so much as ‘what’ data are collected. When looking at any ranking, you need to look at the factors used and the weights given to the factors, that’s what biases the ranking one way or the other. </p>
<p>What many applicants don’t understand is what tom pointed out, acceptance numbers have a relatively small part in the rankings, so they are not a good tool to use for developing a school list. There are some other admissions factors they look at, such as test scores.</p>
<p>For accurate admission rates, go to the Common Data Set for the school, this data is collected consistently across all schools (although some schools provide more information than others).</p>
<p>In general, we all assume the numbers given by colleges are accurate. Yes, there are going to be scandals. I don’t think college admissions is that different from many other businesses in this way.</p>
<p>Yield is only important if you’re the school, trying to admit about the right number of students to fill, but not overfill, the number of seats in your fr class. To the applicant, you only care about being admitted.</p>