<p>I recently went to my college orientation and they stated that they had accepted 1900 incoming freshmen and that there were over 10,000 applicants. I can assure you that this school does not have a <20% acceptance rate! My guess is that, in actuality, they accepted many more students but 1900 was simply the amount of spaces. This is not the only school I have seen exaggerations of numbers come from. When I used to look at Cornell it seemed they always had thousands more applicants than collegeboard indicated. What is going on?!</p>
<p>What they probably said was “There were over 10,000 applicants vying for only 1900 spots.”</p>
<p>Maybe they meant that the 1900 were those that had matriculated to that college.</p>
<p>Colleges always accept more students than there are spots in their freshman class. UNC has like 20000 applicants each year, and accepts about 6500, of that about 3500 matriculate.</p>
<p>Yeah. What was the exact phrasing??</p>
<p>yield …</p>
<p>They lie like crazy.
Especially WashU.</p>
<p>They don’t lie, but the way the information is presented may be misleading. Newspapers do the same, too. For example, at an Amherst speech, I heard the percentage of international students was 10. But when I went to the website, the fact was only 7% or less is non-US international; the remaining 3% are citizens. This is just one example.</p>
<p>Another is WashU’s acceptance which goes like: out of the X applicants, you have been selected as one of the Y who will be attending. While (X/Y)100% is actually the yield rate, at first glance, it seems like the acceptance rate.</p>
<p>well the lady did make it seem like only 1900 were chosen from over 10,000 but clearly that isn’t possible because obviously they weren’t able to attract all 100% of accepted students. it just seems like many colleges highl exaggerate the numbers of those applying. on cornell’s site it showed that they essentially had a 15% acceptance rate yet collegeboard shows more of a mid 30%</p>
<p>But wheres the college board getting their info from?Don’t they get it from them/the universities?</p>
<p>^ Cornell’s numbers on college board are for the entire university (including the hotel school, agriculture, etc.). Admission rates for CAS and engineering are significantly lower.</p>
<p>People lie with statistics all the time, not only colleges. They misquote for their own purpose, thats’ why there is this book written:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.de/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728[/url]”>http://www.amazon.de/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728</a></p>
<p>I think colleges spin things, but this rampant lying some of you are describing sounds off to me. </p>
<p>With the internet and more sources for college information, it would be very hard for a college to publish false statistics without someone noticing the discrepancy.</p>
<p>Sometimes people misunderstand things, like thinking “spots in the class” equals the acceptance numbers. Our local TV station just did this to Michigan, leading with a headline like “U-M rejects 75% of its applicants.” Which is laughable, and completely false, but it wasn’t the college who said that. We supplied all the correct numbers to the media–it was a journalist who misunderstood how college acceptance works.</p>
<p>Sometimes people make mistakes, too–especially admissions counselors who have not been on the job long. They’re not lying as a part of college policy–they’re just young, and careless, and inexperienced. And it’s not just inexperienced people who make mistakes. I’ve done enrollment and admissions analysis for ten years, and last month I calculated a percentage for the new freshman class incorrectly. Mistakes do happen.</p>