@Saint68 - Excellent question. The answer is no, not necessarily. First of all, it is important to define selectivity. If you look exclusively at acceptance rates, you will get a distorted picture. Some colleges get a high number of applications because of reasons other than or in addition to academic reputation and perceived difficulty. That drives their acceptance rates lower. My take is, you can safely categorize schools into buckets, like most selective, more selective, less selective. The ones in the higher buckets will admit ON AVERAGE more academically qualified students who will set the curve in many classes. Many of these schools will have the largest endowments, high research spending, and famous faculty with lots of awards such as the Nobel. That doesn’t mean they will challenge students equally or educate them better. But class for class, they will be more challenging than schools on the bottom end. Physics at Cal Tech or Harvey Mudd or Harvard or MIT will be more rigorous than Physics at [insert obscure college name here]. And the writing and reading expectations at Swarthmore, Williams, Amherst, Carleton, Haverford, Bowdoin, Middlebury will be higher than at [insert obscure college name here]. Also, when your child is thrust into an environment where the students are more ambitious, hard-working, and intelligent, she/he will be pushed harder to achieve. On the other hand, if you compare schools within the SAME bucket, you will be splitting hairs. Relative selectivity means nothing except an extra rung on the magazine ranking ladder.
Let’s look at five examples.
1.) UC Berkeley vs. UCLA. I don’t know anyone - not even UCLA students - who would argue that UCLA is academically more rigorous (or even as rigorous/ academically competitive) than Cal, even though there have been years (or at least one year) when UCLA had a lower acceptance rate than Cal. A student’s GPA will most probably suffer more at Cal than at UCLA. But UCLA is desirable in many other ways like location, climate, campus, housing, proximity to a medical school, excellence in non-academic areas such as the performing arts and athletics, and so on. These other factors attract many applicants from across the country (not just CA) who may not consider Cal. Cal, on the other hand, attracts a high concentration of academically intense students who may or may not place as much value on UCLA’s advantages.
2.) U. Chicago vs. Harvard. U. Chicago is intellectually more rigorous than Harvard. Amazing school. But it has a higher acceptance rate. That’s partly because of its location (not exactly Harvard Square) & climate (brrr), and partly because Harvard and its student body are more well-rounded.
3.) I can bet you that the low acceptance rates at Pomona and Claremont McKenna are driven in part by climate and location, when compared to the New England schools of comparable status. Williams has a much higher acceptance rate than Pomona or Swarthmore. Would anyone like to make the case that Williams is less challenging than the other two? Give an Oxford-style tutorial a try. Also, Pitzer has a low acceptance rate, but it is not nearly as academically challenging as its 5Cs brethren. However, this small school is extremely selective in other ways: it is looking for students who want to change the world, people with unwavering commitment to social justice. It also offers a unique, interdisciplinary curriculum that appeals to many students. The applicants who flock to Pitzer love its culture and values (and it has the best food among the 5Cs).
4.) Carleton vs Haverford. The two schools are arguably equal in academic rigor, research opportunities, outcomes, and rankings. Carleton is technically “more selective” with its lower acceptance rate. However, if you look closely, you’ll see that Haverford usually has the higher average incoming GPA, test scores, and high school class rankings. That would imply Haverford students are, on average, more academically competitive than Carls. Or does it? The quality of education and level of challenge are probably the same at both schools. For a given student, the experience will vary based on many factors.
5.) Stanford vs. UC Berkeley. Once you get into the most selective university in the nation, it’s smooth sailing. I know a lot of Stanford faculty, alums, and parents of students. They will tell you that surviving Cal is much more difficult because no one holds your hand, and there is no grade inflation. That’s why our neighbors are stepping over each other trying to get their kids into the local joint.
