Clemson--Gaming US News Ranking

Ghostt
Tue, 17 Aug 2010 10:12:39 +0000

This is a very interesting discussion. I have little to contribute to it, but I would just like to say that I don’t think student selectivity (as defined by acceptance rate and GPA/SAT scores) is actually a measure of quality. A college’s acceptance rate has very little to do with the actual education you can receive there; moreover, the average intelligence of the student body at a school with a 15% acceptance rate is not much different from that at a school that accepts 45% of its students. And even if it were, this would only become a factor if class discussions reflected it. But very few students are actually valuable contributors to academic discussions and really enrich their classes, and this usually depends on their communication skills, the knowledge/expertise they have acquired independently and their level of interest. These things, in my experience, rarely correlate with GPA (because in any given class, the number of people who can engage the professor in a meaningful discussion is usually much smaller than the number of people with good high-school grades).

The only ways in which the student body can impact the overall quality of education at a certain institution do not lend themselves to quantification. Because they are usually connected with selecting for unquantifiable qualities.

For example, let’s say that university x wants to enrol a class exclusively made up of people who are interested in travelling around the world and learning about other cultures. This university might devise a special application/supplement/interview to seed out the less intellectually curious applicants. Even if the acceptance rate of x stays the same, it will have conducted a rigorous selection process and its incoming class will have certain unmistakable characteristics. Logic dictates that the geography, anthropology and history classes at x will be much more engaging than those at many other universities. However, because x values personality above numbers, the average SAT scores/GPA of its incoming class may fall.

Ok, this is a crappy analogy, I get that. I’m just trying to say that, imo, acceptance rate is pretty much meaningless (unless we’re talking about music/art schools).

I realise this is pretty off-topic and apologise.