Conflicting acceptance rates

College Search & Lists
1

So a friend of mine who is going to Northwest Nazarene University said they accepted only 29% of applicants. I was like, whooaaa no way. But on the USNWR it said 29%. Here’s the thing,

  1. That seems just absurd for NNU
  2. Other sources such as the Princeton review said their acceptance rate is like 69%
    I’ve noticed discrepancies with the USNWR when it comes to acceptance rates before, but now I’m super doubtful about it’s reliability. Any explanations on why USNWR seems to have different numbers?
2

It’s more like the 69%. They have an early admissions round in which nearly all applicants are admitted. The yield rate is about 35%.

3

http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1126 says 67%.

4

@JustOneDad @ucbalumnus Thanks for the replies. Any idea why USNWR has the acceptance rate so low? Is it some sort of weird technicality?

5

I thought college data.com was slow to input current year admission rate. One School website showed student profile from last year 2014 said 14% admission rate. But college data.com showed 19%. Cappex showed 14% as same as school website. So, you need to check student profile from each school website. That is the most reliable way.

6

In 2013 NNU’s acceptance rate was [url=<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=northwest+nazarene+university&s=all&id=142461#admsns%5D62%.%5B/url”>http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=northwest+nazarene+university&s=all&id=142461#admsns]62%.[/url] No way did it plummet by more than 30% in a two year span.

7

@bambi0611 @whenhen Thanks for the replies. So is there any reason why USNWR had such a wrong acceptance rate? Is it a reporting issue maybe?

8

Reporting issue likely. The data I linked to is what they submitted to the federal government.

9

gdlt234 I sent an message to Unigo website also showed 18% acceptance rate of child’s college and different from school website. They said they all get information from school every summer but they are slow to update. So, for the current information it is best to check each school website.

10

USNWR makes mistakes. Browsing through I’ve seen plenty of examples. In the case of NNU, the error is probably a function of this base data: 1227 applied, 357 accepted. The latter figure is probably incorrect, as it implies an improbable yield.