Haverford vs. Barnard vs Smith

juillet
Mon, 10 Apr 2017 22:56:16 +0000

^In addition to the above, let’s also remember that admissions rate is not a proxy for college quality or educational experience or the competitiveness of one’s peers. There are lots of schools with higher admissions rates for a variety of factors - maybe because they have lower name recognition than bigger schools, or because they are single-sex (Wellesley’s and Barnard’s acceptance rates are much higher than comparable top LACs), or a variety of other factors. My favorite example of this is always Lawrence University, a great little LAC with top-notch students and an acceptance rate in the 70-80% range.

Another example is looking at how acceptance rates have shrunk over time - Princeton’s acceptance rate went from 13% in 2006 to 6.5% in 2016; Duke accepted 22% of its applicants but now accepts only 9% today; and Emory used to accept over 40% of applicants but now accepts only 25%. Did these schools get twice as good in the intervening years, or did their students get twice as competitive? Nah, not really - it’s just now easier to find out about and apply to college than it ever was before, so students apply to more colleges in places they wouldn’t have considered before.