Let's quibble over semantics: what do we really mean by "highly selective" (Ex: Pitzer v Williams)?

Corinthian
Fri, 22 Apr 2016 19:42:29 +0000

OK let me try approaching this another way. Instead of Pitzer and Williams let’s just talk about Hypothetical Private College A and Hypothetical Private College B. Assume both say they consider applicants holistically. If all you knew was that A admits 13.5% and B admits 17.6%, you’d say A is more selective than B, right? Now let’s assume we have further data: let’s say that we know A’s applicant pool is 80% from California, that the average GPA of applicants is 3.2 and the average ACT is 29. For B, let’s say the applicant pool comes from a wider geographic area, the average GPA is 3.5 and the average ACT is 31. My point is that, as I understand the word selective, A is STILL more selective than B. It’s not like the admissions committee for A says: our applicants are all fungible, we’ll pick 13.5% at random. Nor does A say: all we care about is stats and we’ll take the top 13.5%, determined solely by stats. Sure wish we had B’s applicant pool. Instead A’s admission committee carefully goes through the applications to discern and select which 13.5% is the best fit for A.

This is the issue that bugs me about the word selective. We import all sorts of judgments onto it about the worth and “quality” of the applicant pool. And we do that without actually even having data about the applicant pool, just educated guesses. Of course the bottom line is that acceptance rates are a flawed metric especially given the limited data included with them. But as humans we love to make lists, ranks and judgments.