Looking for prestigious universities that are not very hard to get into ?

College Search & Lists
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<p>Hey guys
I’m looking for some prestigious colleges but not like MIT or Harvard.
UC berkeley is a good example, requirements aren’t so hard and the acceptance rate is over 20%. I’m just curious if there are some colleges like it.
I also have a problem, it is just that I studied in a regular or let’s say a “crappy” school, I also live in a place where there aren’t too much activities, and so I don’t have much of “extracurricular activities”. but I have ambitions and goals and I love learning so much and have plenty of good activities -I do at home- and interesting events that happened in my life. So my question is : if I got all the requirements and wrote an excellent essay, will they overlook my extracurricular activities ?
Thanks in advance :).</p>

<p>P.S. : I haven’t taken the SAT yet but I’m going to soon, so don’t ask me about how well I did. I just need your help to recommend me some good colleges like I explained above.</p>

<p>Thanks again.</p>

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<p>Case Western (a good name for itself and a higher acceptance rate)</p>

<p>University of Alabama (a nice financial safety if you end up with nice stats and a decent school otherwise too)</p>

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<p>“University of Alabama (a nice financial safety if you end up with nice stats and a decent school otherwise too)”</p>

<p>Did you miss the part where the OP was looking for a “prestigious” college?</p>

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<p>This list sorts colleges into categories of selectivity:</p>

<p><a href=“Ranking Colleges by Selectivity - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com”>Ranking Colleges by Selectivity - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com;

<p>Cal-Berkeley is in category 2, so you can look through the other colleges with similar selectivity in that category and see if any of them match your idea of prestige.</p>

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<p>OP - No one can really give you much advice without more info. Did you take the PSAT? What is your unweighted GPA? What can you afford? What state do you reside in? Do you have any geographic constraints? What do you think you want to major in? </p>

<p>Here is the thing about “prestigious universities” – most of them are hard to get into. That is why they are “prestigious”.</p>

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<p>OP: You posted on 1/10/2013 that you would be graduating high school in June, 2013 and you haven’t taken the SAT yet? Are you taking a gap year?</p>

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<p>UC berkeley is a good example, requirements aren’t so hard and the acceptance rate is over 20%. I’m just curious if there are some colleges like it.</p>

<p>I’m not sure if Cal is a good example. Are you instate? What are your stats?</p>

<p>When a school has a XX% acceptance rate, that doesn’t mean that YOU have that chance of acceptance. Some students may have a 90% chance, some may have 10% chance…depending on stats, residency, etc.</p>

<p>Prestigious schools aren’t going to have easy acceptance rates. Because they are “prestigious,” they get a gazillion apps.</p>

<p>I just saw that you’re an int’l, therefore acceptance rates really may not apply to you. Those rates are often for domestic students. I doubt Cal is accepting 20% of int’l apps. </p>

<p>Also, do you need FA? If so, that will make things even more complicated.</p>

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<p>^ you are correct, Cal is only accepting about 12% of international applicants.</p>

<p>UCLA, on the other hand, has a 32% int’l acceptance rate. Another school which comes to mind too is NYU.</p>

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<p>The usual notion of prestige is based on how good the worst undergraduate student at the given school is. It is based on the idea that having attended and graduated the school, you must have been good enough to get in there in the first place. So more prestige by this measure is closely associated with difficulty of getting admitted.</p>

<p>However, other notions of prestige may be less correlated to undergraduate selectivity. For example, research or graduate level prestige ranks may be quite different from prestige based on undergraduate selectivity.</p>

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<p>No school is going to have Harvard prestige and be easy to get into. Though you can still get into a pretty prestigious school with above average stats.</p>

<p>NYU ED isn’t too hard to get into. Wake Forest is a great test-optional school that’s not too hard to get into. U of Miami is somewhat prestigious and not too hard to get into.</p>

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<p>Below is something many high school students don’t understand about higher education… </p>

<p>Prestige, as it relates to colleges, is simply a measure of exclusivity. It has nothing to do with the quality of a school despite what many people believe, at least not in present-day context. When someone says a school is “prestigious”, they’re really just saying that the school is exclusive. </p>

<p>The issue of college prestige has been rife with debate and criticism over the years. Academia, despite it’s “ivory tower” outside appearance is no stranger to corruption… rankings are the name of the game, and the fighting that takes place between schools gets downright dirty - schools faking SAT/ACT scores, selectively picking some scores over others, bribing students to retake SAT’s for boosts in scores in order to improve college’s ranking… The victims here are the students. Students are exploited by these prestigious schools in order to maintain their levels of prestige and places in the rankings. It’s almost as if the primary goal of some schools these days is simply to outrank the other schools! Furthermore, the current ranking system prevents any performance-based movement within the rankings… meaning that the top schools end up staying at the top, and the bottom schools end up staying at the bottom. This lack of movement is due to the fact that “prestige”, in and of itself, attracts more kids to the top schools, thus improving those schools’ scores, graduation rates, etc, thereby attracting more students… it’s a vicious cycle.</p>

<p>The moral of the story here is to not be influenced solely by prestige, regardless of how important some people make it out to be. The bottom line is finding a place that makes you happy, and offers you a quality experience and education. </p>

<p>I wrote this comment not to sound like a jealous rant, but rather to explain what prestige really means in the context of education.</p>

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<p>For many internationals, the prestige of their degree is important because that’s how employers, unfamiliar with the US universities, rank schools. In those cases, international prestige, eg the kind that non USNWR rankings purport to measure IS extremely important because that’s the only way employers can judge the “worth” of an applicant’s education (this is more true in some countries than others). </p>

<p>Below are a list of US universities that aren’t hyper exclusive but generally well regarded in the international arena:
Purdue
UCLA
Georgia Tech
NYU
University of Washington
University of Colorado - Boulder
University of Wisconsin - Madison</p>

<p>You may also want to consider schools in our northern neighbor, Canada. Those universities, even the top ones, are much less selective than their international reputation would suggest. These include UBC - Vancouver and UToronto.</p>

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<p>Not at all. The OP never mentioned they were international or much else about themselves in the original post and I generally don’t take time to search other posts from the same student. </p>

<p>For many students with good stats (which we don’t even know that yet) but not much else going for them, getting into a < 30% acceptance rate school is unlikely - not impossible, but unlikely. U Alabama is often a safety school for really good students while they see if they get accepted to a school they can afford that is more prestigious. Why should the OP be any different? My own high stat middle son used them and would have been happy there had he not ended up with better options for him. In the SE they have a really good rep. As they “buy” more top students I suspect their ranking will increase as well. It can be a good bargain and is definitely worth considering, esp if a good student on a budget (which may, or may not be the OP).</p>

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<p>“Prestige, as it relates to colleges, is simply a measure of exclusivity. It has nothing to do with the quality of a school despite what many people believe, at least not in present-day context. When someone says a school is “prestigious”, they’re really just saying that the school is exclusive”</p>

<p>This is false and your views on these schools are too cynical. The top schools genuinely built their prestige through their research output and quality of academics. While this may come right back to exclusivity and selectivity in who gets tenured and granted research positions it is still a product of factors outside of exclusivity (i.e how wealthy a school is). The selectivity in applicants only compliments how great the schools are. In other words, these schools have the right to be so picky because they know the extent of what they could offer.</p>

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<p>To answer the OP’s question I’d recommend:</p>

<p>Wake Forest
Case Western
NYU
Brandeis</p>

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<p>OP, if you can give some stats or intended majors, that would help a lot…also, what state do you live in?</p>

<p>If you live in CA, you can aim for UCLA/Berkeley/UCSD/Davis. NYU is an okay option if you get aid or are wealthy, since it’s very expensive to attend and live there. NYU-Stern is a great option as well. FWIW, Berkeley is not that difficult to get into as a CA citizen, yet it carries a good amount of prestige in America and outside (great international reputation).</p>

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<p>I am surprised at the view that UC Berkeley has lower requirements and is not as hard to get into as an Ivy League school. Cal was always the top choice of all of my college-prep friends, and was always seen, at least based on anecdotal evidence, as the hardest to get a slot. UCLA was always second choice, and for some students, a distant second. And UC entrance requirements are even more stringent than when I was in high school out there.</p>

<p>I was curious after reading the post, and in looking at admissions stats for Berkeley this year, nearly 68,000 students applied to go to Cal. Harvard - 35K. Berkeley offered admission to over 14,000 students, and they expect about 4300 to attend. Harvard offered admission to just slightly over 2000 students, and about 1600 will attend. So, yes, your chances are going to be higher at Berkeley because there are more slots available, but that does not mean it is not difficult to win a golden ticket.</p>

<p>Harvard is always going to win on prestige because it’s been in existence since 1636 and because people buy into the idea that things east of the Mississippi are more prestigious and superior in some way. You can get the same kind of liberal, progressive college education at Berkeley that you can get at Harvard, but you pay far less for it and you don’t need family connections (the wonderful, freeing aspect of living in the West.) In fact, if you don’t have any family connections, Berkeley ought to be your first choice, because their admissions will be focused on you first.</p>

<p>That said, even for Berkeley, you have to demonstrate some level of excellence in something. You will get a holistic review, and can be forgiven for a lot based on your personal circumstances, but still, they are not just giving slots away.</p>

<p>Of course, given the budget woes, if you are an out-of-state or international student, you are going to increase your chances a bit, at least for now, because they need that extra tuition money. And that’s too bad because that does seem to smack of the old legacy preferences, where money talks more than an academic record. I hope California can get its act together and restore its public university system and keep its promises to its own college-prep students rather than favoring people who have the extra tuition money.</p>

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<p>Tulane comes to mind.</p>

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<p>UCLA and UCB are not easy to get into (nor is USC; one person from my school had a 4.0, a 32, all honors and AP classes, and a couple of activities with high depth and got flat-out rejected). Get that out of your head.</p>

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<p>So you think it had nothing to do with that person’s essays and everything to do with that person’s stats/ECs, despite those stats being above the average to get into those schools? </p>

<p>It’s called a holistic process, my friend. Plenty of 4.0s/2300+ get rejected because they’re nothing but robots.</p>