northwestern vs. unc out of state admission?

Colleges & Universities Northwestern University
1

<p>does anyone know which one is more difficult?</p>

2

<p>I believe NU is harder than UNC out of state</p>

3

<p>Here are the facts:</p>

<p>Admissions rates:
UNC Out-of-State
19% for non-legacy
39.2% for legacy
hypothesis: around 25-30% overall, depending on the split (assuming it’s in favor of non-legacy)</p>

<p>Northwestern
around 25% in the past several years</p>

<p>SAT Range
UNC (in 1991)
1120 average in-state (68th percentile)
1293 average out-of-state (89th percentile)
weighted average (18% OOS): 1151 (74th percentile)</p>

<p>Applying that 21% differential, while maintaining allowances for the bell-shaped curve (ie the differential decreases as the score increases) to the most recent academic year and working backwards:
UNC average SAT score in 2008: 1305 (90th percentile)
1180 average in-state (77th percentile)
1340 average out-of-state (92nd percentile)</p>

<p>Northwestern
Average SAT score in 2008: 1435</p>

<p>Judging from this data and extrapolation, Northwestern is rather significantly more difficult to gain admission to than UNC out-of-state. This difference could be mitigated to an extent if you assumed more of the recent increase in UNC’s SAT scores came from out-of-state applicants, but I would deem that rather unlikely considering the statistical rarity of applicants in the higher SAT ranges, evidence of increased competition over the very top academic programs (ie SAT ranges increasing dramatically across the top 15-20 universities) as well as articles referencing the state of North Carolina’s continuing improvement in their SAT score ranges.</p>

<p>sources:
[UNC</a> General Alumni Association :: Admissions FAQs](<a href=“Carolina Alumni”>http://alumni.unc.edu/article.aspx?SID=1839)
[CTL:</a> Publications / Teaching at Carolina](<a href=“http://ctl.unc.edu/hintro.html]CTL:”>http://ctl.unc.edu/hintro.html)
<a href=“http://www.colchestertalks.com/SATPercentileRanks.pdf[/url]”>http://www.colchestertalks.com/SATPercentileRanks.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
[N.C</a>. SAT scores close in on national average :: WRAL.com](<a href=“N.C. SAT scores close in on national average”>N.C. SAT scores close in on national average)</p>

4

<p>^^^Typical outstanding job by a NU student. Thanks for the info.! UNC-Chapel Hill is a great school & choosing between the two should depend upon one’s planned major course of study.</p>

5

<p>Wow, elsijfdl, that is strong work.</p>

<p>…and this is your first post since April 2008? Geez, saving it up!</p>

6

<p>lol whoa, elsijfdl, thanks so much!</p>

7

<p>elsijfdl… will you do my stats homework? :)</p>

8

<p>

</p>

<p>elsijfdl,
Can you redo the approximation? It doesn’t look right to me. The overall average in 2008 should be a lot closer to the average in-state, not average out-of-state, like the 1991 data you showed. It seems to me the average of in-state and out-of-state for 2008 were both understated.</p>

9

<p>Sam - It’s an imperfect approximation, done on-the-fly -> feel free to improve it to get closer to the truth! </p>

<p>(the only assumption I made was the 18% OOS weighting - the differential was purely built with excel where I applied various combinations of in-state and OOS scores to arrive at the weighted average that was posted on collegeboard.com - this one seemed plausible to me, but obviously there is room for improvement)</p>