<p>As Monydad posted, it depends upon the program to which you are applying within the university or college. </p>
<p>As a more general overview, I had similar questions and realized that just looking at USNWR rankings, admission rates, or midpoint SAT scores alone did not always provide a very useful selectivity ranking. So I put together a formula with midpoint SAT/ACT scores and admission rates of the top 70 or so schools, to try to give a clearer picture for myself based on data points only (to try to make sense of the often opposing subjective viewpoints posted on CC) . Below are the top 16 results, which includes all the Ivies, as ordered by the formula. </p>
<p>Selectivity Ranking</p>
<h2>Rank Score School</h2>
<p>Rank 1 100 Harvard University
Rank 1 100 Princeton University
Rank 3 99 Yale University
Rank 3 99 Columbia University
Rank 5 98 California Inst of Tech
Rank 5 98 Stanford University
Rank 7 97 MA Inst of Technology
Rank 7 97 Brown University
Rank 7 97 University of Pennsylvania
Rank 10 96 Dartmouth College
Rank 10 96 Duke University
Rank 12 95 University of Chicago
Rank 12 95 Washington Univ in St Louis
Rank 12 95 Northwestern University
Rank 12 95 Pomona College
Rank 16 94 Vanderbilt University
Rank 16 94 Cornell University</p>
<p>Formula:</p>
<h2>70% SAT/ACT midpoint scores</h2>
<p>55%|SAT midpoint between 25% - 75% ranges for enrolled freshman
15%|ACT midpoint between 25% - 75% ranges for enrolled freshman</p>
<h2>30% Admissions Selectivity</h2>
<p>20%|Admission rate
5%|# of freshman openings as a percentage of total # of applicants
5%|Total # of applicants</p>
<p>The admission rates used are projections based on prior year yields and the 2011 application numbers as recently released by the admission offices of the colleges/universities. </p>
<p>These rankings are not presented as anything other than an attempt to examine selectivity based on more than a single data point. The weightings and the data points used were contructed from my study of the issue (and is limited by the consistant data available from the CDS). If you find different data points or weighting to be more useful, then you are encouraged to construct your own formulas.</p>