Villanova's Prestige

lostaccount
Thu, 23 Apr 2015 04:12:44 +0000

Acceptance rate doesn’t indicate quality, exclusivity or prestige. Some schools don’t recruit students for the sake of rejecting them. The yield is more important since that tells you something about how desirable the school is to those it accepts. The lower the yield the larger the percent of students who opted to take a different offer.

You can look at scores and grades of the incoming class to see the achievement levels of those that are accepted. Sometimes the grades and scores of students at a school with a 60% acceptance rate are far higher than those with a 25% acceptance rate.

A school that does not use the common app may have fewer applicants than those that use the common app. More of those that complete the separate application are likely to be serious candidates compared to schools that use the common app. Some schools count as applicants almost anyone who expresses interest in the school. Some count all those that checked if off on the common app even if they did not send any information beyond that. Other schools require a completed application before they will consider a student as an applicant. So consider these two scenario school that uses the common app and counts as an applicant anyone that checks off interest in the school versus a school that has its own application and considers only those with completed applications. The 2nd school may have a smaller pool of applicants but they are likely a much stronger group.

There is no Harvard of the SUNY system. That would be like suggesting that Spam was Filet Mignon in a can or that a Chevy Vega is a Jaguar of family cars. Spam and Chevy’s still have value. But best to be clear on what they are and what they are not.