Villanova's Prestige

merechaude
Wed, 01 Apr 2015 18:45:24 +0000

Good question.

The atrociously high acceptance rate is something I take serious issue with. The acceptance rate for the incoming class in 2010 was actually decent- 38%. I remember this because this is the figure I saw posted on CollegeBoard when I was applying (I entered Fall 2011, so I saw incoming class of 2010 data). After that it increased each year… 45%… 46%… and now almost 49%.

This is something that really bothers me, especially considering how easy it is to fix/game acceptance rates like other schools are doing. The acceptance rate for most people is the biggest indicator of prestige, because it implies exclusiveness. Nothing about “We accept half of our applicants” screams exclusive or prestigious.

The biggest issue with this is that the acceptance rate shouldn’t BE so high. From what I gleaned off CollegeBoard just now is that the median SAT scores and the breakdown of students who were in the top 10%, top 25% and top 50% of their class is similar to many schools who have significantly lower acceptance rates- including

NYU - 35%. Slightly higher median SAT scores, slightly lower HS performance.
BU - 35%. Slightly lower median SAT, slightly higher HS performance.
Lehigh - 34%. Slightly lower median SAT, slightly higher HS performance.

It appears Villanova simply has trouble attracting applicants; which is surprising because their yield is pretty good (22% of admitted applicants enroll), this indicates that most of the people who apply to Nova seriously consider attending. Villanova should work harder to attract applications from those with no intention of attending. They can pull a Case Western (38% acceptance rate, higher SAT medians but lower HS performance than nova) and reduce the price of their application to 0%. If the application is free, people will apply anyways. They should also make it very easy to apply by dropping the supplemental essay which probably intimidates people who dont want to come anyways. I feel like supplemental essays should be reserved for schools like NYU which have built a large and organic applicant pool through effective marketing and branding or a very prestigious Ivy/GT/ND/Duke/Vandy type school.

Let’s be honest, the economic impact of making the application free (loss of $1.2 million in revenue per year) is probably worth getting an extra 5,000 applicants; which would drop the acceptance rate to a respectable 35%- making the school look more exclusive; thus attracting more applicants naturally for the next cycle.

Or just give HS students who have no chance of admission (barely graduated from inner city schools) admission waivers and allow them to not do the supplemental essay and brand this as some sort of community outreach effort or diversity thing… but in reality 98% of these students will get rejected and help out the accept rate

But what Villanova admissions office needs to realize is that top students don’t take schools with a 50% acceptance rate seriously, regardless of how good your academics or how talented the enrolled class actually is.