What are Byerly's intentions?

alphacdcd
Sun, 06 Feb 2005 15:35:25 +0000

The PR in their latest published rankings of the “Toughest Schools to Get Into” had the following results: 1. MIT 2. Princeton 3. CalTech 4. Yale 5. Harvard. In response to the PR rankings Byerly stated the following:

“silly PR “rankings” (biggest party school, most tree-huggers, toughest to get into, best food, etc) based on tiny, non-scientific returns from survey forms handed out on street-corners at various campuses, on which respondents rate only their own school and don’t (how could they anyway?) compare their school to any others.”

The reality (from PR itself) is as follows:

"Admissions Selectivity Rating
This rating measures how competitive admissions are at the school. This rating is determined by several institutionally-reported factors, including: the class rank, average standardized test scores, and average high school GPA of entering freshmen; the percentage of students who hail from out-of-state; and the percentage of applicants accepted. By incorporating all these factors, our Admissions Selectivity Rating adjusts for “self-selecting” applicant pools. University of Chicago, for example, has a very high rating, even though it admits a surprisingly large proportion of its applicants. Chicago’s applicant pool is self-selecting; that is, nearly all the school’s applicants are exceptional students. This rating is given on a scale of 60-99. Please note that if a school has an Admissions Selectivity Rating of 60*, it means that the school did not report to us all of the statistics that go into the rating by our deadline. "

Why does he do/say this stuff?