<p>Hi, everyone!</p>
<p>Examples that pop into mind</p>
<p>UChicago has a self selecting pool, which means it has a reputation of attracting really smart geeky intellectually seeking nerds to their school. Although UChicago over the year has a relatively high acceptance rate on paper, since its application pool is self selective, don’t let that fool you, its incredibly hard to get in, since your competing with really smart ppl, or what I call, really smart nerds.</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins is self selective in that it attract ppl that are highly competitive, like minded, very career focused, AKA them vicious premeds everyone talks about and admire. Ppl only go there because of the medical school (which is not the case since it is populated with top 10 ranked programs in humanities and sciences) and of course there is an steadily rising IR pool of applicants as well.</p>
<p>I hoped I dinged it right on the nail…though I might be incorrect. (about the self selection part) :)</p>
<p>The only example I can think of is the University of Chicago. I’ve heard that they have weird essay prompts, and the people who hate these prompts and end up not applying are usually students who wouldn’t fit in with UChicago’s atmosphere anyway. That’s probably why they have a higher acceptance rate than other schools–because they’re “self-selecting,” so students that wouldn’t like the intensely intellectual atmosphere don’t even apply.</p>
<p>And like Phead218 said, I might be wrong about it too… This is just my view. Hope it helped.</p>
<p>I would have to say that St. John’s College and Reed College are fairly self-selective considering the rigor of the schools.</p>
<p>I’m sure that Deep Spring college also is self selecting as not many males would want to spend 2 years in the California desert working on a ranch while taking very intensive academic courses. One would have to be bright, independent, interested in the outdoors, and highly motivated to apply there.</p>
<p>Self Selecting is a poor phrase. It would normally be interpreted as the <em>school</em> doing the selecting. </p>
<p>It really should be “a sub-set applicant pool”. or “a specialized applicant pool”</p>
<p>It means a school has some characteristic about it that makes it particularly different from most other schools, and therefore attracts far fewer general applicants looking simply for “a really good college”.</p>
<ul>
<li>U of Chicago is attractive to nerdy, bright kids who don’t mind Chicago winters and don’t care that there is little school spirit around athletics</li>
<li>Caltech and Harvey Mudd are attractive to nerdy, science oriented bright kids who like a very small school and don’t mind a 7/3 male female ratio … MIT is not as self selective as these two because it has a much broader curriculum, and is larger, is 44% female, so MIT is less “self selective” than the other two.</li>
<li>Northwestern’s weather puts it in a subset of students who don’t mind the brutal north Chicago winters. Cornell suffers a little from this bitter winter rep also.</li>
<li>the Service Academies (Air Force, Naval, Army) attract bright students who function well in a command structure and are willing to serve in the military for five years after graduation.</li>
<li>Wheaton College (Illinois) attracts students who are professing, usually evangelical Christians wanting a rigorous academic environment populated by mostly same minded people.</li>
</ul>
<p>For all these schools, the % admitted is skewed because the majority of college applicants looking for “a top school” would find some attribute about these schools that is less desirable than most other “top schools”.</p>
<p>In sum, whenever a top school is known for an attribute(s) most people applying to “top colleges” dislike, it is said to be “self selective”.</p>
<p>I believe the concept would apply to most unique or very specialized schools such as Bible colleges, for example. They have a very high acceptance rate, because the only people who would apply are the kind of people that the school would want. Thus the applicant is self-selecting.</p>
<p>In a way, this is the opposite of what a lot of elite schools do which drum up a lot of applicants who will not be accepted in order to look more exclusive.</p>
<p>the college itself is not self-selecting. the applicant pool to certain top colleges is.</p>
<p>Means there’s a stigma against the college that keeps it from attracting a more diverse set of applicants.</p>
<p>“n a way, this is the opposite of what a lot of elite schools do which drum up a lot of applicants who will not be accepted in order to look more exclusive”</p>
<p>What elite colleges do this? I’ve been a Harvard interviewer for years, and virtually all of the students whom I’ve interviewed have had the stats to meet Harvard’s standards. </p>
<p>There are tens of thousands of students with the stats to get into the top colleges. Unfortunately, there aren’t spaces in those schools for all of the students who qualify for admission.</p>
<p>For instance, of the seniors who graduated from h.s. in 2007, more than 28,000 scored between 750-800 on the SAT critical reading test, and more than 34,000 scored in that range on the math part of the SAT.</p>
<p>Given that elite colleges will accept students who score as low as 600 on part of the SAT, one can tell that there is an overabundance of students who could qualify for admission.</p>
<p>I know Case Western is self-selective. We have something like a 70% acceptance rate, yet our average SAT scores are on par with other top 30-40 schools.
It tends to happen when schools have a specific type of environment</p>
<p>There’s a saying: “The valedictorian goes to Harvard. The student the valedictorian is scared of goes to Chicago.”</p>
<p>It’s that kind of saying that I think turns a lot of potential applicants away from Chicago.</p>
<p>What I think makes (and continues to make) Chicago self-selecting is the student culture more than anything else-- a lot of students take pride in the fact that they can scare away a lot of potential applicants, and it seems like a lot of people I know worry that the school is losing its flavor as the black sheep of major U.S. universities. I sympathize with these sentiments, even though I don’t agree with them. </p>
<p>Personally, I don’t think that the academic rigor, intelligence of the students, professor quality, social life, or extracurricular opportunities at Chicago stands out as particularly noteworthy when compared to other top schools. (That’s my suspicion based on the scads of people I know at various top colleges, but I can’t be completely sure). Where I think Chicago does stand out is the vibe of the student body-- and even here, I think it’s a vibe that’s similar to a lot of other liberal arts schools like Swarthmore, Grinnell, Oberlin, Macalester, Reed, etc.-- i.e. schools that tend to highlight their academic offerings and draw in somewhat offbeat students.</p>
<p>I love the fact that Chicago is an engorged liberal arts college, and the fact that Chicago resembles so many different kinds of schools, and due to its various academic strenghts, draws in a lot of diferent kinds of people. I think it’s the best of both worlds for somebody like me.</p>
<p>But in a day and age where each school is its own special snowflake, Chicago kids feel the need to differentiate (or position) their school so that it stands out against others. This positioning takes the form of scare tactics and our t-shirt slogans like, “Where fun comes to die,” “If I wanted an A, I would have gone to Harvard,” “If it was easy, it would be your mom,” and others. They are self-selecting scare tactics, but they are also marketing tactics.</p>
<p>And, come to think of it, every school has an air of rhetoric that surrounds it, an air that makes the school sound more romantic and positions itself against other schools of its caliber. One school is “laid-back,” another school is “community oriented,” another school is “social,” another school is “happy,” another school is “spirited.” Does anybody ever stop and think how vague and empty these terms actually are? You can be “laid-back” and find likeminded people anywhere, you can be social anywhere, you can be community-oriented anywhere.</p>
<p>“Means there’s a stigma against the college that keeps it from attracting a more diverse set of applicants.”</p>
<p>Not necessarily a stigma. It could be something that some applicants would perceive as very positive, but others would not, such as a very specialized curriculum, a religious affiliation, military, etc.</p>
<p>"“n a way, this is the opposite of what a lot of elite schools do which drum up a lot of applicants who will not be accepted in order to look more exclusive”</p>
<p>What elite colleges do this? I’ve been a Harvard interviewer for years, and virtually all of the students whom I’ve interviewed have had the stats to meet Harvard’s standards. "</p>
<p>Maybe you are right. It just seems that many of the top schools do a lot of marketing when they already have admissions rates of under 20%. My daughter gets tons of stuff from schools that are way out of her league as far as gpa and test scores. I don’t know why they do it unless it is to drum up even more applications and thereby bolster their reputations as being elite. I coud be wrong, though.</p>