Why does Hopkins have such a high acceptance rate?

<p>I was just wondering why Johns Hopkins has such a high acceptance rate? Johns Hopkins is a great school on par or maybe of even greater caliber than some ivies. Why does it have as high as a 27% acceptance rate or as high as 40% for ED when compared to other schools? Is this because the applicant pool is small? Thank you for answering my questions</p>

<p>I don’t want to say that this is why, but looking at the numbers says something. Take Columbia for example. Last year, they enrolled 1857 students, which is about 500 more than Hopkins enrolled last year (and Hopkins actually over-enrolled). Columbia admitted 2496 students, compared to Hopkins admitting 4318. Now Columbia also had about 9,000 more applicants so when you combine that with the yield, you get a rough idea.</p>

<p>Its mostly a matter of yield. While Hopkins offers as good (if not better) an academic and social experience than many of the Ivies—The Ivy League has done a remarkable job over the years of promoting the “Ivy” brand, associating the brand with quality and prestige. Because of this successful branding and marketing–the Ivies (except for Cornell) tend to have better yields (i.e., a higher percentage of accepted students choose to attend). The Ivies also tend to have larger applicant pools, but most of the Ivies are also larger than Hopkins (some, like Cornell, are a lot larger) so that the ratio between applicants and actual enrollment is not starkly different between Hopkins and the Ivies.</p>

<p>This is slowly changing over time. Hopkins’ yield has improved (last year it was much higher than predicted, hence the over-enrollment) and, as a consequence, Hopkins’ acceptance rate has gone down. I read that this year’s RD acceptance rate may be as low as 17%—which is in range of the Ivies.</p>

<p>Saving that all Ivies, perhaps except Yale which has experienced a negligible decline in applications this yr, will all go down in varying degrees as well. For example, Princeton & Brown both have abt 20% increase in apps with no announcements on increase in enrollment so their acceptance rates will go down significantly. Yields will be correspondingly lower for these schools since there would be more cross-admits becos the surge, as many argue, is due to the same students applying to more schools (some say due partly to int’l applicants too). Sadly, it seems that the avg applicant this yr will receive more reject letters, and looks like this trend will continue becos next yr people will apply to even more schools being afraid of the lowering acceptance rates. My guess only.</p>

<p>I don’t think it’s high at all. :frowning: This year it can be as low as people can think I guess! SO MANY APPLICANTS!!</p>

<p>btw, I applied to 18 schools. already too many. Several of my friends applied to over 20 schools. One applied to 33 schools!! fungal’s post reminds me that, 50 years ago people applied to at most 3 schools. <em>sigh</em></p>

<p>my dad says he applied to only one college in 79, chosen by words of mouth and some thick yearbook in the library. He did not even notice that there were any big-deal essays, just brief answers from the same old questions in a box like: why do you want to major in XXX and why this school." He wrote that perhaps in like 5 mins, by hand of course.</p>

<p>I think I also read that 18% will be the RD admit rate which doesn’t seem high at all. They had too many freshmen last year so I imagine that will hurt this year’s applicants seeking admission. Good for JHU though, high demand.</p>