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Big 5 = "most desired" schools, not necessarily "the best"
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Anonymous
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Another link: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/liberal-arts-rankings
Acceptance rates are really all over the map for the top-ranked colleges. |
Anonymous
| It would be nice to have a college section on DCUM. People who are looking for this information wouldn't necessarily go to this thread, on the private school section, to find it! |
Anonymous
| I posted it more by analogy -- i.e. would we accept that notion that # of apps (or % accepted) should be used to select the best colleges? On USN's list, % accepted didn't seem to bear much relationship to rank. |
Anonymous
I don't think anybody's denying that different schools are appropriate for different kids -- just like with private schools. Choose the private school or university that fits your kid's needs, not because it's a top three or Ivy. I think we all really do agree on this. Cornell was simply chosen as a representative example of a school that's tough to get into, given that it's impossible to retype the entire Bethesda Magazine article into a post on DCUM. So Cornell is just being used as a stand-in for Williams, Smith and a ton of other great schools that are harder to get into. The fact that applications to Williams have fallen in an economic downturn aren't really surprising, and nobody has insinuated that it's a reflection on Williams. |
Anonymous
Some of us got it, and didn't interpret it as an attack on our alma maters. You made two good points: (1) number of applicants to a school is pretty irrelevant, as the ASU-Swarthmore comparison shows when you move from # applying to % admitted; and (2) percent admitted isn't a perfect measure of competitiveness either, the example of Deep Creek, which only admitted 6% of applicants, illustrated. |
Anonymous
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Yeah, I read the article (in this context) as suggesting how arbitrary ranking based on "desire" would be. Then again, I read the BA from Williams post as making a joke along those lines.
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Anonymous
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I see the "# applicants" figures as representing demand. The ASU-Swarthmore comparison highlights the shortcomings in looking at demand for a college or private school.
By contrast, I'd tend to interpret the "% accepted" as a better indicator of how well kids are prepared for the various colleges. And, in a lame attempt to link this discussion back to the goal of this thread, the success that various private schools have in preparing kids for various colleges. With caveats, of course. For example, having only 30 slots for incoming freshmen lowers a college's admittance rate but doesn't make it better than other colleges. What's up with Deep Springs college? They're setting the bar pretty high -- does anybody know what their bar is? Arguably, a DC private that gets your kid into Deep Springs can claim an accomplishment. This would depend, however, on whether we can agree that the bar they've set is something fairly universally valuable, and not simply being Estonian, living within 30 miles of Deep Springs, or something of that ilk. |
Anonymous
| Deep Springs admits 11-15 kids a year. % accepted stats may be as much a function of small # of slots as it is of "selectivity." Do you become a better school just by selecting fewer students? Hypothetically, if supply exceeds demand but the demand is all among comparably qualified students, is a school selective in any meaningful sense or is admission just a crapshoot? |
Anonymous
Thanks for digging that out. No, you don't necessarily become a better school by selecting fewer students. Possibly you raise the average intellectual quality of your student body. But with only 15 kids in a class you have to wonder why they're pursuing that particular strategy. I agree that many college admissions are just a crapshoot. But that doesn't mean they aren't selective. The unqualified kids don't bother applying because their guidance counselors have talked them out of it. So they've selected themselves out of the process before the school has to do it. Please can we have a college thread? Pretty please? |
Anonymous
| Sure, just start one! |
Anonymous
| Actually, I should have said "college section" not "college thread". I wouldn't know whether to start a college thread in the public schools section, the private schools section, or somewhere else.... |
Anonymous
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I don't know whether the moderators here read every thread. My guess is they don't. In which case, probably the best way to get a new forum is to email one of them directly.
If I'm wrong, hopefully one of them will pop up and and say I'm here and I've head you. Good luck! |
Anonymous
There is a college forum on DCUMD - it's 4-5 lines below this Private / Independent forum. By all means let's direct traffic there, because it's a little under-used! |
Anonymous
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For the person who keeps arguing that Blair should be thrown out of the mix, I need to clarify.
(Probably not so many of you care about this, in which case just skip over what follows, but for those who do care....) Blair had 53 NMSSF last year. Almost all of these came from the math/science magnet, with a few more from another magnet at Blair, the Communication Arts Program and from the rest of the school. So if the concern is having a stimulating peer group, the correct denominator for the 53 figure is probably 200 (the total graduating class in the 2 magnets), not 700 (the total graduating class). TJ is a whole-school magnet. Sorry for the interruption, back to what you were doing. (But since the PP made her point about Blair more than once, I did want to clarify). |
Anonymous
This post is a year old. |