Are elite LACs even harder to get into than their admit rate suggests?

[Anonymous]

Yes, in the sense that the general admit rate does not tell you what preference is given to legacies, athletes, minorities, etc. So if you're white or asian with no hooks, the admit rate is definitely lower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not sure test scores are the way to assess elite status once you get to a certain level. I think if a student has met a set minimum standard, then everything else becomes more important than the test scores. Certainly, a very high test score may help a relative deficits in another area, but if the rest of your portfolio is exemplary, a slightly lower test score will not matter.

Ok, so if % admitted isn't a sign of a school's elite status (or a reliable marker of the difficulty of being admitted) and if median scores of those who matriculate doesn't capture it either, what metric would you use to assess the claim that elite LACs are just as hard to get into as top universities?

I agree that LACs may have a more self-selecting pool, but part of that self-selection involves lots have top students having no interest in attending a LAC -- they'd rather go to Harvard or Berkeley -- and not participating in any LAC applicant pools. LAC pools are probably more homogeneous -- less top-heavy as well as less bottom-heavy than HYPS, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were whiter and wealthier on average.

What you need is the average SAT, ACT, and income of the APPLICANT pool for SLACs vs. HYPS. I would bet that the average SAT score for AWS applicants would be higher than that of HYPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not sure test scores are the way to assess elite status once you get to a certain level. I think if a student has met a set minimum standard, then everything else becomes more important than the test scores. Certainly, a very high test score may help a relative deficits in another area, but if the rest of your portfolio is exemplary, a slightly lower test score will not matter.

Ok, so if % admitted isn't a sign of a school's elite status (or a reliable marker of the difficulty of being admitted) and if median scores of those who matriculate doesn't capture it either, what metric would you use to assess the claim that elite LACs are just as hard to get into as top universities?

I agree that LACs may have a more self-selecting pool, but part of that self-selection involves lots have top students having no interest in attending a LAC -- they'd rather go to Harvard or Berkeley -- and not participating in any LAC applicant pools. LAC pools are probably more homogeneous -- less top-heavy as well as less bottom-heavy than HYPS, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were whiter and wealthier on average.

What you need is the average SAT, ACT, and income of the APPLICANT pool for SLACs vs. HYPS. I would bet that the average SAT score for AWS applicants would be higher than that of HYPS.

Someone just did. Amherst has a more selective applicant pool than Stanford. I'd also add Pomona to AWS; it's more selective than them.

[Anonymous]

Good grief. Do you know how easy it is to send off 15 applications today with the Common app? High stats kids apply everywhere. Of course the schools latch onto to those ADMIT stats. The more important stats should be the students ATTENDING the college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good grief. Do you know how easy it is to send off 15 applications today with the Common app? High stats kids apply everywhere. Of course the schools latch onto to those ADMIT stats. The more important stats should be the students ATTENDING the college.

Yup. In that case, I doubt the SLACs could compare to the top universities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good grief. Do you know how easy it is to send off 15 applications today with the Common app? High stats kids apply everywhere. Of course the schools latch onto to those ADMIT stats. The more important stats should be the students ATTENDING the college.

Yup. In that case, I doubt the SLACs could compare to the top universities.

Just why do DC users make such blanket statements?

Pomona's ENROLLED student selectivity is comparable to Duke/Columbia/Penn/Stanford, as the link posted before (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1789717-ranking-by-selectivity-for-help-picking-reaches-matches-safeties-p1.html) pointed out. These are numbers based on ENROLLED students. Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, and Bowdoin are all above Brown, Johns Hopkin, and Georgetown, which are top universities.

Furthermore, the top LACs are taking a higher percent of underrepresented minorities and Pell Grant students than the universities that have a higher testing average and even many that have comparable scores, so that makes it all the more impressive. Is it that impressive that Caltech has such a high testing average when only 1.5% of their student body is Black? Not to me, no. Everything has to be thought about in perspective. You can't just look at numbers without context and then use them to decide what's better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good grief. Do you know how easy it is to send off 15 applications today with the Common app? High stats kids apply everywhere. Of course the schools latch onto to those ADMIT stats. The more important stats should be the students ATTENDING the college.

Yup. In that case, I doubt the SLACs could compare to the top universities.

In that case, you would be wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good grief. Do you know how easy it is to send off 15 applications today with the Common app? High stats kids apply everywhere. Of course the schools latch onto to those ADMIT stats. The more important stats should be the students ATTENDING the college.

Yep. It's largely the same pool of applicants applying to all the highly selective colleges. I know a gazillion kids who applied to both the ivies AND Pomona or other LACs, like my own current Columbia student. (Pomona's essay question 4 years ago was to write about something interesting on your street.) I also know kids attending Amherst and Middlebury because they didn't get into HYPS. There are simply too many highly qualified kids with great stats and ECs, and they're all anxious and shooting off many Common App applications.

If you want to make an argument for LACs being harder to get into than meets the eye, you should look closely at the individual LACs. For example, I read that Amherst recruits heavily for sports and a large share of the supposed entry seats are actually taken by recruited athletes. This probably translates into lower "effective" admissions rates there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not sure test scores are the way to assess elite status once you get to a certain level. I think if a student has met a set minimum standard, then everything else becomes more important than the test scores. Certainly, a very high test score may help a relative deficits in another area, but if the rest of your portfolio is exemplary, a slightly lower test score will not matter.

This is how it works at most places. The top colleges basically have thresholds for GPA and SATs, for example many top colleges seem to make a cut at SATs of about 2200. If you meet or surpass these thresholds then you make it past the first cut and the admissions officers start looking at the rest of your portfolio. Therefore to compare colleges, in theory you'd also need to compare the talents of the athletes and a capella groups and student government.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing I've noticed is that the top 10 universities have a lower acceptance rate than the top 10 LACs. The most selective university, Stanford, has a 4.8% admit rate; the most selective LAC, Pomona, has a 9.4% admit rate (almost double that of Stanford's). But my friend raised an interesting point that top LACs have a highly self-selecting pool, while the top students at any school, many of whom aren't in any way qualified for the top universities, send in an application. So apparently the level of difference between getting into Pomona and Stanford isn't as much as the raw numbers suggest. Is this anecdotally true? Does Carleton's 22% admit rate or Williams 17% admit rate reveal a deceptively high admit rate for a more competitive applicant pool than top universities?

Yup, highly self-selecting, especially considering that most people haven't heard of most LACs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good grief. Do you know how easy it is to send off 15 applications today with the Common app? High stats kids apply everywhere. Of course the schools latch onto to those ADMIT stats. The more important stats should be the students ATTENDING the college.

Yep. It's largely the same pool of applicants applying to all the highly selective colleges. I know a gazillion kids who applied to both the ivies AND Pomona or other LACs, like my own current Columbia student. (Pomona's essay question 4 years ago was to write about something interesting on your street.) I also know kids attending Amherst and Middlebury because they didn't get into HYPS. There are simply too many highly qualified kids with great stats and ECs, and they're all anxious and shooting off many Common App applications.

If you want to make an argument for LACs being harder to get into than meets the eye, you should look closely at the individual LACs. For example, I read that Amherst recruits heavily for sports and a large share of the supposed entry seats are actually taken by recruited athletes. This probably translates into lower "effective" admissions rates there.

Even if SLACs accept the Common App, a much smaller percentage of students are going to apply to SLACs compared to universities they've heard about. The vast majority of kids out there haven't heard of AWS, but everyone knows about HY and maybe Stanford. DH who grew up in the Midwest went to a decent highschool with a great state university (think Michigan, Wisconsin), but the college counseling there was an afterthought. It was simply assumed that most kids would go to the state university, and if you wanted to go to a private university you'd apply to Northwestern. This is how most kids applying to college face applications. DH didn't even know about AWS until he went to a top law school and met classmates who went to SLACs. Now he finds himself in a different environment than the one he grew up in (which is probably how much of American lives), in a small social circle in DC full of law firm partners, where there are a lot of alum from AWS, our kids attend a big-3, and we are strongly suggesting that our kids consider applying to SLACs for college. It's a much smaller group of students with a certain background who are actively encouraged to pursue a college education at a SLAC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good grief. Do you know how easy it is to send off 15 applications today with the Common app? High stats kids apply everywhere. Of course the schools latch onto to those ADMIT stats. The more important stats should be the students ATTENDING the college.

Yep. It's largely the same pool of applicants applying to all the highly selective colleges. I know a gazillion kids who applied to both the ivies AND Pomona or other LACs, like my own current Columbia student. (Pomona's essay question 4 years ago was to write about something interesting on your street.) I also know kids attending Amherst and Middlebury because they didn't get into HYPS. There are simply too many highly qualified kids with great stats and ECs, and they're all anxious and shooting off many Common App applications.

If you want to make an argument for LACs being harder to get into than meets the eye, you should look closely at the individual LACs. For example, I read that Amherst recruits heavily for sports and a large share of the supposed entry seats are actually taken by recruited athletes. This probably translates into lower "effective" admissions rates there.

Even if SLACs accept the Common App, a much smaller percentage of students are going to apply to SLACs compared to universities they've heard about. The vast majority of kids out there haven't heard of AWS, but everyone knows about HY and maybe Stanford. DH who grew up in the Midwest went to a decent highschool with a great state university (think Michigan, Wisconsin), but the college counseling there was an afterthought. It was simply assumed that most kids would go to the state university, and if you wanted to go to a private university you'd apply to Northwestern. This is how most kids applying to college face applications. DH didn't even know about AWS until he went to a top law school and met classmates who went to SLACs. Now he finds himself in a different environment than the one he grew up in (which is probably how much of American lives), in a small social circle in DC full of law firm partners, where there are a lot of alum from AWS, our kids attend a big-3, and we are strongly suggesting that our kids consider applying to SLACs for college. It's a much smaller group of students with a certain background who are actively encouraged to pursue a college education at a SLAC.

Ok, but you're just saying:

Admissions rate = acceptances / applications

And you're saying the denominator is smaller at LACs than at Ivies, because LACs have fewer applicants.

But you're ignoring that the numerator--acceptances--is also lower at LACs. Last year Pomona admitted 970 out of 8091 applications, or 10%. Compare to Harvard which accepted maybe 2000 out of 37,000 applications, for an acceptance rate of 5%.

5% is still less than 10%.

Nor does it follow that the 2000 accepted by Harvard are necessarily of lower caliber than the 970 accepted by Pomona.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ok, but you're just saying:

Admissions rate = acceptances / applications

And you're saying the denominator is smaller at LACs than at Ivies, because LACs have fewer applicants.

But you're ignoring that the numerator--acceptances--is also lower at LACs. Last year Pomona admitted 970 out of 8091 applications, or 10%. Compare to Harvard which accepted maybe 2000 out of 37,000 applications, for an acceptance rate of 5%.

5% is still less than 10%.

Nor does it follow that the 2000 accepted by Harvard are necessarily of lower caliber than the 970 accepted by Pomona.

How'd you get 970? Pomona took 765.

Anyway, I think the point is, and it has been illustrated, that while the most tippy top universities are more selective than the tippy top LACs, the top LACs draw a stronger pool, so the difference isn't as much as the admit rates suggest. It may be as difficult to get into Amherst as Penn, even if Penn has a 9.5% admit rate compared to Amherst's 12%.

[Anonymous]

As an alum of AWS, one professor of mine was of the opinion that SLACs have a higher "floor" of students, while HYP had a higher "ceiling."

[Anonymous]

Witness the narcissism of small differences -- DCUM's favorite sport.