not really. i've had four kids go through the college application process in the past eight years and there a number of schools who just take it to an extreme leve.. read any college forum, hell, there have even been articles in major publications about this topic, and you will find out which schools take this tactic to artificially lower their acceptance rates. |
+1. Also in the case of state schools, many of the applicants are prescreened by the state high school counselors whose job it is to route the students to the state institutions best suited for that students. Hence a lot of students who are applying to public like UCLA know that they don't stand a chance of getting in and apply to UCIrvine, etc. That's why the percentage of acceptances is higher for state institutions. They get a better and more selective application pool. Usually, the exact stats required are made public. .The high school counselors (also state employees) have good Naviane track records and can show the students and their parents where to get the best bang for their application buck. Also, most state institutions don't play the marketing games mentioned above (doing everything possible to get as many applications as possible so as to reject as many as possible) simply because they are public institutions and don't have huge, fancy admissions offices and visiting teams. |
| That's just silly. |
How are you defining "better"? |
| Depends on what you want to study. |
Yes really. The ones who don't have bigger budget can't play at the same level as the ones with big buckets. But yeah, it's not because they believe in some sort of higher level to teaching/learning. Schools are no different than businesses, ranking means money, sports means money, they need that resource to keep the machine running. |
| I can assure you both schools are great. I was born and raised in SOCAL, Grandfather, father and me all UCLA for undergrad...Aunt and Uncle both Cal grads. Aunt ended up as the CEO of the School of Arts and Architecture at UCLA and Uncle was a Prof. there. I went to USC for graduate work, was almost disowned by rest of family but it was the best choice for me. There is really not a gap between the two. |
I'd have disowned you. |
LOL, yeah it was close, I think it would have been easier to tell them I was going to drop out, smoke meth and "walk the world like Caine from Kung Fu." |
| Enrolled stats are much better indications of "selectivity" than the acceptance rate. |
You have WAAAAY too much time on your hands. |
If you grew up out there then you know USC was the party school and not considered serious until only recently. I taught there and it was very much the University of Spoiled Children compared to east coast schools. And yes I went to school in the west and the east. |
Sure thing all knowing one, thanks for disparaging my alma mater, I guess if it was bad when you taught there then you were part of the problem. As I said, my undergraduate education was UCLA and one of my graduate degrees was SC. It was also referred to as the University of South Central but hey you know a lot of schools get nicknames for stupid reasons. I too received another graduate degree from an east coast school, how is that relevant to this topic other than to be arrogant? |
| Ottawa University in KS has a 78% acceptance rate. |
| What do you mean by "best?" Such an unintelligent question. |