Are elite LACs even harder to get into than their admit rate suggests?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
| 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? |
Anonymous
|
No. With the exception of Harvey Mudd, which edged out Stanford, none of the LACs make the top 10 in selectivity as measured by median test scores.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1789717-ranking-by-selectivity-for-help-picking-reaches-matches-safeties-p1.html |
Anonymous
| 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. |
Anonymous
The top LACs aren't interested in bringing the highest test score students. Someone posted Amherst's link before in which they reject so many of the people with 750+ on the sections (nearly 75% of them). I have a friend at Vanderbilt, which has extraordinarily high median test scores, and they directly look for students with near perfect scores to build as strong a profile in that regard as possible. In the link you posted, there isn't that big a difference from Pomona and Stanford; only 15 points among SAT and no difference between ACT. Stanford is skewed by its heavy STEM and engineering groups on its college, which means higher M scores than most LACs. Schools like Princeton, Yale, and Harvard are less diverse than the top LACs in terms of admitting students who're URMs or low-income students. Of course they'll test a bit higher. Pomona had the highest percent of black students in its class of any top university or LAC this year, nearly 30-40% more as a percent than HYP (https://www.jbhe.com/2017/01/black-first-year-students-at-the-nations-leading-liberal-arts-colleges-2016/ vs https://www.jbhe.com/2017/01/black-first-year-students-at-the-nations-leading-research-universities-2016/) I don't have any anecdotal data, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were as difficult for a qualified white student to get into Amherst and Pomona as it is to get into Harvard and Stanford. The first two seem exceptionally keen on bringing as diverse a student body as possible. |
Anonymous
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. |
Anonymous
Amherst: https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/669797 Stanford: http://admission.stanford.edu/basics/selection/profile.html Amherst % of applicants with 700-800 SAT CR: 60% Stanford % of applicants with 700-800 SAT CR: 46% Amherst % of applicants with below 600 CR: 10.6% Stanford % of applicants with below 600 CR: 20% Amherst % of applicants with 30-36 ACT: 75.5% Stanford % of applicants with 30-36 ACT: 74% I don't buy that top LAC pools are less top-heavy than HYPS. It seems that Amherst's applicant pool is more selective than Stanford's. |
Anonymous
You're not comprehending OP's argument. This isn't a statistics question. |
Anonymous
If you ignore math scores and create a broader than relevant range -- 750-800 would typically be top scores at elite schools. |
Anonymous
Oh I think I understand OP's neighbor's argument quite clearly. And the notion that stats seemingly have no relevance is telling. I get (and agree) that % admitted doesn't inherently correspond to quality (it's more about supply vs demand). But if you throw academic credentials of those admitted into the mix and that doesn't matter either, then the implication is that an elite school is one that accepts the right/best sort of people. And if you don't know who those are, well you aren't one of them/us. |
Anonymous
|
Williams takes 35% of early applicants. Middlebury takes 50%.
If you're a highly qualified kid and apply to a LAC - especially through ED - you get in. The same is not true of the top universities. |
Anonymous
Brown https://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/explore/admission-facts Brown 750-800 CR: 28.2% Amherst 750-800 CR: 35% Brown 750-800 M: 39% Amherst 750-800 M: 42% |
Anonymous
Pomona takes 19%. It and Harvey Mudd have the lowest ED acceptance rates in the country. The only reason W/M are so high is because a huge number of their ED applicants are NESCAC DIII athletes who have been interested in the school for years. |
Anonymous
Pomona is very selective. It and Harvey Mudd benefit from much less competition on the West Coast among kids who are interested in LACs. And yet even they are not as selective as top universites. According to Pomona’s 2016-17 Common Data Set, last year it accepted 196 of 1004 ED applicants – 19.5%. Harvey Mudd accepted 18% of 436 ED applicants. They haven't released this year's ED numbers, but compare them to schools that have released ED/EA stats. About the same as Brown, which has 3x and 8x the number of applicants as those LACs. Not sure why you think the same acceptance rate but with significantly fewer applicants equals greater selectivity. And the other schools are more selective and with significantly greater numbers of applicants. MIT 657 out of 8394 (7.8%) Harvard 938 out of 6473 (14.5%) Princeton 770 out of 5003 (15.4%) Yale 871 out of 5086 (17.1%) Brown 695 out of 3170 (21.9%) Williams 257 out of 728 (35.3%) Middlebury 343 out of 673 (51.0%) |
Anonymous
I know that, I'm not talking about EA. I'm talking about ED. Pomona and Mudd have lower ED rates than every ED school- Columbia, Duke, Penn, Brown, etc. Columbia/Duke/Penn are top 10 universities by anyone's measure. Also, as pointed above, Amherst has a significantly more selective applicant pool than Stanford. Pomona is the Amherst of the West Coast, so I'd wager that it has similar statistics (even in California it is not well known). Pomona and Harvey Mudd benefit from being in California, but they also don't prioritize athletics as much as their East Coast peers, hence the lower ED rate. The point made in the OP was that the difference between Stanford and Pomona isn't as simple as 2x. If Pomona's applicant pool is noticeably stronger than Stanford's, then a qualified student should be made aware of that. 20% of Stanford applicants have below a 600 CR. Almost all of them are rejected. That number is only 10% at Amherst. This does mean something. |
Anonymous
| Isn't it mostly rich polished kids applying to the tony LAC? Average joes have never heard of Williams, everyone has heard of the top Ivies, Berkeley, Michigan... |