Reply to Williams vs. Carleton vs. Middlebury vs Pomona vs Swarthmore

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ummmmm she got wait listed at Colby and Bowdoin???[/quote]

Bowdoin WL is understandable. Colby is now 3-4 years into the thick of playing games to rise in the US News rankings. They have gotten rid of their extra essays as part of their application and just about halved their application fee as a way to get more kids to apply so they can then reject more, be considered more selective and climb the ranking. Around 2012 they were ranked somewhere in the 30s, in 2014 in the 20s and now #12, with record numbers of HS seniors applying last year and this.  My DS, with perfect SAT scores from very competitive private HS was also just waitlisted at Colby but accepted by much "better" schools.  Actually kind of pissed that he applied there in retrospect, playing right into their scheme.[/quote]

That's the thing. College rankings are really easily to manipulate, and there are several culprits. Take Middlebury, which hides weaker students through its Feb admits. Middlebury reports an acceptance rate of 16.1% and a SAT of 1450 to US News, but their actual acceptance rate was 18.9% and their SAT lower thanks to the Feb admits, who don't have to be reported. Bowdoin gets to hide a lot of low testing applicants with its testing optional policy. Claremont McKenna purposely caps a number of their classes to be under 20 students to do well on the faculty resources ranking, but only in the fall, which is what counts for the ranking. A number of schools heavily rely on ED to make their RD rates lower. Take CMC and Pomona for instance- both had a yield of 53.7 last year and an admit rate of 9.4, but CMC filled a whopping 68% of their class through ED, while Pomona only 47% (actually one of the lowest among LACs). If you didn't know better, you'd think these colleges were equally desirable. But Pomona's yield of regular decision applicants is more than 35% higher than CMC.

That's why it's important not to take rankings so seriously, and to just let a college's profile, students, and outcomes speak for themselves.[/quote]

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