Anonymous wrote:new to the process as a parent, and can’t believe some of these acceptance rates. I went to Georgetown back in the day when I think acceptance rate was over 40%. Vanderbilt now around 5%??? Has the quality of instruction and the overall experience changed that much over the last 20 years when acceptance rate was somewhere around 60-70%??

Oh FFS. You parents got this idea that you can micromanage your precious little snowflake’s grade school and secondary school classrooms and now you want to take that attitude to the university. Nope. Not having it. Power down the chopper.

wow vanderbilt scored 95? that’s an absolutely ridiculous score, especially when compared to the peers u mentioned..

how did Vandy achieve that improvement? identify the weak professors and clean house?

According to students, it depends on the school.

I still have my Princeton Review Best Colleges guide from the 90s (yes, I'm a bit of a packrat!) plus one from a couple of years ago for my kids. In it they have ratings for how interesting the professors are according to students. First number is 90s, second is now.

Georgetown 86 65
Vanderbilt 78 95
U Va 70 87
Va Tech 66 87
Maryland 62 76
Harvard 75 78
Stanford 76 89

The numbers for the overall experience, which is also rated, follow a similar trend. Looks like something's not going so well at your alma mater recently. Maybe they started using TAs instead of professors too much? Is not winning as many basketball games as they used to affecting overall happiness?

Anonymous wrote:yes but has the quality of the educational experience changed. Is the Northeastern coop experience relatively better now than in 2000 when everyone got in

I think it’s very hard to know that. I think there is some increased attention to class size and a lot of money has gone into facilities, but whether the actual quality of instruction has improved is hard to say but I would say no.

There has been a shift where families view themselves as being consumers/purchasers of an education which raises expectations in some ways.

It’s the same.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:topic cut off - has quality of professors/instruction in schools with declining acceptance rates improved over the last 20 years

It has probably declined overall. Research is mor important to most schools than undergrad teaching, and many academics view their careers as much more dependent on research and publising than teaching.

How is this different from 20 years ago?

Anonymous wrote:topic cut off - has quality of professors/instruction in schools with declining acceptance rates improved over the last 20 years

It has probably declined overall. Research is mor important to most schools than undergrad teaching, and many academics view their careers as much more dependent on research and publising than teaching.

Tenured faculty teach less and less.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think Georgetown was ever 40%. I started college in 1989 and was rejected from Georgetown and Duke, but got into Hopkins and Yale. I have many friends that went to UVA, but couldn’t get into GU. It’s about 11-12% now, but that’s skewed because since they aren’t in common and require test scores (and from every sitting) they have fewer applicants and they tend to have higher credentials.

GW, GMU, GU have some fantastic professors given the location. Of the schools.

interesting - how does faculty at GW compare to GU - excluding foreign service school which is a gem of its own

^aren't on common app,

I don’t think Georgetown was ever 40%. I started college in 1989 and was rejected from Georgetown and Duke, but got into Hopkins and Yale. I have many friends that went to UVA, but couldn’t get into GU. It’s about 11-12% now, but that’s skewed because since they aren’t in common and require test scores (and from every sitting) they have fewer applicants and they tend to have higher credentials.

GW, GMU, GU have some fantastic professors given the location. Of the schools.

yes but has the quality of the educational experience changed. Is the Northeastern coop experience relatively better now than in 2000 when everyone got in

More students submitting more applications per student to the same number of schools

topic cut off - has quality of professors/instruction in schools with declining acceptance rates improved over the last 20 years

new to the process as a parent, and can’t believe some of these acceptance rates. I went to Georgetown back in the day when I think acceptance rate was over 40%. Vanderbilt now around 5%??? Has the quality of instruction and the overall experience changed that much over the last 20 years when acceptance rate was somewhere around 60-70%??