Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a question I ask myself all the time. The rankings/necessary stats/acceptance rates are all over the board. Makes no sense.

It only makes no sense if you think the quality of the school is based on how selective admissions is.

It DCUMland in the country of Statusovia, exclusivity is the only thing that matters, in college, career, Medicare care, restaurant, swimming pool, or anything else. Even price is only a proxy for exclusivity.

Truer words were never spoken. Here they manage to make merit aid but not needing it also a status thing. I keep saying it, but this is a terrible place where many people come who see the world as a zero sum place and will take (or invent) any advantage they can to make themselves and their progeny seem bestest over you and yours.

The way I decided to look at it was, do I want to live in their neighborhoods? Do I want my kids at their schools?

No. That's no way to live.

In terms of admissions, think of it from a college admissions representative's perspective: they've just read 800 essays about captain and president so and so of fifty different after school clubs, who also started a non-profit collecting eyeglass frames for the disadvantaged at farmer's markets (I made that up, any resemblance to an actual nonprofit is coincidental), and then they get to your kid who writes honestly and funnily that they didn't join any high school clubs because they really love the one sport they play, or their violin, or they have to cool dinner for their siblings and help them with their homework, or work at Wendy's--

Who stands out there?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ranking is one reference you consider out of several factors. It contributes to the selectivity.

Selectivity is a function of acceptance rate + student stat/quality + yield.

+marketing

I don’t equate acceptance rate with quality at all. Good marketing can decrease your acceptance rate and so can manipulation of the numbers by using ED, etc.

+1 Posters on here don’t realize rankings and selectivity are marketing tools designed to make them spend more money.

Also did anyone notice that USNWR made math mistakes in the latest rankings (only affected schools towards the back of the list). There's a note on their site about it.

And the Poets & Quants MBA ranking shows Wharton plummeting because their grads were mad about pandemic-era online classes

Rankings aren't worth much except for making a starter list.