The Selectivity Illusion

Of the many statistics publicized by universities and the college guides that evaluate them, few receive as much attention as those that measure the difficulty of admission. "Selectivity" data—ranging from simple admission rates to statistical profiles of the academic achievement of each school's freshman class—would seem to be useful enough: they provide students with a quick notion of whether their credentials might be a good match for any given school.

But these statistics also have an almost fetishistic appeal, as if the more students a school turns away, the nobler the character of the few it admits. How much does a school's selectivity reveal about the quality of the school or of the students who attend it? Does selectivity mean much of anything at all? By way of experiment, The Atlantic gathered data on America's most selective schools and created a ranking of the top fifty. The ranking is derived ...