OT: most difficult US colleges into which to gain admittance

What are the two most difficult US colleges/Unis. to get into, based on percentage of rejections? I heard it on the radio and didn't hear the source, but to get the correct answer, think out of the box. Hint...neither seems a likely candidate ever to have a DL program. (It's not Harvard; Harvard was third.) I'll post the answer later. (This is a thought challenge, not an Internet search challenge.)

 

I know at one point, Brown had more applications than Harvard and, therefore, a lower acceptance rate.

And then you've got obscure places like St. Johns which has a pretty high accept rate, but requires each applicant to write something like seven essays on some rather complex topics. So one could argue that it's "harder" to get into there in the sense of requiring more effort than a Harvard or Yale application... but what would you expect from a schools whose entire curriculum is based around the Great Books?

 

1. West Point
2. Annapolis


Tom Nixon

 

Tom Nixon already started the military angle, but I'm going to go with (in no particular order);

1) Coast Guard Academy
2) Merchant Marine Academy

Bruce

 

It's EMPHATICALLY NOT a distance education school, but my serious guess is that Deep Springs College is one of them.

My other less serious guess... how about the Ringling Brothers Clown College?

 

I always seem to encounter this school, be it on my old favorite email lists (which are or were hosted on maelstrom.stjohns.edu) to the St. Johns student who was in the neighborhood yestersummer and had a couple of chats with me over coffee. It really sounded like a wonderful place, the way she described it -- a strange mix of the individualistic and the social (read some books, process them, and then hurl yourself into the middle of the school's Open Court). Almost like college-level homeschooling,
but with more Mortimer Adler involved.

Peace,

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Tom Head
www.tomhead.net

 

All good answers. One was a direct hit and all I think were in the top 20. (As I said, I heard it on the radio and don't have the list; I would add that I was driving at the time.)

All of the service academies were in the top 20, but the Coast Guard Academy was THE most competitive school of all, so Tom had the right idea and Bruce nailed the #1 school.

Nobody guessed the #2 school: Julliard, the holy temple of music education in the U.S., IMHO.

Most of the other guesses were in the top 20, if memory serves. Harvard was #3 and Yale was #4. The rest of the list far exceeded the capacity of my short-term memory.

Moderator: if you wish to delete this thread after awhile, feel free; it was advertised as OT.

Bill Highsmith

 

Note to Tom, and others FYI: There was an excellent article on St. John's College about two or three months ago in Smithsonian Magazine. Well worth reading.

(P.S. Lest I screw up my truck driver image by having people think I actually read Smithsonian, I confess that I subscribed to it in exchange for some frequent flyer miles. However, it is not really my cup of tea, and the St. John's article is propbably one of the few I read in it.)

 

I agree. Should be two of the three tuition-free colleges.
1. Deep Springs College, Deep Springs, California http://www.deepsprings.edu/
2. College of the Ozarks, Point Lookout, Missouri http://www.cofo.edu/
3. Berea College, Berea, Kentucky http://www.berea.edu

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Jonathan Liu
http://www.geocities.com/liu_jonathan/distance.html

 

I have heard that the most selective
undergraduate collge in the country was
Cooper Union in New York City. They were
established through a generous bequest, and
are tuition-free. IIRC, their programs are
limited to engineering and art.

 

Well, I know University of Chicago is almost impossible.

 

I should have remembered the earlier thread on Lexington University, whereat the "quiet rural atmosphere of Lexington University is conducive to the contemplative pursuit of knowledge" and where the on-campus enrollments are filled until the year 2005 (possibly because they have no campus).

This raises an interesting question, though: is it easier to get into a DL program than a residential program at schools that offer both?

 

I just was looking at the US News & World Report College Guide, and here are the top 15 schools with the lowest admission rates;

United States Coast Guard Academy 10%
Harvard University 11%
Princeton University 11%
United States Military Academy 13%
Columbia University 14%
Stanford University 15%
United States Naval Academy 15%
Yale University 16%
Brown University 17%
California Institute of Technology 18%
College of the Ozarks (MO) 18%
Amherst College (MA) 19%
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology 19%
United States Air Force Academy 20%
Dartmouth College 21%

I may have nailed the #1 school in the trivia contest, but I must say my #2 choice (US Merchant Marine Academy) has a rather disappointing (for me) 48% acceptance rate.

Bruce

 

Forgot to mention...I know Juilliard was #2 overall, but they are very specialized, so I just listed colleges & universities that offer more general programs.

Bruce