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Comment by ytx | Hacker News Reader

Every institution with a limited number of slots is exclusionary. Berkeley's admit rate is around 15%, 20% for Michigan and UVA, versus Harvard/MIT around 5%, so in terms of "excluding" the vast majority of applicants, there doesn't seem to be much difference.

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There's a huge difference between 15/20% with opportunities to community college transfer and 3-5% acceptance rates without that. That's literally a 4-5x difference.

As Morill Act institutions (except for MIT, which is an aberration) Michigan/Harvard/UVA's purpose is also to educate and not to cultivate an elite.

Fair, by that metric it is indeed 4-5x "easier" to get into UVA/Michigan than Harvard/MIT. But it's also undeniable that former still excludes the large majority of applicants. And if everyone in America suddenly wanted to start going to UVA, and its admission rate dropped precipitously, would it not then also fit the definition of being "elitist"?

No, because it's a public school.

Look, you're the one that set the bar at "exclusionary" - by the numbers, these are all highly exclusionary institutions (more than three quarters of people won't get it) - we're just arguing over the fine details at this point.

If Harvard reduced financial aid, meaning that more people were dissuaded from applying, and that brought the numbers up to the same - would you be happy?

Looking at acceptance rate to define what is good or bad is just weird.

Elite universities themselves target an acceptance rate when targeting advertising and outreach to prospective students. It's an extremely important metric for even selling their exclusivity. It's why BU went from 50% accept rate to ~17% in ~7 years.

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