What acceptance rate actually measures

Acceptance rate is applicants divided into admits. It rises when a school markets harder, joins the Common App, or goes test-optional in a way that inflates applications. It falls when yield strategies and reputation concentrate demand. None of that is the same as “teaching quality,” and none of it is your individual probability of admission.

Useful, if you keep the frame

• As a soft weight in the engine, selectivity is optional — turn it down if brand prestige is not your goal.
• As a single-metric list, it answers only “who admits the smallest share of applicants among reporters.”
• On a school page, pair admit rate with class profile, net price, and outcomes instead of stopping at the headline percentage.

Coverage is incomplete: many institutions do not report admit rate. We never impute it. Missing means missing — the school simply leaves that list and that soft-weight signal.

Personal odds are a different product

If you want a structured self-assessment against a target school’s published profile, that is the Odds beta on the home engine — still not a promise, still grounded in reported ranges. Selectivity lists will not do that job for you.

Re-score with your weights