The University of Michigan has around a 15% acceptance rate. How is it possible that they’re letting in kids who aren’t ready to do college level work? What are they selecting for?
The University I went to has like an 80% acceptance rate so it's not comparable, but I was surprised when I got into 400-level CS classes and there were people who didn't know how to program at all.
Our professor assigned us to write a fast fourier transform, and when we had class next week apparently everyone claimed that it was too difficult so he changed the assignment to "find an implementation online and write about it"
I feel really grateful I graduated before the advent of LLMs because it was really easy to stand out as a good student when the standards are apparently so low.
Side tangent but in the same class he caught people zero-citation copy-pasting from Wikipedia on the papers we were assigned to write, and the guys acted like they had no idea you couldn't do that.
I went to a state school. The quality varied wildly depending on the department. It was very eye opening in the general English/writing classes when encountering people who couldn't read or write above a 4th grade level. The difference between they're, their, and there was like a riddle to some of them. Of course many didn't make it more than a semester or two.
That's the big thing - the college might be dropping the first semester grades so they can squeeze a second semester of tuition out of kids.
> The quality varied wildly depending on the department.
I feel like it has always been this way. I went to a small private university. The natural sciences and especially the pre-med students had their days fully packed, like the only time you could even have a moment to talk about anything was at the cafeteria during meals.
Then there was the business department. The college athletes apparently picked business as a major because you have to pick something. You couldn't guess what was their preferred minor and why... The overwhelming preferred minor was music because the buildings for department of business and music were adjacent.
Compare that to the pre meds who were always worried about getting a B and somehow "ruining their chances at med school".
> The college athletes apparently picked business as a major because you have to pick something.
I actually think it makes a lot of sense to go for some kind of basic business degree if you're angling to go into professional sports. Having some basic concepts of basic business law, finance, etc. seems pretty important for someone looking to shop their abilities and likeness around and have some understanding of the contract negotiations they'll hopefully be a part of. Outside of the gym its probably the most relevant kind of skills being taught on a college campus for that career path.
I feel like the prevailing story you would hear “back in the day” was always the star quarterback or the kid of a rich donor getting white-glove treatment. Instead my experience matched GP, handful of students complaining that a tree-balancing exercise is “too harsh” and getting the entire assignment slashed by the professor being pressed to increase the size of the department.
> That's the big thing - the college might be dropping the first semester grades so they can squeeze a second semester of tuition out of kids.
This seems most likely. If you think of college as yet another extractive business (and you can bet the administrators at colleges think this way), then students that drop out are simply cu$tomers you are failing to retain: Pure lost revenue.
In almost any program, it is entirely possible to navigate your degree so that you are allowed to come away with a high GPA but knowing largely nothing useful. There's enough burned out adjuncts, overworked pre-tenure profs, and coasting/research-oriented tenured profs that with some help from upperclassmen and the ability to detect lax professors, that you can manage to get through largely unscathed by learning. Typically to your chagrin/despair as you then begin interviewing.
I went to a 2nd tier state school in the early mid 2000s.
For our senior project class, one group of students successfully incorporated as a startup and sold their project to the city as a SaSS app, and my group ended up open sourcing our cross platform app.
Everyone in the program could code - really well - by the time they got to their junior year. Those who couldn't were weeded out early on.
May have helped they the entire first 2 years were taught in native languages with manual memory management.
I started university in 2014 so it was post-Google-driving-up-engineer-salaries, and it attracted a LOT of people with no passion for computers, but wanted one of those well-paying jobs.
It was rare to find people who actually "got" computers, and learned things beyond what was taught in classes cause they just liked technology. Those of us who just really liked tinkering with our computers knew who the other ones like us were. And it still feels like that after working as a professional in the industry for the better part of a decade.
I'm pretty sure most of the people I work with have no idea what a .zshrc file is, or how to configure things to optimize their workflow, or use keyboard shortcuts, etc.
> Our professor assigned us to write a fast fourier transform, and when we had class next week apparently everyone claimed that it was too difficult so he changed the assignment to "find an implementation online and write about it"
that sounds unbelievable. Not calling you out by any means i'm just shocked! I can comprehend tuning down the difficulty but not to the level of find some code online and write about it.
There are, I think, three big hurdles for freshmen in college:
First, college can be a very abrupt shift from "someone is watching over you" to "you, and only you, are responsible for yourself." If you slack off in high school, someone--your parents, your teachers, your school administration--is likely to get on your ass to put you back on track, and this is more likely to be the case for people who get into tougher colleges ("helicopter parents" are very real things). But in college, if you sleep in and miss all of your classes... no one is going to care. Well, your parents might, but your parents aren't with you in college to do anything about it. I've seen quite a few people who went from straight A's in high school to failing most of their college courses because of this.
Second, a lot of those accepted are going to be the smartest person in their class, who are now going to a college where they might be average--or even below average.
Finally, college courses are generally more difficult than a high school course, even an AP course, teaching the same material; there's just a lot more that's expected as students. Freshmen courses generally mitigate this somewhat to help ease in students, but by the time you get to a senior-level course, reading multiple research papers a day for per class is considered pretty normal. Of course, if you're a kid with a truckload of AP courses who let you skip your first year of college, now you're dropped into courses that expect you to have already adjusted to college life first.
"Freshmen courses generally mitigate this somewhat to help ease in students"
Interesting, that's not my observation at all. Instead freshman classes were the most grueling experiences, intentionally weed-out classes to try to detect and, well, weed-out early those who wouldn't have the combination of grit, intelligence and organization skills to make it to the end of the degree.
I speak somewhat hyperbolically, it was never _unfair_, but the classes absolutely were paced and had homework/exam loads that you would simply be unable to cope with if you were trying to half-ass it. At my college, Calc I and Physics 1 were the big freshman showstoppers. I tested out of calc 1, but my IB HL was chemistry and as such I had a chemist's disdain (and begrudging respect) for the more academic science of physics, and while the actual topics weren't difficult, there was a LOT of homework and the exams left no stone unturned.
Comparatively, jr+ classes tended to be much more relaxed, focused more on learning the material than ensuring you are willing to do 8-10 hours of physics homework per week.
This was a few decades ago but we had 2 tiers of weed outs. The first was the intro classes that most everyone took their freshman year. Then there was another wave that was major specific and tended to show up 2nd semester of sophomore year into 1st semester of junior year, essentially the point where coursework was shifting almost entirely to be major specific.
So for instance, one of the notorious freshman weed out classes was a class that *every* engineering student took. But then each individual engineering major had their own handful of pain in the ass classes that showed up as the engineering curriculum diverged.
Same experience in 2000s. I’ll never forget there was a kid on his third try to pass the mandatory Intro to Engineering class. I sure hope he moved on to a new major.
If you are an old like me, I don't think you can use current acceptance rates. They are artificially low compared to old rates because kids just send so many applications out now.
20 years ago UofM had a 50% acceptance rate, from some light google searching. Apparently they received 115k applications last year vs under 25k in 2005.
The biggest factor is that applying is a lot easier in the age of web applications, common application, and students being advised to send 10-15 applications out. In the 2000s even a good student might apply to 3-5 schools and feel they had covered enough.
Exactly. They're rejecting 85% of applicants because they're not qualified, but the 15% they admit are, by and large, not qualified either. I'm at one of Michigan's peer institutions, and we have the same problem.
College is a pretty large step up for most people even if they're good at high school and go to a relatively decent one. It's a sudden promotion to full adult in charge of yourself and your success in a way that's hard to prepare for living at home.
Do you know what it takes to get admitted into Mich tier programs in 2026?
Kids will take multiple APs (taking 10+ isn't unheard of, and in a lot of high schools is expected), do multiple extracurriculars (debate, MUN, DECA sports, academic olympiads, theatre), volunteering (NHS, CSF, etc), and even take college classes in high school.
On top of that while tests are optional, most students still submit their SAT and ACT, and the expectation of 1500+ and 35+ still holds.
And even then there's no guarantee you'll get in.
Most applicants who successfully get into Ivies, impacted majors with single digit acceptance rates at Mich or Cal tier programs like EECS or a BBA, and other peer programs are basically burnt out by 17-18 (the age most kids at these programs now matriculate).
And the first semester is not impactful in any shape or form. It's best to take summary and intro classes as P/NP to even the playing field and then throw in a weed-out class (in CS that was historically data structures or OS).
So many HNers complain about how the younger generation is hyper-competitive yet when universities start taking steps to help reduce that they start kvetching.
Heck, with my profile from the late 2000s and early 2010s (right when everything became hyper-competitive and optimized), I actually wouldn't have a shot at most programs at Mich let alone my Alma mater, especially when I compare it to my younger sibling's profile who also attended a Mich tier engineering undergrad in the 2020s.
Seriously, and how many HNers would cite MIT as one of the best around?
Well I learned over a decade ago that they have had Pass/no-credit for the first year implemented for years... So at this point it wouldn't surprise me if you said it's been going on for two decades (at min.)
Again, I think people are having the same reaction I had "what, MIT just gets off scotch free for the first year?!". Decade later, watching it help relieve the stress from their rat race of 110% from their childhoods... Man is it worth it. And everyone still loves hiring people out of MIT
> giving you time to adjust to factors like increased workloads and variations in academic preparation and teaching methods.
> curb a mental health crisis
In this context, both have the exact same meaning, of "stop freshmen who are used to overachieving their entire lives from taking a header off the tallest buildings on campus because they're not used to being less than the top 5% at everything"
"So many HNers complain about how the younger generation is hyper-competitive yet when universities start taking steps to help reduce that they start kvetching."
Dropping a semester of grades is a cover up for the symptoms, not a fix. A better fix would be stress management and realistic expectations. Building your identity or self-worth around going to a particular school is the insane part. It's great to have big goals, but you have to separate those goals from defining you. It seems many kids today don't make that distinction. Pick a cheap state school with a decent program, get a scholarship, and start living life. All this prestige and pedigree is the type of stuff we should be trying to destroy.
> And even then there's no guarantee you'll get in.
> yet when universities start taking steps to help reduce that they start kvetching
Your argument is hard to follow. It is prohibitively hard, to the point of being unhealthy, to getting admitted to the University of Michigan. Okay, but how does this policy solve for or address that in any way? Wouldn’t the solution be to increase capacity to meet demand, thus relieving those pressures that create the conditions for them to admit young adults that are suffering from health issues that the universities admissions policies itself precipitated?
But, again, the University of Michigan’s own admissions policies created the need for the students to “chill out”. Is this not treating a symptom of the problem, not the motivator?
Also 32,000 undergrads is not “massive” by any measurement[0], especially when accounting for the population of the state of Michigan, much less the broader United States.
Michigan admissions create opportunities for students that found success within the challenging conditions. Umich treats the problem by educating future policy makers about those systems. Then occasionally yields to powerful lobby groups and clandestine operations of fascist administration.
> Heck, with my profile from the late 2000s and early 2010s (right when everything became hyper-competitive and optimized), I actually wouldn't have a shot at most programs at Mich let alone my Alma mater
You're right about this one. I'd never get accepted today at the state university I went to back in the 90s. Back then, applying to college meant taking the SAT, filling out an application, and maybe submitting an essay. That was it. Then you figured out how you'd pay for it. They didn't care that much about AP courses, extracurricular activities, career shadowing, volunteering, college level credits, or anything like that. Sure, they were nice bonuses but nobody treated them as hard requirements like they do today. Hell, my high school didn't even offer AP courses, so I couldn't take one even if I wanted to.
Now, my kid is approaching college age, and all these college admissions coaches are breathing down my neck to get her to take 40 AP courses, join the debate club and chess club, play Sportsball every year, take 4 years of a foreign language, do volunteering, tutor other kids, and then take extra courses at the local community college, and that doing all that will only improve her already-low chances of acceptance. Good grief!
You can handle all of that in high school, but suddenly can't handle the mental stress of a grade report your first semester of college? Give me a break.
Yes, it doesn't transfer. This is because the type of work required to perform in school is completely different from the type of work required to perform in college. This means first sem performance often dives even for a diligent student. The stress is not about the first few course themselves rather it is that they can terribly impact your entire GPA. Considering how relatively unimportant the first sem courses are relative to the whole degree, it makes sense to drop it from the GPA. You could also assign them much fewer credits, that would be an alternative solution I suppose.
As someone who lives in this area... Sorry for saying this.. Ready for it:
Nepo babies and affirmative action babies. (Dont @ me about Gratz, lets not pretend its no longer happening)
The students that come out of there are just normal. There is nothing special in the UoM sauce. They have more ego as their state school grad who makes the same money as them.
Sure there is a floor, they didn't let the alcoholic nepo baby in. But the people that made it to entry level Fortune 20 companies were the same tier, or maybe they were worse. Best engineers were people from random schools around the country that just wanted to work there.
Note: This didn't apply to people that had been there for 2 or 3 years. After that, even the UoM grads had their ego destroyed and they were normal people again.
> How many kids are "Nepo", and aren't they usually donating some kind of money to the University
Plenty of kids are small-town nepo. Daddy threatens to call his lawyer every time they get a C or get in trouble, and teachers and administrators cave.
It's a pretty different environment going from high school to college. There's a dynamic change that's pretty sudden where your parents are no long really in the picture for support.
What they are trying to do is keep the kids that would otherwise do well but might freak out in the first semester. Seems pretty fine to me especially since those are grades that if we are being honest really don't matter anyways.
It’s not actually less certain now than it was then. It’s just the media has gotten louder. Cuban missilie crisis, civil rights, world wars, nuclear weapons, it has all been happening for a while.
When you look at real wages vs cost of living and the trend line is down and showing no signs of ever going back up, the question will I be able to afford the resources to survive and have a family, will my kids be able to afford a home, that's the growing uncertainty.
There is a real issue that housing is unreasonably expensive in many areas, which we could fix via the innovative strategy of not making it illegal to build housing.
Now plot that wage plot against productivity, or corporate profit, or any US stock index, or as you said: housing costs. Real wages are not keeping up with anything. It's not just housing.
The price of food/groceries has doubled over the last few years. The price of new cars is also much higher than it has been. All money I used to allocate to eating out in restuarants now goes to groceries. My next car purchase will be a used car. So there are workarounds for now, but if the trend doesn't stop, soon there will be no more workarounds. Only so many people can get the high-wage jobs.
The data don't support the story you are telling, at least not on a 17 year time scale. Most places including LA and New York actually show the opposite. Real wages are rising faster than cost of living in the long term just about everywhere in the US.
I understand the argument, and housing is a problem, but there just isn't much to support the doom and gloom narrative if you don't use cherry picked data from opeds. I suspect that a lot of people have distorted views about what they should be able to afford.
>The data don't support the story you are telling, at least not on a 17 year time scale. Most places including LA and New York actually show the opposite.
People point to the 1960s as the "golden age" where everyone could afford everything on a single person working an easy entry-level job. However, that is also a meme, not reality. According to the census bureau median family income in 1960 was $5,600, which is $58,946.59 in Jan 2024 dollars. It's $83,730 in 2024.
For individual males, in 1960 it was $4,100 ($43,157.33 Jan 2024 dollars) and $71,090 in 2024.
You're conflating income and wages. People are working more hours so income increases while wages are flat. And people who aren't full-time aren't counted in that income figure.
The source I provided specifically does not look at total income but real wages compared to cost of living. Did you look at the data you are arguing against?
Also, you are wrong about people working more hours. Here's the actual numbers. We are working slightly fewer hours than we have been on average for the past 20 years: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP.
Has it occurred to you that the data really just doesn't support your perception? People have been giving you sources that refute what you are saying at every level. I get it. I keep reading and seeing people talk about how awful everything is, but I just can't find hard evidence that this is the case on a broad basis. You should look into the concept of the "vibe-cession". People are convincing themselves that things are getting worse based on talk and perception, and, well, one of the limits of humanity is that perception is reality inside your head.
Household income is not wages. If people work more hours income goes up while wages are flat. That series only includes full-time workers. High earners are doing better, that's the k-shaped economy. The upside of going to college is being carved out by changes in the labor market. A more representative measure would be average wage for non supervisory roles which is flat since the 1970s. Lower earners face higher inflation than the CPI because more of their paycheck goes to necessities. CPI shelter is what I'm interested in.
Yes? When I started college 16-ish years ago the '08 financial crisis was still fresh in my mind. Many of my peers were deeply concerned about the kinds of jobs and wages they could expect to find after graduation.
As someone that graduated when you started and was much closer to 08, it turned out to be a non-issue for everyone I know that went to college with me.
It did not, at least not for me. But that wasn't the question: the question was whether or not it was something I thought about as a freshman. It was, though I obviously can't prove one way or another if my concern for the future made a difference in my earnings out of school. I can only provide my own anecdata on the matter.
On all fronts we are having a easier time than before.
Healthcare, safety, life expectancy, disease, mental health (yes, you disagree, but it not being existant in the past kinda sets tue bar).
No, you would have to worry about your job being sent/lost to Mexico, Japan, China, etc. Now those jobs are already lost and we have a different vulnerability. Same story, different clothes.
Downsizing and outsourcing hit all non-management positions, the only moat against it was technical expertise, but that's been eroded for quite a while. How much moaning about development being outsourced to India have we heard in the past decade?
When I was in a CS program in the US in 2005 I heard from dozens of people as well as media pundits that it's a bad choice because all the tech jobs would be outsourced to india.
No, in the past you just had the possibility of childhood illness and death, the death of siblings, war, famine, drought, none of which are real problems for university students these days.
He just said: they freaked out, dropped out and did some less qualified work. Meanwhile inept kids from money who were taught that form them effort is not required went on to get lucrative jobs without merit, and now Trump is president.
Yes.. and that friction, too, served a purpose. There it a reason it tends to be referred to as a filter, because by first year you find out whether you have what it takes to survive that environment or not. The good news for everyone is that now we get to find out in 2nd year, where our sunk cost is much greater. Hurray for winning.
First semester, not first year. And I suspect that the filter will still be in play for students because they'll still have coursework to complete. They simply don't get the grade feedback reducing the stress of perfecting that semester while they are still learning the ropes.
We all know how it goes. Minimal adjustment is made to accommodate someone in some way only crazies like me would object to and soon the entire school is pass/fail depending on whether you show up with your own pencil; just to ensure we do not induce stress. Naturally, then stress will be first experienced in first real job, but lets have private ( non-school ) sector worry about that. Maybe they can institute their own stress-free policy. And so it will go on.
> That's the slippery slope fallacy. That's not what's being proposed and not what's going to happen.
They have proposed 1 semester, if they propose extending it then I'll be right along side you saying that's ridiculous. However, it's just as likely that they'll say "Actually, 1 semester was too long, we'll just do it for 1/2 a semester".
It is genuinely hard to argue slippery slope fallacy when we have years upon years of examples like social promotion, resulting grade inflation and such. Own your argument man. If you are ok with end result, say so.
> It is genuinely hard to argue slippery slope fallacy when we have years upon years of examples like social promotion
No it's not, because that's a tangentially related thing. You can't say "because social promotion is widely practiced, colleges will eventually eliminate grades" That's a non-sequitur. It'd be just as silly as me making the argument that "because some classes at my college were pass/fail, eventually they'll all be pass fail". That's the slippery slope argument.
> Own your argument man
That's not my argument, dude. And claiming it is is bad faith bro.
> If you are ok with end result, say so.
The end result of a single semester not being graded? Yeah, I'm fine with that. Because it's just as likely the university finds it's a mistake and rolls it back as it is that they expand it. It's also likely that they don't do anything with it.
That's my argument. That this policy is probably positive and worth trying. My argument isn't "nobody should ever be graded ever". That's a straw-man that you've cooked up.
MIT has had this policy for years and years. Did they fall down this slippery slope such that everybody is slacking off and nobody is getting meaningfully evaluated?
Interesting! It looks like MIT, Swarthmore, and Wellesley are the well-known ones so it has precedent.
While I still think it's a disservice to the student, I'd be curious to hear from those that lived through this: Both those that attended and graduated and those that had to drop out.
For the former I'm guessing there's not much to report. I'd be curious about the latter.
I've never cared about where the degree of someone comes from. You really think and employer is going to look at UofM and say "Oh, they gave their students a 1 semester reprieve, obviously they are of lower quality"?
> Hiring practices expanding to include multiple take-home exercises to prove competency.
Why would the policy of UofM change the hiring practices of companies that are not UofM? Where's the connection?
> Students not fully learning foundational knowledge they’ll need later because the class is an easy pass.
This may be a real harm, but ultimately they'll have to learn the foundational knowledge to continue going to UofM. Plenty of students fail to learn foundational knowledge outside of UofM, I know because I had to tutor them.
> You really think and employer is going to look at UofM and say "Oh, they gave their students a 1 semester reprieve, obviously they are of lower quality"?
Yes. This will be evident on the transcript. It won’t reduce a student from “must-hire” to “do not interview.” But it could make a marginal difference when two students are compared.
One has all A and the other has all P. If the all A is Ohio State and the all P is Michigan, if I’m otherwise indifferent I might hire Ohio State.
As a student: Grades are one of the clearest signals on whether you're a good fit for a major or topic you're interested in, you need more work, or you need to trim down the number of classes.
Not providing that clear, cumulative signal is a major disservice to the students.
Also, UofM is expensive so dragging it benefits only the financials for the school.
I think this touches on a real potential harm. I guess my counter is that it'd be hard to make that adjustment after the first semester anyways. Particularly because these will all be intro classes anyways which can all be overly easy. Some of my engineering 3 credit courses really should have been like 6 credits whereas some of my generals 3 credit hours were more like 1 credit. It's hard to know that without getting a feel for the classes and professors.
The coddling is a big problem these days, and this focus on mental health is itself unhealthy. The assessment that "they would otherwise do well" is speculative, at best.
> this focus on mental health is itself unhealthy.
Yes. We should ignore things like school shootings, which have long been described as the result of mental health issues. Ignore PTSD. Soldiers can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. By all means, ignore the mental health of a rape victim or a child abuse victim. They can just tough it out. Clearly, that's the better strategy.
Oh, and you've been working in this field for how long?
> Once you cross a certain threshold, it's luck of the draw if you're selected.
For most schools, it’s the opposite.
For folks qualified to get in, they will be selected. For folks at the marginal threshold, it’s luck of the draw.
> Clearly the entire thing is broken.
I agree with your sentiment, but for opposite reason. We need to scale down the number of people at R1 schools and develop a more robust system of technical and trade schools (imho).
The spreadsheet types have taken over the universities from the professors (it started decades ago), so I don’t think that this change will happen unless and until the current system implodes.
A few years ago, there was a mini-trend of showboating about how many universities that accepted you. It is not difficult to apply to dozens of schools, with the assumption that you are not going to attend, but only to post that you got accepted on social media. Type A parents encourage this since it reflects on them as well (must be a good parent if the kid got accepted to 20+ universities).
Universities have caught on to this trend, and use other heuristics for acceptance like "has this person ever emailed us or visited the campus?" and not just taking applications as the only input. So acceptance rates have started to reflect this. Sorting through 1000's of throw away applications to find those who might actually want to attend.
The longer I live, the less I'm impressed by fancy schools.
They don't make great labor. They are normal labor with egos until the age of ~25. Then they become normal labor without egos as the system killed their ego.
I really expected some secret sauce in Ivys/UoM, and nope. Electrical Engineers there didn't know how to figure out mass of a part given density(based on material) and volume.
Because in America, Ivy versus non-Ivy isn't the distinction.
What matters is your major and whether it is a well respected program.
A CS@Texas student will have the ability to open the exact same doors professionally and prestige wise as a CS@Brown student.
You have Ivies, Ivy Tier Privates (Stanford, Chicago, Duke, USC, Caltech, MIT, NYU, Northwestern, Georgetown, CMU), and Public Ivies (Cal, UCLA, UCSD, Mich, UIUC, UW, UT, GT, Purdue, UNC Chapel Hill, UVA) that all recruit the same kind of applicant and place in the same careers and employers.
They ain't. A non-trivial amount of people have not heard of Brown or Dartmouth, and confuse UPenn with Penn State. Hell, I didn't hear about Brown until high school and I ended up attending an Ivy lol.
And employers and us alums of these programs know the difference is marginal.
I don't think anyone on the west coast of the US cares if you're an Ivy grad. Now, Stanford grads on the other hand, every employer seems to cream their jeans over them, for whatever reason. I knew a tech company that sorted their resumes into "Stanford" and "Everyone else". Having not gone there, I don't understand what the fuss is all about.
The Northeast isn't the rest of America, the same way someone in Maine isn't necessarily going to think about CMC or Harvey Mudd similarly Brown or Dartmouth doesn't come up much or at all.
The acceptance rate is sort of a weird criteria for NYU when you compare it to the other schools it is listed with. It is a very popular school so it gets more applicants than 3-4 of the other colleges it is listed with combined, it has a slightly higher rate than most of those schools. It also accepts more students than probably all of those schools. I went there it is a good school. I don't think most people would put it in the same category as MIT. I certainly do not think it is as prestigious.
If you are using acceptance rates as a proxy for difficulty of schools in a given year, you need to adjust by desirability of location and perceived seriousness of degree programs.
And across time you have to adjust acceptance rates for the fact they are all way lower now because kids send out 2-3x as many apps.
A lot of kids even 20 years ago were applying to schools in NYC/Boston/DC on east coast because they wanted to be in NYC/Boston/DC. Many of my friends went to said schools for psychology/film/etc type programs at schools that as an engineering major were decidedly for me "safety schools". Many of these were 50% admit then and 10% admit now. I don't think they suddenly became as difficult as MIT.
Meanwhile many engineering schools (the types with Institute in the name) that were in cold rural boring areas had higher acceptance rates than my "safety schools" in Boston.
This trend has seemingly only accelerated. For example picking 3 schools in Boston to isolate just the difficulty feature:
* In 2005 MIT acceptance was ~16% vs 4% now (1/4).
* BC was ~30% vs 15% now (1/2).
* BU was ~68% vs 11% now (1/6).
So theres an argument that the harder the school the less dramatically its acceptance rate has compressed, while desirable good but not super hard schools (which have fluffy majors available) have had a larger effect.
