How to Use selective in a Sentence

selective

adjective
  • The club is selective in choosing members.
  • The college has a highly selective admissions process.
  • The drill teams are selective, and many who apply don’t make the cut.
    Justin Jouvenal, Washington Post, 20 Oct. 2022
  • The selective oenophiles in your life may want their own say on what their gift should be.
    Hannah Selinger, wsj.com, 29 Sep. 2023
  • Yet, the dish is approachable–for the more selective eaters.
    Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 26 Oct. 2023
  • But the process was selective — not all fans who signed up got access to the presale.
    Erin Pflaumer, CBS News, 15 Nov. 2022
  • The most selective schools had a more than 50% drop in enrollment from those groups.
    Ira Porter, The Christian Science Monitor, 20 Apr. 2023
  • Her son, Khadim Mbacke, was on the radar of Ivy League and other highly selective schools.
    New York Times, 11 June 2022
  • And a little selective shopping could earn you the MVP with not only guests, but your spouse.
    Chris Morris, Fortune, 6 Feb. 2024
  • Those who found success in the Major Leagues, like Hayes, were more selective.
    Wilson Moore, The Indianapolis Star, 28 June 2022
  • Nearly all go on to selective high schools and four-year colleges.
    Kelly Field, The Christian Science Monitor, 3 Jan. 2024
  • But since giving birth, she's been more selective about her projects.
    Emily Blackwood, Peoplemag, 22 May 2024
  • Valley is selective with his dog friends and prefers a home without cats.
    Shelter Staff, Kansas City Star, 17 July 2024
  • And for high school, Banks raised the bar for grades needed to get top priority at the city’s most selective schools.
    Laura Meckler, Washington Post, 17 Nov. 2022
  • Now, this could be a complete case of selective editing.
    Dalton Ross, EW.com, 30 Mar. 2023
  • And keeping Lowell selective, surely, was the way to keep it great.
    Nathan Heller, The New Yorker, 7 Mar. 2022
  • The sheer number of art fairs means that many galleries have to be highly selective about which fairs to attend and which to miss.
    Pearl Lam, Forbes, 29 Mar. 2024
  • Zach Freemantle and Jerome Hunter need to be more selective from deep.
    The Enquirer, 22 Sep. 2022
  • But what about the high schools where lots of students are gunning for selective colleges?
    Michael J. Petrilli, Forbes, 12 Sep. 2024
  • Like the rest of the NBA, James has become much more selective in his shots, taking fewer mid-range jumpers in favor of threes.
    Mitchell Thorson, USA Today, 8 Feb. 2023
  • Artists with kids have to be painfully selective with taking far-flung jobs.
    Laura Lane, Rolling Stone, 30 Aug. 2021
  • That rosy view of the Trump economy involved a lot of selective forgetting — more about that in a minute.
    Paul Krugman, The Mercury News, 24 Jan. 2024
  • Over the past year of war, a selective reading of the Gulf states’ actions may have played into this assumption.
    Maria Fantappie, Foreign Affairs, 22 Nov. 2024
  • The current format is still more selective than the league employed in its first 11 seasons.
    Ian Nicholas Quillen, Forbes, 5 Dec. 2024
  • Each stakeholder should hold a purpose and role in the meeting or project, so be selective.
    Expert Panel®, Forbes, 14 Oct. 2021
  • There are Western schools and Eastern schools, schools with high admission rates and schools that are selective, schools on the beach and schools in the mountains.
    WSJ, 27 Sep. 2022
  • The gene gives them a selective advantage in places like Africa, where malaria is rampant.
    Gina Kolata, New York Times, 15 Nov. 2023
  • Later in the game, with the Dodgers behind, Betts and Freeman were less selective, however.
    Dylan Hernández, Los Angeles Times, 12 Oct. 2023
  • Bottom line As shoppers get more selective, investors in retail need to do the same.
    Paulina Likos, CNBC, 2 Nov. 2024
  • There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution.
    Ryan Gaydos, Fox News, 3 Dec. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'selective.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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