<p>Interesting read… </p>
<p>[A</a> College Opts Out of the Admissions Arms Race - NYTimes.com](<a href=“A College Opts Out of the Admissions Arms Race - The New York Times”>A College Opts Out of the Admissions Arms Race - The New York Times)</p>
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<p>Well, OK. But I’m not going to give them too much credit. This sounds like something close to an open admission that they were fabricating data on applications to make themselves appear more “selective.” So just how much should we credit the man who stops battering his spouse?</p>
<p>I think it just means that they fired their direct marketing consultant.</p>
<p>A good yield from a smaller admissions pool seems far preferable. Having people only apply if they’re actually seriously interested in the college is a good thing.</p>
<p>I see dropping the application fee as a good move; too many students scramble to come up with money for fees. However, dropping the essay is a terrible, terrible idea. If anything, college applications need more writing questions and more essays, preferably specific to the school. Again, when applicants really have to care about the school to apply, you’ll have better matches and better yield, hopefully leading to a better class. I would also assume that less students without much interest would try to use the school as a safety or quick admit if took more effort to apply.</p>
<p>When I applied to colleges, most were on the common app. If I was applying to one with its own application (aside from UF, which has an app that can be done in an hour or two with no recommendations), it was because that college had something specific about it that made me want to go that extra step.</p>
<p>I think Ursinus is right in moving away from the practices they recently undertook. What’s more important, a number (admit %/college “rank”) or having an excellent group of eager young scholars?</p>
<p>At least, that’s how I see it.</p>
<p>P.S. The article refers to the liberal arts college as a “university” in some places.</p>
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<p>If ranking means the USNews ranking, the impact of reporting higher numbers of applications is not that great. The admission rate only accounts for 1.5% of the total score. </p>
<p>It is possible that Ursinus discovered the merits of full disclosure. Or, perhaps, they worried that Bob Morse meant it when he hinted at bringing back the infamous yield.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2010/06/04/what-may-change-in-upcoming-college-ranking[/url]”>http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2010/06/04/what-may-change-in-upcoming-college-ranking</a>.</p>
<p>I just glanced at the mountain of mail that D2 has received recently. Essentially all came from two VA zip codes. Then I scaned the blizzard of emails. They come from seemingly legitimate places like tulaneinfo.org or uofminn.org. Who would notice the .org extension instead of .edu? I traced the URLs and they are registered to Royall and Company, the same telemarketer mentioned in the article. </p>
<p>Here is another NYT piece on Royall: [ROYALL</a> & COMPANY - The Choice Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/royall-company/]ROYALL”>Royall & Company - The Choice Blog - The New York Times)</p>
<p>would like to see NYTimes follow-up on the other schools on their comprehensive list to see if this could be traced back to the other handful of schools who saw a drop in apps this year, especially ones that are not on common app and require specialized essays…</p>
<p>Ursinus pulled one of the biggest ‘gimmicks’ on college applicants several years ago…they raised tuition significantly,then gave out liberal merit aid to applicants,hence people thought they were getting a pricey education at a discount…</p>
<p>Here is the link
<a href=“In Tuition Game, Popularity Rises With Price - The New York Times”>In Tuition Game, Popularity Rises With Price - The New York Times;
<p>Very interesting article. Contrast this approach with schools like Tulane - with the fast app and the goal of enticing as many applicants as possible - and the resulting very low yield. Seems to me the more involved application (specialized questions, not Common App, etc.) - resulting in fewer applicants but a higher yield makes more sense and is more cost-effective in terms of the admissions office staff.</p>
<p>I’d rather have fewer applications, but from genuinely interested students, than a huge amount of applications from students who know nothing about the school but got a fast app e-mail they are responding to.</p>
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<p>No kidding! USNWR lists the Regional Universities with the lowest acceptance rates, including Medaille College in NY and Mississippi Valley State U., both at 30%. Those are two schools, both identified as “less selective,” with a median SAT of 920 and a median ACT of 17-18. Who are these 70% of applicants they’re turning down - anyone who calls the Admissions office or sends them an e-mail?</p>
<p>BTW, Mr. DiFeliciantonio has an 8-syllable last name. Wow - I’ve never seen that for someone who isn’t Thai!</p>
<p>An arms race with honest stats is unsustainable in this present economy and the financial structure of most colleges. What incident or trends do you think will put a death nail in these institutions?</p>
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All but the very most selective schools and the big state schools will increase their applicants so much that their yield will start to look like Harvard’s admissions rate. Then there will be so many offers of admission that given yearly fluctuations, colleges could end up with hundreds too many or hundreds too few of students.</p>
<p>Makes sense. So would the school with too few have to seek a niche while draining their funds? What would happen to the schools who either fail to market or fail to find a market? Do you see the federal government stepping in to support this private system or the low preforming public institutions? With today’s applicant inclination towards skills and proffesional training how will this collide with these economic forces?</p>
<p>I think Coase makes a particularly good point. I believe what you read here is just the tip of the iceberg, in that most colleges are using this same consulting firm to do the same gimmick. Doesn’t matter if you are HYPS or unknown regional U…everyone wants to increase their selectivity rating and really, it doesn’t mean very much when the primary focus of schools is upon getting more and more and more students to apply so you have more to reject. Sure they can spin it as ‘outreach’ but I’m too cynical to buy that. </p>
<p>So does USNWR not incorporate yield? Why not?</p>
<p>They will run out of gimmicks at some point. The consumer is begining to look more closely for value as they become more aware that education is just another business with a product. The indirect funding and payments have skewed this relationship.</p>
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<p>They eliminated yield as a ranking factor because they decided it’s sort of double-counting: a high yield generally gives you a low admit rate, a low yield generally gives you a high admit rate, so they figure if you know the admit rate that’s all you need to know. </p>
<p>It’s not quite as simple as that, however. Some schools have a high admit rate AND a high yield. An example is the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Their admit (acceptance) rate is 63%, but their yield is a stratospheric 67%, not quite as high as Harvard’s (76%) but the same as Yale’s (67%) and higher than Princeton’s (60%). Why? Well, that’s an interesting question. It’s a pretty good public institution, but there are better publics with lower yields (most are in the 40-50% range). It’s a relatively large institution in a state with a small population, so that may account for the high admit rate. But why the extraordinarily high yield? It may be partly the lack of public and private college alternatives nearby. It might be the fact that, lacking professional sports, Nebraskans are born and bred Cornhuskers sports fans, and that loyalty translates into college preferences. It could be that Nebraskans are uncommonly thrifty and calculate that their in-state public flagship is both good enough and a good value. But those factors don’t work in the neighboring states for the University of Kansas (91% admit rate, 40% yield, possibly due to K-State rivalry?), University of Iowa (83% admit rate, 32% yield, Iowa state rivalry?), University of Missouri (83% admit rate, 41% yield, other public and private options?), University of Colorado (84% admit rate, 34% yield, a “safety” for a national pool of applicants who end up going elsewhere?), or the University of South Dakota (87% admit rate, 41% yield). So something unique is going on here. Anyway, I think it’s interesting. I think yield DOES tell us something distinct from admit rate, though when I’ve raised this before on CC many posters said, essentially, “Who cares?”</p>
<p>I think your comments on yield are very important - both to the college consumer and to the college itself. From the consumer standpoint, it would seem to me that a higher yield could be an indicator of quality or value or perhaps both. From the college viewpoint - I would think at some point they would focus on increasing yield rather than applications - a more targeted approach to getting the class size that they desire. But somehow - the number of apps remains the chief bragging point.</p>
<p>“They will run out of gimmicks . . .” Huh - I am still waiting to see the Twitter Application!</p>
<p>Glido - I Phone app?</p>
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<p>Sometimes, but not necessarily. The yield rate is often influenced by how many likely competitors there are for the same applicants. The U. of Nebraska example above is a good one. Iowa loses some of its admits to Iowa State; Kansas loses some to Kansas State. There is no Nebraska State, and the kind of student who wants to apply to Nebraska isn’t likely to be courted away by Nebraska-Kearney or Nebraska-Omaha.</p>
<p>In Georgia, Augusta State University has a surprisingly high yield rate - around 50%. It’s a perfectly good state U for its local population, but not particularly distinctive, and that’s why its yield rate is so high. Most of its applicants come from its part of the state. There aren’t a lot of reasons for it to draw from the rest of the state. And the type of student who applies to UGA doesn’t typically want to choose ASU instead. So the ASU applicant pool is full of relatively local people who want to stay close to home and aren’t looking to be at UGA or Georgia Tech. ASU has a big yield because its the only option for many of those applicants.</p>
<p>And then there’s BYU . . . BYU is jumping up and down and waiving their arms to proclaim themselves “The Most Popular University in America.” Why? Their yield was tops in the country this year. OK, well one possibility is that they are indeed so fantastically popular that kids from coast to coast just can’t wait to turn HYPMS down once they get accepted to BYU. Or maybe it’s something else . . . let’s see - would there be any other reason that students who apply and get accepted at BYU don’t intend to go to college anywhere else? :rolleyes:</p>