In my observation, there are far fewer true “target” schools for unhooked high stats kids from competitive areas like NJ, NoVa and the Bay Area then there were 5+ years ago.
It’s become much more unpredictable for this group of applicants, leading them to routinely apply to 20+ schools.
Do you think there is a difference between how they admit from Bay Area than say Central Coast or Central Valley? I always assumed they put all CA kids into the same bucket.
Competitive/prestigious and free = highly selective I assume, so clearly very few are going to have those on their resumes. (And to your point, some people have to work summers and can’t even afford “free” because it takes away earnings.) So presumably most students need to do …something else over summer, other than vacation? Obviously for many that will be working.
I see the skepticism if people are doing these things above merely to buff their resumes for college applications, but these seem like worthwhile ways to spend summers for kids depending on interest and affordability. I have known people to use the pre-college courses as a way to see if they are really are the right fit for a student, especially for courses (like engineering and architecture) where transferability of courses might be limited if the student only finds out during freshman year that they don’t enjoy this after all. And some of these give college credit. Spending a summer helping people less fortunate, hard to fault if done with a good heart. Science and athletic camps if that’s your interest and to develop skills, don’t see an issue with that. I’ve never heard of paid for internships, and that did give me pause, but mainly because it seems even more exploitative than an unpaid internship.
To the extent that they make subjective judgements based on achievement in the context of opportunity or lack thereof, they are likely to consider that some areas (more common in the Central Valley) are lower opportunity areas than others.
As I said, my own kids did pay to play stuff. I didn’t say it’s worthless. It shows what a kid is interested in. These experiences can be valuable for many reasons. They will learn all kinds of things about themselves. There are undoubtedly some pay to play activities that look better than others. Maybe a student who chooses a farming learning experience might be more favorably looked upon than a kid who chooses to participate in a video game design camp.
I think it’s fair to say that a kid whose parents paid for them to help build a school in Central America isn’t necessarily more interesting than a student who worked at McDonalds all summer.
Jobs are great, volunteering is great. Doing anything in the summer is good. Working is always good.
During Covid, I think admissions officers were quite interested in the opportunities kids made for themselves. I remember a couple of kids who decided to do conversational English live streams with international language learners of all ages. Necessity is the mother of invention. I think AOs will always be interested in a student who has some activity that reflects a bit of ingenuity.
I would think so, if they are looking at school profiles.
Oh, i know you didn’t, and maybe my unfamiliarity with the term means I’m misinterpreting, but it sounded to me like it was being used as a pejorative earlier in the discussion.
It’s not likely I’m going to refer to my own kids in pejorative terms. However, my kids do regard me as being brutally honest sometimes. 
Yet, kids typically still have many choices. They just don’t want to go to their safety.
@Data10 , I found this. It probably isn’t particularly accurate, but tell me what you make of this. It seems that figures haven’t changed that much from the last two cycles, but is it possible that yield is a bit down overall?
Thanks for the pointer to this link. I haven’t had the chance to suck those numbers into my analysis tools, but eyeballing them, it confirms what I suspected, which is that yields are stable or slightly up for top 10 colleges, and go progressively down from there.
I also have an interesting anecdote regarding Case Western, an excellent college with a very low yield (12%). One of the strong students I coached had applied EA to Case and was deferred, despite being well above Case’s typical acceptance ranges. He then received a notable but not exceptional award, and I encouraged he send a Letter of Continued Interest. Not only was he then admitted, but was admitted with a half tuition scholarship. I think their admissions people really seek students they believe will attend.
To me, it depends. Doing a summer architecture or engineering program to see if you’re interested? Totally makes sense. Going on a mission trip because it really aligns with the kid’s values? Great! If a kid lists these as ECs to represent what they did over the summer, it totally makes sense.
If, however, a kid lists it as an honor/award that they attended the program or that they created a portfolio as a result of the camp or published a paper or similar…that’s where I find it problematic. Lots of ECs are pay-to-play (music lessons, travel sports teams, etc). That’s just the nature of the beast. But when people switch to making things awards/honors/accomplishments, particularly for something that was a component of something that they paid to do, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Federal reporting includes yield stats, but most recent available year is 2023-24. Among all 4-year colleges with at least 100 enrolled students in Fall 2019 and Fall 2023, stats changed as follows. Among 4-year colleges as a whole, admit rate went up and yield went down.
2019: Median Admit Rate = 70%, Median Yield = 23%
2023: Median Admit Rate = 77%, Median Yield = 19%
If I restrict to the 66 selective colleges with an admit rate of <25% in 2019, then stats change as follows. The opposite trend occurs, with lower admit rate and higher yield. A similar pattern has been discussed in news stories. Many colleges have trouble getting enough kids to fill all the seats. It’s only a minority of colleges that are getting an increasingly low admit rate and higher yield in recent years, which partially relates to fewer potential applicants being blocked by a perceived test barrier when switching to test optional/blind.
2019: Median Admit Rate = 13.5%, Median Yield = 46%
2023: Median Admit Rate = 11%, Median Yield = 49%
Among the 66 selective colleges mentioned above, some of the outliers are below.
Low 2019 Yield
Grinnell: (23% Admit Rate, 25% Yield) → (13% Admit Rate, 36% Yield)
Northeastern: (18% Admit Rate, 27% Yield) → (6% Admit Rate, 50% Yield)
Boston U: (19% Admit Rate, 27% Yield) → (11% Admit Rate, 36% Yield)
Emory: (16% Admit Rate, 29% Yield) → (11% Admit Rate, 40% Yield)
Largest Change in Admit Rate (Ratio)
Northeastern: (18% Admit Rate, 27% Yield) → (6% Admit Rate, 50% Yield)
Caltech: (6% Admit Rate, 44% Yield) → (3% Admit Rate, 65% Yield)
Colgate: (23% Admit Rate, 35% Yield) → (12% Admit Rate, 32% Yield)
NYU: (16% Admit Rate, 45% Yield) → (9% Admit Rate, 54% Yield)
Largest Change in Yield (Ratio)
Northeastern: (18% Admit Rate, 27% Yield) → (6% Admit Rate, 50% Yield)
Caltech: (6% Admit Rate, 44% Yield) → (3% Admit Rate, 65% Yield)
Grinnell: (23% Admit Rate, 25% Yield) → (13% Admit Rate, 36% Yield)
Emory: (16% Admit Rate, 29% Yield) → (11% Admit Rate, 40% Yield)
Would this be because kids are applying to more targets/safeties than they used to?
Curious that Colgate was the only one of those whose yield fell along with its admit rate.
Thank you for translating that information.
I look forward to your revisit of this particular issue when the data for this cycle is relased. Have you just predicted that based on many colleges going back to requiring tests, the accetpance rate might tick up due to a drop in apps? As in, they will receive fewer apps due to kids having to submit scores?
Or, now that many kids seem tobe testing again, will numbers continue to increase, due to more kids having scores to submit because they have taken a test?
On a new note, who saw the latest news from Harvard? Tution will be free for families earning under $200k, and full rides will be given to families earning under $100k. Probably worth its own thread. Will other colleges follow suit?
I’ve been really curious to see who might follow in UPenn 's lead on this. I could see Yale making a move soon to “keep up with the Joneses”.
Perhaps one can check with test runs on their net price calculators, including how asset levels affect this claim.
Harvard followed MIT, which announced the same several months ago, but it didn’t get as much press.
I am also surprised they did this, as I expect Harvard to be financially attacked by the current administration.
It looks like they only permit $100k non-retirement, non-primary home assets now. Harvard used to allow $200k in non-retirement, non-primary home assets without impacting FA.
With <= $100k parents assets (excluding retirement + primary home) and varying income, price is:
$100k Income – $0/yr
$150k Income – $13k/yr
$200k Income – $27k/yr
$250k Income – $46k/yr
$300k Income – $72k/yr
$350k Income – $91k/yr (sticker price)
With $100k income, and varying parents assets (excluding retirement + primary home), price is:
$100k Assets – $0k/yr
$200k Assets – $5k/yr
$300k Assets – $10k/yr
…
n assets increases cost by (n-$100k)*5% per year
Combing the 2, one would estimate $200k Income + $1M assets as:
Cost = $27k + ($1M - $100k)*5% = $72k/year
This is an oversimplification. Other factors also influence FA, such as having a 2nd kid in college and student having non-zero assets.
Among the thousands of colleges in US, only an extremely small minority have switched to test required… not enough to have much impact on the earlier median type stats. However, there are likely to be changes at the specific highly selective colleges that switched from test optional to test required, particularly colleges for which many potential applicants saw the high score as a barrier to applying.
For example, number of applications by year at MIT are below. There were large changes in number of applicants during each year MIT changed testing requirements, and there was little change in applicants during each year when MIT did not change testing requirements.
2019 (test required) – 21k applicants
2020 (test required) – 20k applicants
2021 (test optional*) – 33k applicants
2022 (test optional*) – 34k applicants
2023 (test required) – 27k applicants
2024 (test required) – 28k applicants
*MIT was not “test optional” in a traditional sense. MIT instead requested that students who could take the test safely take the tests, take and submit test scores.
There was a notable increase in testing shortly after COVID as more students could safely take the test, but seems to be relatively little change in past year. I’d expect relatively little change next year as well.
2024 – 1.97M SAT, 1.4M ACT (sum = 3.4M)
2023 – 1.91M SAT, 1.4M ACT (sum = 3.3M)
2022 – 1.7M SAT, 1.35M ACT (sum = 3.1M)
2021 – 1.5M SAT, 1.3M ACT (sum = 2.8M)2019 – 2.2M SAT, 1.8M ACT (sum = 4.0M)
2018 – 2.1M SAT, 1.9M ACT (sum = 4.0M)