For several years now, in spite of the demographics not being in their favor, the 100 or so colleges that are in the top 50 have all reported significant increases in applications. I get that. We’ve got the common app, more international applicants, the “holistic” story that convince all those kids that yeah, they can get in with their 3.5/1900 even though it’s way below the average. But what I don’t get is how they are all showing increasingly high yields.
The number of super high achieving kids has been fairly steady for years if you look at ACT/SAT test data. We’ve got around 20k that get 34+ on the ACT or over 2250ish on the SAT. It goes up to about 40K if you go down to 33/2200. So that’s 80k but as we know from CC there is a lot of crossover, let’s guess 40%. So that means we have somewhere around 50,000 kids competing for seats that these “top 25-50” schools. If those real top 50 have average freshman class sizes of 2000 that’s well over 100,000 seats for just the true top 50. It goes up exponentially if you start counting the next tier of schools because there are a lot of big state schools in that crowd.
Yet despite all this, they all are reporting higher yields every year. So we have a finite number of high achieving kids. And they are sending out a lot more applications than they did in the past thanks to the common app. And every school is reporting that this is their smartest, high achieving-est freshman class ever. And they are reporting that their yields are as good or better than ever before.
I’m not suggesting they are lying. But maybe they all have a room full of unemployed math majors that are figuring out a way to spin the statistics to perpetuate the ever increasing Lake Wobegoness of the top 50. All I have for real statistics is our school Naviance. The story it shows is that there hasn’t been any significant increase, and in many cases there is a decrease, in the selectivity of a lot of the top 50 schools over the last 4 years. This is a large ORM dominated top public HS in CA. Our acceptance rates for many of the top schools (not counting HYPSM) has stayed true and some cases increased quite a bit since 2012. Schools like NW, UM, USC, Vandy, etc… are letting in more not less. And yielding way less.
Maybe our kids are just way smarter than everyone else>)
Actually my very tiny, mostly white, school has shown the opposite. While the numbers for UM, Tufts and Emory have remained steady, 4 years ago our school could count on at least a seat or two at Brown and Penn each. There also have not been any HYPSM in 4 years. This is the first year without a regular or ED Cornell. No Vandy, No WashU. Since my grade is small and they usually accept most people that apply, the applicant level really varies. Although several people were interested in HYPSM, I could tell you why each one did not make it (myself included). However I cannot tell you why the guy who should have been a shoo in last year got barely anything , same for the two preceding years (I know no one is a shoo in blah blah, this kid should have done better than he did, and he is not my friend, I am not biased). At a neighboring public school results REALLY varied. Two kids with virtually identical profiles, one got H and Duke, the other got Vandy and not much else (I know holistic blah blad but he is a great kid and had really reseached the process I am sure his app was great.) A school similar to mine but more “college aware” seems to be short circuiting the process after they have gotten no HYPSM this year or last (and they had great candidates last year). They now have their most brilliant kids doing ED to the non HYP ivy of their choice and it seems to be working.
It may be your school has figured out the “trick” and is doing better. There definitely is one because my friend’s school in Philly did amazing this year for their top 30 kids. Stanford, MIT, Harvard and tons of Penn.
Most of the privates in the Boston area promote the “ED to your high match” strategy, or so I hear. The only ED admits I’ve heard about from our public school are middle/high income URMs. Every top ORM student was deferred from Ivy/equivalents ED.
As for cooking the books, I have no doubt that the old adage applies here: “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics”. The 25%/75% percentile scores are probably the most fiddled with stat there is. In particular I suspect some serious engineering to get the 25% to a respectable level at selective schools.
The ever increasing numbers for the Ivies, I can buy that. But the rest of the top 50, it’s hard to believe that they all have been able to increase yields, increase app numbers, and show lower admit rates in the face of a declining population of students. And a lot more competition for the top students. For all of us full pay suckers, a lot of those next tier schools start looking pretty good when you consider the potential merit money.
@GMTplus7 thanks for that link, it is really interesting. It really seems like change in yield has an inflection point somewhere around #25 on the USNWR top universities list. Some schools have seen a slight rise in yield (Vandy, Tufts), and most schools below this, even just a few spots below, are seeing significant drops in yield (Northeastern).
I think these schools in the #20-30 range on USNWR are getting the cast-offs of the higher ranked schools because there is much more emphasis on socioeconomic and racial diversity at top schools these days. I’ve wondered where these cast-offs are going, and it seems like it is the Tufts of the world. This year, Tufts’ acceptance rate went down primarily because they expected a higher yield, which has been going up over the last 10 years.
Once you go down the list, if your choices are BU or a state flagship, I think more full pay/low merit students are choosing to go to the flagship.
Personally I think it is pretty amazing that Tufts’ yield has gone up considering it basically does not give out merit aid. Are they fudging the numbers? I don’t think so, but you never know.
The acceptance rate and yield rate are not what is relevant. Instead it is the caliber of the entering class that matters.
Many here on CC and in the media find it hard to believe that schools like Northeastern and USC have risen so dramatically in the past 20 years. Rather than attributing it to good planning it is dismissed as “cooking the books”.
Schools where yield has gone up typically have a corresponding increase in the number of admits from ED. If they used to fill 15% of the class from ED and are now filling 25%, that is a significant increase in yield.
Also, schools have become savvy about using extended waitlists. They only admit a smaller initial cadre, hedging bets on those whom the college feels will be more likely to accept – thus bolstering its yield. Then among those who have accepted a WL spot (weeding out those who accept offers from other schools), the college can tap into a secondary pool of more than likely candidates.
@tomsrofboston The credentials of the incoming class is exactly what Claremont McKenna was “cooking” a couple of years ago. So it’s not like there isn’t some precedent for this. They just sort of accidentally used the stats of the accepted students rather than the admitted students.
The amount of time and effort that goes into college marketing these days certainly makes it plausible that college administrators might be taking some liberties with the data.
Based on my college experience with my kid this year, #8 is dead on. I think the “waitlist” is used to bump up the yield rate b/c most colleges have a pretty good idea who will come (and is willing to pay the price—if kid is a full pay candidate—as all the merit $ has been handed out).
Northeastern is nit CMC. They have their admission stats audited and certified alomg with their financial statement and they are includedas n appendix to these statements.
Not suggesting Northeastern is doing anything wrong, just pointing out that one of the most highly respected and highly rated LACs, and one that has shot up the rankings in the last 10+ years, was flat out caught cooking the books. So it is within the realm of possibility that some of the other up and comers might be using similar strategic accounting errors.
@TomSrOfBoston which financial statements include information about independent audits of Northeastern’s admissions statistics? Are they publicly accessible?
The link from post #4 is quite interesting. I had a feeling this would be a question that benefits from big data visualization. I also read elsewhere recently (sorry, can’t recall source) that the number of applications has risen in part because students feel they can / should apply to even more schools per cycle: to hedge their bets, gratuitous marketing inducements, and even as one concurrent thread proposes, by “playing the lottery.” It would stand to reason that even if some of this were accurate, yields would be falling, not rising. This is what The Chronicle of Higher Education has found.
This was an interesting variant that is not often used, but maybe it should be (from article):
“(draw is a better measure of market position vis-a-vis competitors because it punishes you if you try to appear more selective at the price of yield).”
I had heard that wait list acceptances are not considered part of the yield. Which would explain why some wait list candidates are not given the same treatment as RD candidates.
^^ I feel like the schools did not use their wait lists as much as I was expecting given how selective they were (talking top 30 here) and many schools yields stayed the same.
@gluttonforstress, there may be well over 100,000 freshman seats available at “top” universities, but these seats aren’t just available to high achieving American students. Many colleges have substantially increased the seats available to international applicants (who pay more and/or are not eligible for financial aid). Therefore, you need to add the high achieving international students to the pool of applicants to these colleges.
Competition for these spots has become, ever increasingly, global. This leads to stiffer competition all around, and those ACT 34+ American applicants are not the only ones competing anymore. A US education at a top university is a coveted commodity in many countries.
@TomSrOfBoston, did you ever find a source for this? After the Boston Magazine article, I would think they would be motivated to show that their #s have been validated by an independent party.
I assume that they do not include NUin students in their incoming class’ stats. I guess this is pretty common (not including Spring admits), but I’d like to see an auditor’s report that actually confirmed this. As I remember, NUin enrolls around 500 students/yr so as a percentage of freshman in the Spring semester, it is significant (15-20%?). In addition, the % of international students is relatively high, and we don’t know how many of those are included in the 25%/75% #s.
I’m guessing that between these two groups, around 20-25% of NEUs Spring registered freshman were not represented in NEUs official stats, and this is what I’d like to see dis-proven by an independent auditor.
I actually think all schools should have their stats audited, with the % of Spring registered students that are represented in the official admissions stats disclosed. Sort of the way that non-profits need to disclose the % of overhead etc.