<p>Where do you guys get those numbers?</p>
<p>I’m sure SCEA boosts yield at Stanford and Yale. Some accepted students will treat it like ED – and why not, if they get accepted to their first choice with adequate financial aid? But 77-79% isn’t grossly out of line with the RD yield that would imply. I can see how Princeton boosters would be grumpy about it – Yale’s RD yield is much closer to Princeton’s than the overall numbers make it seem, and Penn’s is much farther away from Princeton’s by the same token. But does anyone (who matters) really think less of Princeton because of overall yield numbers? Come on! (And, in the end, all any discussion of yields at hyperselective colleges does is remind you that Harvard has truly solidified its position as #1 in the public imagination, to an extent that was not true even 10 years ago. In a world with no early admissions programs, Harvard’s yield might top 90%.)</p>
<p>The reasons to institute an SCEA program at Princeton and Harvard are (a) students like it, (b) admissions staff like it, because it smooths out the workload, (c) it’s not structurally unfair the way ED is, and (d) effectively, that’s the way the world works now. When I was 18, everyone found out all of their college acceptances within a week of April 1; now, only Ivy RD applicants wait that long. It’s a quaint vestige of the past, and the only places it can resemble a norm at all anymore is at HYP. Princeton and Harvard are taking a position that’s paternalistic (those poor kids and minorities are too dumb to understand the difference between EA and ED, even the ones who are smart enough for Harvard or Princeton; those poor stressed high school seniors shouldn’t be applying to college in October), and mostly symbolic (since they, and the UCs and UVA, are the only ones with that position). They can sustain it because they are so strong, just as the UCs and UVA can sustain it because they are superb public universities in states that are vibrant and growing (at least long-term). And because they all make exceptions for athletic recruiting, and at some of them other stuff as well.</p>
<p>If the world consisted only of HYPS and state flagships, Yale and Stanford might very well come around to the H/P/UVA/UC position. But that isn’t the world, and as a result Harvard and Princeton’s symbolic position doesn’t mean much, for them or for students, except that it creates inconvenience. (I am not aware that H and P are doing so much better on economic and ethnic diversity compared to Y and S as a result of their position, but maybe JohnAdams or Pton Grad knows those numbers, too.) That’s why ultimately it won’t be sustained.</p>