<p>The OP piqued my curiosity about “yield protection,” aka “Tufts Syndrome.” While the blogosphere is full of speculation and outright drivel about the topic, I looked through many pages of Google searches and failed to find any in-depth academic studies of yield protection. From the little that I could find: (a) it seems intuitively obvious that yield protection occurs, at least in some schools, as an out-growth of basic human nature, and (b) it is doubtful that many admissions offices would be willing to disclose much or any information relating to the topic.</p>
<p>I did find one interesting article by an admissions officer at the U Michigan School of Law:</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.law.umich.edu/connection/a2z/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=11[/url]”>https://www.law.umich.edu/connection/a2z/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=11</a></p>
<p>The article contained this quote, one of the few admissions (sorry for the pun) that I have seen from a professional in the field about yield protection:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Extrapolating from the examples cited in the article, here are some possible explanations for an applicant being rejected from an MT program that lacks the notoriety of a school (or schools) at which they do gain an offer:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>A negative/red flag was detected by a school that other schools overlooked, ignored, or did not appear in their process (and these can occur just due to basic differences in faculty personality between schools, not to mention different admissions processes): the applicant ignored audition instructions for material selection or committed some other obvious faux pas, there was a poor explanation in an interview, the application contained one or more unenthusiastic recommendation letters, there was an incoherent or off-putting personal statement in the application, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>No “zing” or “spark” - the applicant had great skills and talent but there was, perhaps, something perfunctory and/or uninspiring about the audition.</p></li>
<li><p>Perceived lack of interest - the applicant did not demonstrate a high level of interest in the school.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>To echo a previous post, any or all of these could be attributed, rightly or wrongly, to a perceived “diva factor” (to put it ungraciously), which I have no doubt occurs in some very capable applicants in at least some circumstances (ego is not a rare quantity in show business).</p>
<p>Combine these factors with other factors noted in previous posts that can cause a poor audition, such as illness, exhaustion, type, style, interpretation, material preferences, etc. and it would surprise me very much if even the most qualified applicant, “got in everywhere.” There seems to be variance in all highly selective processes, even ones much less subjective than the MT audition process.</p>
<p>I have to also add that, IMHO, trying to come up with a definitive rank order of MT programs on which to base comparative judgments about success or failure at various auditions is at best so full of speculation as to be relatively useless. Is Florida State “better” than Penn State because they win some count of grads listed in Playbills 14 to 9? Really?</p>
<p>For a general discussion of yield protection, I found this article from the WSJ was informative:</p>
<p>[Glass</a> Floor: Colleges Reject Top Applicants, Accepting Only the Students Likely to Enroll - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB991083160294634500,00.html]Glass”>http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB991083160294634500,00.html)</p>