<p>General question–given that accepted students don’t have to tell a university that they accept until April/May–how does a school like Penn State, without ED, know how many acceptances to send out when they won’t know how many will ultimately accept? For example, the first round of acceptances are sent to top tier students, for many of which, I assume, Penn State may not be their first choice. I am sure that the ‘short’ answer is ‘admission officers’ experience’, but does anyone know how this really works?</p>
<p>They use the yield statistics from previous years to estimate how many students to accept for a desired freshman class size.</p>
<p>going by prior year yield statistics is not a perfect science. They did that a couple of years ago and seriously over enrolled (by over 1500 students I believe). They do their best to predict yield…but who knows? Yield may be affected by stupid things like whether or not they win the bowl game.</p>