Inside Scoop on Duke Admissions

gadad
Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:55:28 +0000

Ahem . . . back to the topic at hand.

Yes, Duke’s yield is around 40%, which is rather high considering the fast company they keep. So what happens if a school’s yield suddenly comes in higher?

I work at a university that went through a dramatic 10-year change in mission, student body, and recruiting. Over that time, SATs rose 250 points on the 1600 scale, the frosh-soph retention went from mid-50% to high-80s, and the demographics of the student body shifted significantly.

A typical yield rate for a school like ours would be around a third, but suddenly we’d gone from a backup school to many applicants’ first choice, and the yield rate became impossible to accurately predict. Over the last couple years it seems to have settled in at around 59%.

When too many of your invitees accept the invitation to the party, you scramble for residence hall space and seats in freshman math and English. It’s a good problem to have, but if you don’t anticipate changes such as these you could easily produce negative experiences for the students who’ve decided that you’re their top destination, and lose that momentum. But schools like Duke and the Ivies have been what they are for so long, they can predict very accurately how many to invite to get the class size they want.