<p>JYM: It is not 16-17%. It is 14%. Tulane accepted 10,563 and 1,502 enrolled. That is a 14% yield.</p>
<p>Dont think those are Tulanes numbers from their admissions folks, but I dont really care.</p>
<p>Keep up to date SJU. This year with the 1680 or so that have deposited, the yield is between 16 and 17%. They will lose a few to summer melt, and add a couple for various reasons. Probably come in around 1650. Not that it matters.</p>
<p>Tulane has decided to try and get thousands of students that are looking at top 20 caliber schools to apply. They have succeeded at that, but the vast majority of those students will decide to attend Ivies, Wash U, Duke, Rice, Vandy, etc. However, they have also succeeded in getting some small percentage of those students to decide on Tulane. They could get their yield up by simply not marketing to those students, and then they never apply, and then they never matriculate. So Tulane doesn’t get these better students. Yeah, that would be smart just to maintain a number. They get a lower average academic quality class, but they get to say their yield is 50%. That is exactly the way it used to be when they got 10,000-15,000 apps. Now they get 44,000.</p>
<p>So cptofthehouse, I understand why you think yield is important, but isn’t it better for a school to keep improving by stretching for the very best students, even at the cost of having 90% (or whatever the number is) turn them down, pushing down yield? Is it really that negative that most students that are cross-accepted choose top 20-30 schools over Tulane? Yes, these students consider Tulane a safety for themselves. Not the worst thing in the world. How does a school raise its profile if it doesn’t aggressively try to get the top performers? If no students ever chose Tulane over these schools, then the strategy would be a failure and they would be sacrificing the yield number for no reason. But in fact since the strategy has been implemented (2002 or 2003), it has resulted in a highly significant increase in the quality of the Tulane student profile. Katrina obviously cause a bump in the road, but things are back on track and the last 3 classes have been the best in Tulane’s history, this just accepted class being the best ever.</p>
<p>So given all that, I remain mystified as to why yield trumps improved student class profiles.</p>
<p>On the drive into work, I thought of this analogy. I think it works.</p>
<p>Let’s suppose there is a university (Whatsamatta U) football team that is good but is trying to get better. In the past it has only recruited players of a certain caliber, because it “knew” that it couldn’t compete for players with USC, Texas, Alabama, etc. The top 25 of college football. To make this work, let’s also say that people track the yield the coach gets, the number of players they make offers to that accept the offer to play there. I know in real life that isn’t true (other than schools on tight budgets, maybe), but let’s just say that historically that was a number people looked at for some reason as part of judging the quality, or at least desreability, of a program.</p>
<p>Whatamatta and its staff decide to really ramp things up, go and recruit hundreds, if not thousands of players they know are likely to pick top 25 football programs, but hope with some special incentives that a few will pick Whatsamatta. And it works! 990 out of 1000 still pick higher ranked teams, but 10 decide that Whatsamatta is the palce for them. With this improved quality of average player profile, the team goes from 5 wins a season to 7 or 8. Things are better, but their yield of recruits went way down. Does anyone really think that the Whatsamatta football program is less desireable because so many decided to go elsewhere? Would anyone say that coach is really not doing his job or employing a successful strategy? Everyone already knew that those other teams had higher quality profiles, and these things do tend to perpetuate themselves, as they should in most cases.</p>
<p>Now back to the reality, where we are talking about a university where the core purpose is not to field a football team, or even to achieve some admissions rate or yield number, but to create the highest quality learning environment possible. A huge part of creating that environment is to have the brightest group of peers interacting with each other as possible. Tulane has improved that peer quality tremendously over the last 8 years, precisely by recruiting the very best, failing 9 times out of 10 or whatever the number is, but succeeding enough to improve the “won-loss” record.</p>
<p>I just don’t see the problem other than as it relates to an anachronistic view of the importance of yield. Its a new world with new marketing and Tulane should be highly commended for being at the leading edge of it.</p>
<p>Do I think yield is a deal breaking stat? Nope. Just an important number to know. By just looking at the stats of a school such as test scores, gpa,and then the number of seats the school has available and the number of apps, some of the schools that are matches and even fairly safe matches, look awfully selective. You have to temper that with yield in order to get the actual acceptance rate. That acceptance rate is not one that is touted so loudly at admissions info sessions. Of the 6 schools we recently visited, not a one announced it. The viewbooks and info stats leave out the yield completely. So yield as a single stat is not so important as having the info to get the final acceptance chances. </p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that more than half the kids who apply to the vast, vast majority of colleges in this country are accepted. Very few colleges have a lower acceptance rate than that. And many of the half who are not accepted have incomplete apps, missed deadlines or have other such issues. My kids were “rejected” from a number of schools for those reasons. They never even paid the app fee or completed the process but they have the rejection letters. So that yield figure is very important for colleges.</p>
<p>Tulane is a special case of a college. Hurricane Katrina truly devastated the workings of that school and with NO as dangerous as it became, and was publicized as such so everyone knew, it dropped down the list of many students who might have gone there. My son’s good friend who ended up at Cornell would have gone to Tulane, had he not cleared the Cornell waitlist. This was before the catastrophe that hit NO But not after Katrina. The mom has loudly proclaimed what a near miss her son had, and Tulane did not even make it on her next child’s college list. We are talking about a full pay family with kids in the upper quarter of the mid half of Tulane’s test stats, a group of kids that Tulane would desperately love to have. Would even pay for. </p>
<p>Another student who is a friend of my college sophomore got his most generous merit offer from Tulane. The family was not in good financial shape and financially he should have taken that offer as it was truly the best in terms of rep/cost. Nope. Chose to borrow to go to a catholic school that did not offer a dime. Parents were just too spooked about NO and the future of Tulane. They visited and pondered the situation, and decided that the premium was worth paying. A lot of folks are thinking that way, and the yield clearly reflects this.</p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback, cptofthehouse. Very interesting point of view and stories. That’s a shame about the last family, especially. Tulane is in a very nice part of town, and as has been documented on various threads here, the crime rate on and near campus is average compared to dozens of other city based universities. But perception is what counts, you are right. Fortunately those that visit usually see how nice it is and that factor goes away. Anyway, my own opinion is that while I am sure anecdotes like the above contribute to the low yield, the biggest factor is the acceptance of thousands of top 30 caliber candidates, most of whom then go to those top 30 schools. But no doubt it is some mix of things like those.</p>
<p>
Exactly my point. And to a degree, a low yield (eg below 20%) gives the “perception” that kids dont want to go there. I totally get TU’s marketing strategy. Hey, it worked for us. But that said, I still think they could improve yield, desirability and “perception” while keeping the stats up and getting strong students if they raised the bar a bit, deferred more earlier on and perhaps then relied on a WL (which they do not have to turn to due to over-enrollment this year.</p>
<p>Well, I was talking strictly about the perception of New Orleans as it was horribly portrayed in the news post-Katrina. I still don’t think for most people yield is anywhere near that level of importance on their radar screen. After all, look at the number of threads and posts we have had to respond to regarding the perception about crime compared to low yield. Take JSUHawk out of the picture and it would be almost zero. I just really don’t think there are more than a handful of top 30 caliber kids that said “Oh, Tulane has a low yield, I am crossing them off the list.”</p>
<p>I also think if they deferred more early on and relied more on a WL, they would lose the interest of many top students, going totally counter to the strategy they have chosen. If you mean defer more and WL more of the non-top 30 caliber students, that is a risky move since they are not Harvard, or even Duke or Chicago. But you are right, if improving the yield number while continuing to improve the incoming profile was the goal that would be one way to do it. Again, it is just a risky move.</p>
<p>With 1687 enrolled at this point, and the 3 best academic classes ever, frankly desireability seems to be a non-issue right now. If their goal is get to stats more like Duke, Wash U and some of the others, then they would have to make some radical changes. But I do not think that is their goal, at least not in a short time frame.</p>
<p>Tulane would be a reach school for my current college seeker. Wouldn’t get any merit, may not even get in. I was thinking of taking a trip there to look at Xavier, Loyola as well as Tulane. Don’t hear much about those other schools there. One of my youngest’s classmate’s mom graduated from Xavier in NO. She is a newscaster for Bloomberg now.</p>
<p>Cool. When I went back to NOLA to show my D Tulane, I hadn’t been in that section of the city in a very long time. I was shocked at how much progress it looked like Xavier has made. Of course, Xavier is an historically black university, but I didn’t know it is the only university in the Western Hemisphere that combines that with also being affiliated with the Roman Catholic church. Apparently Xavier is about 87% black and 6% white.</p>
<p>I have a few friends that went to Loyola NO, and they have also done quite well for themselves. One in particular went on to get his Ph.D. and has been very successful in business. I wish you and your child the best of luck in the college admission process.</p>