Denied. I’m moving on—luckily, I have a few other great options, and I’m still waiting for 6 more schools.
Congratulations to everyone who got in or WL!!
6 Likes
Daughter accepted.
12 Likes
Daughter rejected - too bad, she was hoping to leverage the language strengths of the school. She wasn’t surprised, though.
2 Likes
It’s not a 1% chance (though still very small). For ED, the ratio of accepted to attending is close to 1:1 (figuring a few students who might have to back out due to insufficient FA offers, but not much more drop-off than that). So yield is almost 100%, by design. For RD, the yield is much lower, because accepted students have more options. Yield for RD (I’m guessing) might be somewhere between 20-40%? So schools have to accept far more students then they have remaining spots.
Still – when a school takes about 70% of its incoming class ED, RD becomes a lottery. And Middlebury’s admissions stats have become striking in that respect over the last few years.
4 Likes
Yup. Their yield rate is 38.9%, according to the common data set online.
1 Like
Is that RD or overall? If it’s overall, then RD is substantially lower yield, because nearly 100% ED (for a significant percentage of the class) would be factored into that number.
It doesn’t specify, but I’m pretty sure that’s overall yield - so ED and RD.
I tried to calculate based on the numbers in the CDS, but my math is definitely very wrong because first I got a 1.7% RD admit rate, then 26% 
1 Like
Yeah that’s quite a range! But I suspect that 26% RD yield is ballpark.
Does anyone have an idea as to why the yield is lower? Is it because many of these students get into more “prestigious” schools?
Using the 2022-23 CDS, ED was 439 admits. Based on other college’s data, I would use a 97% yield estimate for ED, so 426 ED enrollees.
There were then 1644 admits total, so 1205 non-ED admits. There were 639 enrollees, so an estimated 213 non-ED enrollees. That works out to a 17.7% non-ED yield.
So roughly speaking, for every 1 non-ED enrollee, Middlebury these days likely admits nearly 6 people non-ED.
I note if that seems low, of course part of what is happening is that a lot of the people with the strongest interest specifically in Middlebury are putting themselves into the ED pool.
I don’t think it has to be more prestigious, just a college that the admittee ends up preferring to Middlebury, including for reasons like cost, location, and so on.
But sure, Middlebury probably loses some people to one of the handful of SLACs ranked higher in the US News, maybe the service academies, maybe some Ivies and Ivy+, because those people think those colleges are “better”.
And again the people who don’t think that–and for the record, I don’t think like that–and who prefer Middlebury generally most likely applied ED.
2 Likes
I’m glad you were able to figure out the math because I unfortunately could not 
17.7% does seem like a really low yield rate to me. According to the CDS, only 12 students were admitted off the waitlist out of 2215 who accepted a spot, so they’re not really struggling to fill their class. Unless I’m interpreting that wrong.
I think most people applying to Middlebury probably applied to mostly other LACs (which are all relatively unknown, even the top ones), so it might be more a scholarship/financial aid or location thing.
1 Like
No, I think you are right. This evidence suggests that Middlebury has a pretty good idea what it is doing. It is skimming off the students it wants that also have Middlebury at the top of their lists largely through ED, and then it seems to have a pretty good idea who to admit, and how many to admit, RD to get the remainder of the students it wants from people who may not have Middlebury at the top of their lists, but do not get admitted places they prefer (or not with good enough financial offers).
Generally speaking none of this is inconsistent with Middlebury being a highly desirable college. But it is competing with a number of other highly desirable colleges for some students, and the ED/RD structure naturally sorts the applicants where that competition is going to be hardest for Middlebury to win into the RD side. But it does win sometimes anyway, about 1 out of 6 times, which is not at all bad when you realize those people probably did not have Middlebury as their top choice going in.
1 Like
I wonder if some of it has to do with Middlebury not having a supplemental essay. Middlebury was the last school my kid applied to, and no supplemental was definitely part of the reason. It’s not that he had no interest in it otherwise–his brother’s girlfriend went there and speaks very highly of it (incidentally, she applied ED2, was deferred, and got in RD…which is a whole other thing to think about; they may prioritize deferred ED applicants in RD because they’re more likely to attend…making the RD odds even worse than they appear)–but no essay certainly didn’t hurt.
4 Likes
The way I see it, Middlebury is admitting only the most desirable students in RD. Since they already filled 70% of the class in the ED rounds, they can afford to admit only the strongest applicants (ones who undoubtedly also applied to Ivys, other top 20 universities, and other top-ranked LACs) and kids who will round out the class (first-gen, oboe players, kids from South Dakota, etc.)—knowing that many of them will choose Dartmouth or Williams or Brown over Midd. Schools that don’t fill as much of their class early may have to be more strategic about who they admit, choosing kids who are clearly qualified, but who might have a better chance of matriculating. In the end, they all end up with classes of similar quality—there are simply different strategies that get you there. Frankly, as an admissions rep, I’d rather fill most of the class with kids who clearly want to go to my school rather than kids who didn’t get in to their top choice and settled.
1 Like
I had the same thought re accepting deferred ED applicants. In my D’s case it backfired, she ended up choosing another SLAC despite getting into Midd RD.
Yes, Middlebury seems to encourage a lot of applications like that, and then it seems to also waitlist a lot of them! All to get 12 people?
And yet sure, why not? A few more people it likes off the waitlist, maybe a few out of RD admits even if the yield among those people is even lower than 17% . . . it is a small school in an extremely competitive submarket, and so even a couple dozen more enrollees it likes could potentially make any given strategy worth it.
In any event, my usual assumption is these colleges have very good reasons, supported by experience and internal data and such, for the strategies they choose.
This is a bit of an aside, but I note there are many colleges with ED who simply do not get enough ED applicants to fill more than a fraction of their slots with ED no matter how many they admit (and of course few selective colleges are going to admit anyone who applies ED). So they have to enroll a lot of people RD, and often these are the sorts of colleges that have robust merit programs and such to help them increase yield. Middlebury in that sense is one of a fortunate few private colleges that really don’t seem to need merit, just generous need aid, to enroll the classes they want.
I guess the question is how far would you compromise to get there?
Like, hypothetically, suppose you internally graded applicants on a 100 point scale. 95+, and you know you would want them anyway you could get them. 91-, and you know you would not want them.
That leaves 92-94. Suppose you have a choice: enroll a 92 ED, or admit 6 94s RD to enroll one 94 RD? The 92 made you their first choice, the 94s presumably more likely missed out on one or more colleges they preferred, but would you really rather have the 92?
And what if I told you 92s were, say, 10 times as common as 94s?
Again my assumption is what actually happens behind the scenes is these colleges know their best bets to get the classes they want, and to the extent they have different approaches that could be because they have somewhat different priorities, face different yield models, or so on.
But how much do they really care about you making them your first choice? Or is it just more that by encouraging people to apply ED, they are actually yielding more 94s, and indeed more 95+, but not really changing much who they actually want to get?
1 Like
Middlebury’s ED strategy changed a few admissions cycles ago. The percentage of the class admitted early has risen significantly since 2019.
For the class entering fall 2019, they admitted 372 of 831 ED applicants. That same year, they took 111 kids off the waitlist.
In fall 2020, they admitted 392 of 838 ED and took 104 off the waitlist.
In 2021, they admitted 425 of 923 ED and took 2 off the waitlist.
In 2022, they admitted 439 of 1039 ED and took 12 off the waitlist.
We don’t have the full CDS for 2023, but we know they took 516 of 1,326 ED. We don’t yet know how many were accepted from the WL.
Middlebury has struggled with over enrollment for the past few years—in a way that most peers have not. The student body hit a high of nearly 2,900 students—ideal enrollment is 2,500. This was partly due to uncertainly around the pandemic and students taking leaves of absence. They had to pay students $10,000 to stay away.
What I deduce is that Middlebury cannot afford the uncertainly around an unpredictable yield, so is using ED to stabilize enrollment until things return to normal. Indeed, the latest predictions are that enrollment will return to ~2,500 by next year. It’ll be interesting to see if they continue to prioritize ED to manage enrollment, or return to the pre-2021 strategy of relying more heavily on the waitlist to manage the class size. Just my two cents.
10 Likes
Rejected, but expected. It was a long shot. Her stats and ecs are not as high as s22 who was lucky enough to get in RD and is very happy there. He suggested she try anyway, but it was a super-reach for her.
2 Likes