NESCAC Spoken Here:

[SportyPrep]

@arcadia

In the NESCAC, Middlebury falls about in the middle in terms of RD yield.
It’s also worth noting that the larger the school, the more seats you have to fill, and the more “shoppers” you have to admit to fill those seats. That can be offset by a really strong brand (Ivy, top rankings in USNews, etc.), but the pool of applicants for SLACs is limited. If you want to maintain that high yield and low acceptance rate, a good strategy is to stay small.

This is a good point, but the idea of “a good strategy is to stay small” applies to almost all elite colleges AND universities in the US. Many elite universities could expand but choose not to, not because of limited resources, but it is hypothesized, to maintain the brand and exclusivity (like Rolex, or Hermes).

Why don’t elite universities expand? Great podcast on this from Freakonomics: The University of Impossible-to-Get-Into (Update) - Freakonomics