Re: yield - for all the New England schools having admitted student day today (I know Bates has one) – beautiful, sunny, mid 60s, and the excitement of an eclipse viewing on campus! Wonder if these things influence the overall interest in attending?
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So many of Bates classes were canceled, and there were a lot of eclipse viewers out on the quad! Must have been a very spirited day on campus! (Then again, I also know a lot of students headed off campus – because why settle for 98% totality when you could drive an hour for 100%?)
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So true!
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We’re actually stopped for dinner on a drive back home from the totality zone. Very, VERY cool.
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As in “Come to Bates - we sponsored the eclipse! Our eclipse viewing was better than all the rest.”
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Middlebury was the only NESCAC school in the path of totality. I’ve seen some pretty cool videos from Battell Beach.
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Amazing! Such a neat experience for the kids. One to be remembered, for sure.
BTW, for fun, this is an old article with acceptance rates (New England) from about 10 years ago: https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2013/11/02/kiplingers-top-liberal-arts-colleges-in-new-england/
Hi NESCAC experts - a question: I just found out that Middlebury offers about 100 students a year February admission. I understand that they’ve been doing this for more than 50 years, and some students prefer the gap semester option.
But I’m also aware that many colleges do this practice in order to admit students (often higher risk students that they otherwise want on campus) without having them count towards their various ranking metrics (graduation rate, retention rate, admission stats, etc.), all of which are based on the fall cohort only. I checked the Middlebury Common Data Set for 2022-23, and it is as if the February admits don’t exist - all data is reported for fall enrolling admits only. On p. 12, question c-15, it asks “Are first-time, first-year students accepted for terms other than the fall?” The yes/no box is left blank (when the answer is clearly yes).
Are there other NESCAC schools (or SLACs in general) that have an established pattern of February admits?
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Hamilton has a January admits program with a stated goal of admitting 40-45 1st year students.
In addition to the reasons you listed, I think a lot of schools look at January admits as a way to enroll more full pay students since FA isn’t available and study abroad is expensive. It’s also a good way to fill spots of freshman who don’t return after a semester or seniors who needed an extra semester to graduate.
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Also, more juniors go away for the spring semester, so there is usually more housing in the spring.
I tend to think it’s more about logistics than managing data.
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The admission of Febs started in 1971 to better utilize dorm spaces which would formerly go empty while students studied abroad. It has since become a Middlebury tradition and are offered as part of the normal admissions cycle. A student may indicate presence for Feb admission but decisions are ultimately determined by admissions.
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Then why try to hide it on the Common Data Set? I think that it makes sense to maximize dorm spaces, especially if they know that (a) slightly more study abroad in spring than fall (and Middlebury’s study abroad programs are world-famous, so I know a lot of students use them their junior year); (b) some small number of first-years will not return for the spring; (c) some small number of seniors will graduate a semester early. I can see all of that making it practical. But own it?
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I don’t know that they set out to “hide” it - that sounds maybe more nefarious than it may be. Having been on the other end of filling out these types of forms, it could be the timing of when the form is submitted, which could be before the Febs are students (and when there is a chance they may not enroll.) Or the question to the school may specify new fall students. Often, it’s important to answer the questions quite literally as they are used for other purposes by the organizations that rely on them (such as the government) and inconsistencies are an issue.
My hunch is that these students are no different statistically from the fall enrollees. Way back when, I had a couple of friends who chose to start in spring – one was playing on the pro tennis circuit and wanted to finish out the calendar year, two were equestrians who wanted to do the indoor finals, and one was a swimmer who had some season final in the fall. The school (not Midd) was happy to accommodate them. While many Jan or Feb admits are surprised to be offered that option, there are also kids who check that as a preference on their application.
Fwiw, the kids I have known recently who were offered Feb enrollment at Midd were quite strong students. They all chose equally selective schools for fall admission, but that tiny data set doesn’t suggest this option was for weak students.
If they aren’t in the CDS, that doesn’t mean they have stats to hide. They just may not be new fall students, and that may be the data the school is asked for.
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The CDS (and Fed reporting) is specifically for Fall admits only. For right or wrong, that’s where the line was drawn.
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I can appreciate the word parsing dilemma that schools face when reporting data. Last Fall, a fellow NESCAC parent created a thread implying that Wesleyan was manipulating its stats after USNews published a thumbnail summary purporting to represent their median SATs for “accepted students” that was higher than the figure in its Common Data Set. The explanation appeared to be that the CDS does not have a category for “accepted students” and someone (a Wesleyan staffer or USNews staffer?) lifted the stat from another source, probably the Wesleyan First-Year Profile. The parent rightly pointed out that most, if not all, the other colleges equated the term “accepted students” with “enrolled students”.
FWIW, Wes also sends quite a few students abroad each Spring Semester but the impact on housing is much less since so many Juniors rent residences by the house rather than by the room. They seldom go empty and even if they do, Wesleyan simply removes them from the rent roll.
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However, @kaslew has pointed out that an omission such as this leaves even close readers less than fully informed:
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What’s funny to me is that Wesleyan is being unusually forthcoming by sharing data for admitted students. They require all enrolling students to submit scores (if they have them), whether or not they were submitted in their applications, and include those in their CDS-reported data, which means they are being pretty transparent about the gap created by TO.
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Yeah, I’m pretty sure USNews itself was caught off guard by the distinction in terms.
It’s probably helpful to realize that while the CDS is a really valuable tool for prospective applicants, they are not the only – or maybe even the intended – audience of this data.
That happens a lot, and not just in the educational arena.
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