I’m surprised at the relatively low RD yields of Wes and Midd, given their gilded academic reputations. I can only figure that many, if not most, of their admits are also getting into Ivies. (There could be any number of other factors, but I imagine that’s one of them…). And sadly, some of those kids are probably choosing prestige over fit.
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Wes and Midd are the largest of the NESCACs (outside of Tufts U.)–and by a fair margin. I’d imagine size has something to do with the smaller yields. Personally, I’m surprised at how low Amherst’s yield is, given its ranking and size.
Also, accepting a large portion of the class ED offers some wiggle room when it comes to admitting only the cream of the crop in RD while still maintaining a relatively low acceptance rate. Most of those high achievers were likely also accepted to other top schools, so the win rate is lower. Another strategy would be to waitlist or deny the tippy-top applicants in favor of those who are more likely to say yes. Yield protection is a thing at some schools.
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I look at it a little differently. The bottom was supposed to have fallen out of the Northeast’s college-aged population decades ago and yet every one of these colleges - with no athletic footprint to speak of; no presidential alumni since Calvin Coolidge; and no medical or engineering school associated with them - is attracting thousands of students who need plane tickets in order to reach them. Why? I honestly don’t know. As best as I can make out it is related to what some posters have written. It’s related to FOMO (you can’t count on attending them for grad school); it’s related to the fact that they represent something entirely different from the local state flagship as well as the fact that some segment of the population, when given the choice, will always prefer the small pond. Everything else is academic.
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I note the data apparently indicates the sorts of kids who apply to these colleges are often applying to a lot of colleges these days, and the competitive applicants are often getting a lot of offers. Indeed, if you look at something like the actual results thread, there is a story there about many, many good college offers NOT being taken as applicants choose their favorite. Because they can only take one.
So it is possible a NESCAC admit who doesn’t yield at one specific NESCAC ended up taking an offer from a prominent private research university instead, but maybe it is instead another NESCAC they liked a little better, perhaps a women’s college, perhaps a great LAC not in the NESCAC, perhaps a big merit offer somewhere, and so on. And in fact if they had a decent list of such offers to consider, all but one is going to turn into a non-yield.
Given that, I am not at all surprised even very valued colleges are only getting fractional yields in RD. The math of many applications per applicants, and then often lots of offers per competitive applicant, basically dictates that must happen.
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Or maybe their state flagship. I’ve read a lot of those threads and after a while, it becomes clear that some not insignificant number of those acceptances are either place holders for an Ivy or an Ivy equivalent. But once the student has been rejected by all eight actual Ivies, you can see that name recognition and Gothic architecture aren’t always quite enough to seal the deal and suddenly the idea that “affordability is not a problem” begins to fade. That’s why need-based FA is so important to the survival of these smaller, northeastern colleges.
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Boy, the overall yield rates at Williams, Amherst, et al are strikingly low.
Compare to the big name privates who are 60%-ish or higher (e.g., Notre Dame is 62%, Vanderbilt at 61%, even NYU & USC are in the 55% range. I wonder this speaks to the relatively niche attractiveness of LAC’s in the American higher education pyramid. I doubt the situation for LAC’s will improve either.
Another simple example is Caltech 62% vs. Harvey Mudd 36%, even though both schools have the same number of undergraduates students and both are comparably rigorous STEM-focused schools.
Washington and Lee University’s yield is just under 40%. And they don’t over-rely on ED to achieve that number.
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Overall yield rates greater than 30% may be sufficient to demonstrate quality in the context of an American college and university landscape that includes schools with yield rates in the vicinity of 10%.
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Remains to be seen how AI effects which schools and by how much. The “Learning How to Learn” folk versus the “Learn for the First Job Out of College” folk
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Again, you have to be careful about assuming people who do not get an offer from Williams are taking an offer from a university, rather than another LAC.
This is purely a hypothetical, but suppose the average admit to a “top LAC” was also admitted to three other “top LACs”. Average yield to the “top LACs” would have to be no higher than 25%, and that is assuming there are not also other offers they would consider.
OK, now suppose the average admit to a “top university” was admitted to one other “top university”. Average yield to the “top universities” would have to be no higher than 50%, with the same assumption about no other offers.
Obviously things are more complicated than that. But when you start thinking about things like this, the proper interpretation of a high yield is the average admit to that college is not getting many other offers they consider competitive.
Why not? I don’t think this is a simple question to answer.
Sometimes it may be in part because of fewer close competitors in their market niche. Like, Notre Dame is easily the top Catholic college, at least if you are looking for a “real” Catholic college and not the all-but-secular Jesuit style like Georgetown.
For others, it will be in part because of how they use ED, since ED cuts off any ED admit’s ability to get more offers.
And lots of other things may play a role. Like they might be a better financial deal than most of what would otherwise be competitors, through in-state subsidies, need aid, and/or merit aid. That does not necessarily lead to high yields in the absolute sense, but could lead to higher yields in the relative sense than they would have been absent these financial measures.
OK, so with this background in mind, I will just suggest something about LACs based on my own experiences with people applying to LACs, which is consistent with the data.
I do think people applying to and admitted to very selective LACs tend to end up with more offers they consider competitive on average than people applying to very selective universities. This likely will involve multiple other LAC offers, and not infrequently also involves university offers as well.
I think part of what is going on is very competitive applicants to LACs tend not to be as confident about how to order their preferences. Like, unfortunately in my view, a lot of university kids take the US News National University rankings pretty seriously, but I think LAC kids are far less likely to think that way about the US News LAC rankings, or rankings in general really.
So, they might apply to more colleges where they are competitive due to uncertainty about what they prefer at the time of applying, and might be more truly torn between different offers once they get them–which in fact can be pretty different. I know a kid who was deciding between Amherst and Harvey Mudd. Others have to decide between Williams and Wellesley. And so on.
Then I do think it is true LAC kids are more likely to apply to universities as well, but not vice-versa. Meaning I think not so many LAC kids apply to no universities, but a lot of university kids apply to LACs. And then they get university offers they also consider. I note of course sometimes this might involve Ivies, but not always. My S24 ended up deciding between Carleton and WashU in the end.
And in that sense, I agree LACs are a niche–of course they are, there are far fewer kids in LACs combined than universities combined. And some kids will strongly consider that niche, apply, get LAC offers, consider those, but in the end pick a university (spoiler alert, my S24 picked WashU). And that will end up as a non-yield case for those LACs.
But . . . they DID consider the LACs! If they had not been willing to consider them at all, they would never have gotten to the point of actually having offers to consider.
So I think this is just part of how it works with LACs. They are all in some sense fit colleges, and it can be hard for the sorts of kids who would even consider LACs to know which colleges are truly their best fits (including between LACs and universities), and that uncertainty can lead to more applications, more offers, more rejected offers, and lower average yields.
But the most valued LACs still get their students, the ones who really do find their fit with that LAC. And they are manifestly getting far more than the number of applicants they actually need, such that they are rejecting many applicants before they even have a chance to decide.
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No. The well-known LACs are doing fine. Apps up. Acceptance rates down. Endowments up. In fact, applications to some of the elite LACs have more than doubled in the last 10 years.
If you want small class-sizes and lots of face time with your professor, LACs offer it. If you want to sit in the 60th row and be taught by a TA, there are some mega universities offering that.
Jesting - but they are a different offering, and savvy applicants know that.
(We have 2 at large elites, one of whom claims they are basically self-taught in some classes - the teaching is that impersonal. But they love the networking (great, we are paying for student networking). Another kid at a well-known LAC, where some profs are incredibly helpful with internships, job ops, and advice. Another type of impactful networking.)
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W&L’s overall yield according to their lastest CDS was 41.1%, and RD yield was 21.6%. Last year, the 286 ED acceptances represented 61% of the 472 matriculants. Pretty much on par with most of the others discussed in this thread.
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I think in general cost and quality of life are becoming more important, and prestige less important. Top kids in my area that used to almost exclusively set their sights on top schools in the Northeast are now flocking to big Southern schools like SMU, University of Georgia, Tulane, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, UNC, etc. Nice weather, big-time sports, and–for some–generous merit aid and lower costs. They’re also seen as less “woke.”
The top LACs will do just fine, but they’ll need to adapt more in next two decades than they have in the last two centuries. Many lower-ranked LACs will be in serious trouble.
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AN RD yield of 25% doesn’t seem low. Even when my kid was applying only to LACs, his CC went through how odds worked in a smaller school - of the class of 500, only half are your gender, of the 250, some will be athletes, some legacies, some FGLI from programs (QB, etc) so maybe there are 150 spots for someone like you. And the advice that went hand in hand with that was to apply broadly (15-ish) because you couldn’t predict where you would be desirable.
For anyone following a strategy like this, there is likely to be choice – all within the same range of selectivity. That will mean declining some very nice options…
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An aspect of this appeared during the COVID pandemic, when purported safeguards sich as mask wearing were left to individual discretion at some schools of this type. This might have appealed to prospective students.
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counterbalanced- no doubt- by kids whose sexual orientation, health care needs, ethnicity/race, parental immigration status, etc. who find many of the “less woke” schools to be distinctly unable to meet their needs.
Big country and lots of choices.
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Also, when considered statistically, the acceptance rate for a school such as, say, SMU remains about five times higher than that typical of the more selective NESCACs.
Here’s a good summary of this shift:
Add to this that the South has the highest projected population growth in the US. For kids who want to stay near home or who grew up in warmer climes and shiver at the thought of snow, Southern colleges and universities will hold even more appeal.
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I should have been more clear – I was referring to schools gaming yield numbers by excessive use of ED, for example, the University of Chicago.
Asking honestly… is their strategy what works best for them or do they do it simply to game the system?
I feel like we’ve seen schools making a lot of changes to make ED an option for more students (as in you can do it if you need FA, for example) and that suggests that it benefits them too. With 30% being a good RD yield, it makes sense that they want that variability confined to a smaller portion of the class. My guess, perhaps naive, is that this approach works well for them.
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