Same. I don’t know how much volume this really represents, but my guess is it’s not insignificant.
Also agree. The reality though there just aren’t that many slots for unhooked students at these schools…it’s well under 50% of the seats. Relatively a bit more at Wesleyan and Mid as circuitrider noted above, and of course more at Tufts (Tufts is different from the other NESCACs in quite a few ways.)
There are non-NESCAC LACs in geographic proximity to NESCAC colleges, indeed often considerably closer proximity.
Like to me, outside of athletics, Wesleyan and Vassar seem a lot more similar to each other in terms of appeal than either to Middlebury. They are also about 80 miles from each other, as opposed to about 200 miles each from Middlebury. Perhaps even more relevantly, they are both around 2 hours from NYC, as opposed to 5 hours for Middlebury.
This is just one example, of course. There are a lot of non-NESCAC LACs closer to some NESCAC LACs than those NESCAC LACs are to some other NESCAC LACs.
Yes, and if you add all of their first-year enrollments together, they might equal that of Cornell’s.
Yeah, to me, that term should really be limited to cases where a college would love to enroll a student but their yield model says the chance of them actually accepting an offer is so low it is not worth extending them an offer, so instead they waitlist or reject them.
My usual thinking is if a college has something like a 20% RD yield, they are obviously fine extending offers where the yield model says 20%. And likely that is an average of some at 30%, some at 10%, and so on.
But maybe if the yield model says 2%, or 0.2%, or so on, that might be too low.
So how often does the yield model at Amherst come out THAT low for a kid they really want to enroll? I am thinking very seldom. But I don’t know.
For the record, I don’t actually think this is what happened to my S24 at the LAC that rejected him. Like, I don’t think they really wanted to enroll him, but the yield model said he was too unlikely to take their offer. I think they just were unpersuaded by his application he would be a good fit for them.
But the ones that waitlisted him–maybe? Again, I don’t think there is anyway to know for sure, but given the circumstances, I would acknowledge it as a possibility.
You quoted me suggesting, “there are many non-NESCAC LACs that in some senses are more meaningfully related to at least some NESCAC schools than some NESCAC schools are related to each other.” I’m not sure how Cornell is relevant to that claim.
But to bring this back to the topic at hand, if you are suggesting that the Ivies are part of a very strong competitive set for kids interested in Arts & Sciences, private colleges, and Northeast colleges, and who are considering both LACs and universities but not committed to either–then sure, and I don’t recall ever suggesting otherwise. I also don’t think it is limited to the Ivies, meaning there are some very highly valued non-Ivy private universities in the Northeast as well.
Of course LACs in other regions also tend to have good private universities in the same region, but I think it is observable that the density of both highly competitive private LACs AND highly competitive private universities is by far the highest in the Northeast region.
So I have zero doubt that LACs in the Northeast, both NESCAC and non-NESCAC, are in some sense facing a lot more direct market competition than LACs in other regions. And I think it is quite reasonable to expect that to affect yields, and in turn how they do admissions.
Again, I don’t recall ever suggesting otherwise.
Because I thought you understood my meaning when I said the Ivies were the NESCAC colleges “biggest” overlaps. I meant in terms of numbers of applicants. The number of applicants to Wesleyan that also apply to Yale, for example (30 minutes away by car), probably exceed the number who also apply to Vassar. Do I have access to data that would support this? No, I don’t.
You are quoting something from a different conversation, which in turn was relating back to a third conversation.
In that third conversation, what started everything is my suggesting that NESCAC LACs were not really subject to a generic ranking, because they were different colleges with different sorts of appeal to different potential students.
I then mentioned my S24 was looking at LACs, and explainted that some of the things he was considering as he looked at LACs pointed to some NESCACs being possible fits for him, but not others.
That thread was then closed, and the second opened, and I then sort of picked up where I had left off in the post you have quoted here.
The ultimate view I expressed in that post was the following:
When I said that, I was in no way intending to suggest that discussion would actually be limited to LACs. Maybe, if the kid specifically wanted an LAC. But I was definitely imagining universities would be part of such a conversation whenever appropriate.
Indeed, I know I am not the first person to suggest this, but Middlebury and Dartmouth seem to have a lot of overlapping appeal for certain kids in my circles. I was never intending to suggest the opposite, and what I was imagining is when appropriate, people would make that sort of connection. Or like Wesleyan in my circles is often connected to Vassar AND Brown. I was not intending to suggest that did not make sense for plenty of kids. And so on.
So basically, you seem to understand I am agreeing with you now about how private universities in the Northeast are often part of the competitive set for private LACs in the Northeast. But you seem to think this is somehow a different view from the view I had back in 2023. It is not.
And yes, I agree with you as well that is relevant to things like the observed yields at Middlebury, their admissions practices, and so on. I just never DISagreed with that proposition.
I see.
Another dirty little secret (well, okay–not really a secret) is the large number of international students flooding these schools with applications who ultimately stand very little chance of admission. Most schools don’t complete this section of the CDS (I think I know why), but here are examples from two schools that do (and also tout that they’re need blind for international applicants):
Amherst:
Total number of applicants: 13,743
Number of international applications: 5,664 (41% of total)
Number of international students accepted: 150 (2.6%)
Bowdoin:
Total number of applicants: 13,265
Number of international applications: 5,347 (40% of total)
Number of international students accepted: 77 (1.4%)
Saying you’re need blind for internationals is a great way to drive up applications while not having to spend a ton of money because you reject 97-98% of them.
Thoughts?
One doesn’t follow from the other. The number rejected has nothing to do with the amount of aid spent.
It also doesn’t follow that these need blind schools, literally all of whom are intensely desireable, want to gin up more applications, or are ginning up more applications.
It’s schools that are need aware and schools with low yields that are gaming the admissions landscape, in my opinion, not these extremely wealthy schools.
The number of international students they enroll remains remarkably steady every year, which means they likely have a quota on the number they’ll accept/hope to enroll. I also know that these schools (along with most others) send their admissions reps all over the world to solicit apps from international students. Those that are need blind make that a big part of the sell. I just hope these kids realize they have, in some cases, less than a 2% chance of admission, regardless of how good their application is.
I’m sure percentages are similar for other NESCACs, but they don’t fill out that part of the CDS.
If they are smart enough to get into these schools, they are smart enough to figure it out.
I have only ever heard of need-aware schools doing mostly Asian trips hoping to encourage full pay/super wealthy Chinese and Korean students to apply/attend. They are not beating the bushes of rural India. Have not heard of need blind schools doing this. What would be their incentive to do so?
If they are smart enough to get into these schools, they are smart enough to figure it out.
Did you miss the part about the vast majority not getting in?
?? If they are smart enough to get into these schools, they are smart enough to figure out that their odds of admission are very low, whether they are admitted in the end, or not. And if they aren’t smart enough to get in/figure it out . . . Oh well? No one is coercing these students into applying.
No one is coercing these students into applying.
Coercing? No. Encouraging? Yes. I just find it shocking that 40+ percent of applicants to Bowdoin are international students, and they accepted 77 of them. Again–this probably holds true for the other NESCACs, but we don’t have the numbers at our fingertips.
I don’t think it’s a dirty little secret at all, and Amherst and Bowdoin are not deliberately driving their acceptance rates down by encouraging a lot of international applicants.
Amherst’s incoming class is 18% international. Its acceptance rate for internationals was under 3%. About 40% of all applications were from internationals. Bowdoin was 8%/<2%/-40%.
Let’s compare to Harvard: 18%/2%/30%.
Columbia: 25%/2.5%/25%.
Are Columbia and Harvard misleading international applicants about their chances?
Amherst and Bowdoin can’t help it if they are viewed desirably by internationals, and they are admitting them at roughly the same rates as the Ivies. If they admitted them at a much higher rate, they could become a disproportionate percentage of non-athletes at these relatively small schools, so I am sure that is a consideration. They are also yielding internationals at a much higher rate than domestic RD admittees.
Yes, need blind for international students does not mean that international students are treated the same as domestic ones, or are considered in the same “bucket”. US schools do not want a huge percentage of international students at their schools. Being international places you into the international bucket, for whom there are X# of spaces, no matter how many students are in that bucket. Prospective students are placed into all sorts of buckets all the time, and each bucket is not treated the same as others. Recruited athletes being one well known bucket.
I was just really surprised when I saw the percentage of applicants who are international students and the the acceptance rate for those students.
FWIW, Wesleyan is technically need-aware but has always given full-freight scholarships to Asian and Asia adjacent nationals. It’s their only merit-based scholarship program:
Freeman Asian Scholars Program, Admission - Wesleyan University
Wish I could find my popcorn icon!
This implies the admission rate for domestic students is actually over 10%. That’s kind of positive news!