OOS Students and the Public State Universities

Alexandre
Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:17:30 +0000

We must all remember that at most private elites, like Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Northwestern, Penn, Rice, Vanderbilt and WUSTL etc…, a significant portion of their class is made up of Early Decision applicants. Those are binding and universities can really make it easy to predict the size of their entering class and dramatically improve their yield rates. Obviously, it would be unfair to compare yield rates, or make assumptions on cross-admit rates between schools that have ED options (like themajority of private elites) and schools that do not (like the majority of public elites).

For example, Cornell’s overall yield is generally close to 50%. However, for regular decision applicants, the yield rate is more like 35%.

http://admissions.cornell.edu/downloads/EnteringClassProfile.pdf

Most universities do not publish the yield rates for regular admits, but it is fair to assume that regular admit yield rates at universites that have ED options will be significantly lower than their overall yield. If one is to compare yield rates between public and private, it should be purely for regular admits.