Swat apps drop

[coase]

<p>@desie1: I would be interested to hear what the yield was this year. It has been rising the last couple of years and was around 41% last year. This year Swarthmore accepted 930 applicants, with a goal of enrolling 405. If they accomplished that goal without going to the waitlist, the yield would be 43.5%, but it appears that they have gone to the waitlist. </p>

<p>It is not clear why yield should matter, though. Consider two scenarios. In scenario A, there are 6,000 applicants, 1,000 acceptances, and 400 matriculants. In scenario B, there are 5,000 applicants, 900 acceptances, and 400 matriculants. Scenario A has the lower acceptance rate (16.7% vs. 18%) and lower yield (40% vs. 44.4%). If the same 400 students matriculate in the two cases, it is unclear why one cares about the yield (or acceptance rate). In deciding which of the two scenarios is preferable, I keep coming back to the question of how much time is being spent on applications in aggregate and how much is being learned from the applications. </p>

<p>There are good reasons to reduce the number of applications. BC decided that it was getting an unmanageable number so it made the application more onerous. The number of applications dropped by 26%.<br>

Although some enrollment officials have nightmares about big one-year declines, John L. Mahoney, director of undergraduate admissions at Boston College, described the numbers as good news. After all, he said, the quality of this year’s applicants—as measured by their ACT and SAT scores—did not go down, compared with last year. “Probably what we’ve done is right-size our applicant pool,” he said.

<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/Boston-College-Sees-a-Sharp/136683/”>http://chronicle.com/article/Boston-College-Sees-a-Sharp/136683/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;