But the numbers say otherwise. Here are the ED acceptances the past 2 years:
2024 - 1156
2023 - 1193
So, yes, they can accurately say that they reduced the number of ED acceptances. . . but I don’t know how they can say it with a straight face. I don’t find that to be a meaningful difference. Frankly you could get that difference or ven greater just with normal variability.
Are any for spring admission?? Do they do that?? Meaning do they combine the total admission #s for the fall and spring admission offers?
Can you kindly link the recent tables? Thanks!
The post said yield for ED was “very high”, not 100%. There are a variety of reasons why less than 100% of ED acceptances matriculate. For example, a student may back out of ED, if there is insufficient financial aid. I note this in the calculation for RD saying “1193 - small”. The “- small” represents the unknown, small portion of ED admits who do not matriculate.
The stats above suggest at least 2% of ED admits do not attend. The specific number is unknown, but I expect the portion who do not attend is low enough such that RD yield is very low.
This low RD yield may be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Tulane doesn’t admit many RD students to keep their yield up, as the RD admits rarely attend. If this belief leads to Tulane only admitting the top ~2% of RD applicants, then the rare few RD applicants who they admit are likely to be overqualified students who are likely to be admitted at other colleges more selective than Tulane, contributing to a low yield on those admits. If Tulane instead had a normal RD admit rate that included admitting some mediocre students that are less likely to be admitted at colleges more selective than Tulane, they’d likely have a higher RD yield.
| Freshman Starting Year | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| '24-'25 | '23-'24 | '22-'23 | '21-'22 | '20-'21 | '19-'20 | '18-'19 | |
| Total Applicants | 32,603 | 27,936 | 31,615 | 45,525 | 43,892 | 42,185 | 38,816 |
| Admitted | 4,558 | 4,077 | 3,621 | 4,385 | 4,877 | 5,431 | 6,724 |
| Enrolled | 1,838 | 1,867 | 1,843 | 2,027 | 1,801 | 1,821 | 1,909 |
| ED Applied | 1,946 | 1,752 | 1,853 | 3,853 | 3,976 | 2,163 | 1,659 |
| ED Accepted | 1,156 | 1,193 | 1,258 | 1,209 | 922 | 720 | 535 |
| ED % Admitted | 59% | 68% | 68% | 31% | 23% | 33% | 32% |
| EA/RD Applications | 30,657 | 26,184 | 29,762 | 41,672 | 39,916 | 40,022 | 37,157 |
| EA/RD Accepted | 3,402 | 2,884 | 2,363 | 3,176 | 3,955 | 4,711 | 6,189 |
| EA/RD Acceptance | 11% | 11% | 8% | 8% | 10% | 12% | 17% |
| EA/RD Enrolled | 682 | 674 | 585 | 818 | 879 | 1,101 | 1,374 |
| Enroll % of Admitted | 20% | 23% | 25% | 26% | 22% | 23% | 22% |
I’ve posted this table elsewhere in other Tulane threads but seems appropriate here.
Yes, some of the numbers are backed into because they don’t provide a full accounting of every single person and how they’re treated (YES, some admitted ED do not ultimately attend though I’m sure it’s a very small number).
We also have 2 data points posted from Admissions on social media. This past Spring “The last 1,000+ of our Regular Decision admission offers are coming today”. Tulane sends acceptances all at once, not in waves, so this 1,000+ IS the RD round of acceptances. They posted a similar statement in 2023 “We expect to releaser our final offers of admission to nearly 400 students”. So in that year RD amounted to 400 acceptances.
What’s NOT clear in the those numbers for RD is how many of those acceptances went to applicants that applied EA and were deferred. I can say for certain that S23 was one of those and in that batch of “nearly 400”.
As @Data10 pointed out, on the CDS prior to this one - and it seems like it’s the only one where they broke it out - they did give EA/RD specific numbers but it’s STILL unclear on they treat deferrals from EA into RD in that data set.
Their narrative that they’re “reducing the numbers from ED” - if you take '22-'23 as the baseline I’d say it’s a true statement but overblown only coming down from 1,258 to 1,156 (although the % admitted dropped from ~70%-60%).
And for those looking at the Total application numbers from 45K to 31K - this was due to a change in reporting where they stopped including partially completed (non-submitted) apps. Yes, the prior numbers were intended to make them look like they were more selective than they actually were.
The VP of enrollment Shawn Abbott made some statements when he was hired in '22 that the school was going to decrease its reliance on ED. So they’ve reduced by 100 spots (~5% of incoming class) which based on the yield of EA/RD allows them to accept an incremental 500 through that channel. Going from ~400 3 years ago to ~1,000 this past year implies they’ve driven most of those slots to the RD round.
That said, 1,000 RD acceptances - and how many of those were deferrals?? - is a long shot.
You don’t need to like the game Tulane, or any other school, play - many folks don’t - but it really helps to be aware of the rules if you’re hoping to win.
I’ve never seen where it states it but have heard through multiple channels that “Spring Scholars are not included in their admission statistics”.
Like I said above - their talking points are selective. And usually overstate the what the real data shows.
Like most schools, Tulane does not include spring admits (called Spring Scholars) in the CDS. (To be fair CDS only asks for fall enrollment numbers )
Thanks, @Mwfan1921 and @Mashinations. Was just trying to postulate why the numbers didn’t add up.
@Mashinations -did you create that admissions table from the CDS or is it from somewhere else?
IIRC, when Dattagupta was hired, there was a goal to get the yield numbers out of the cellar. There was a statistic. I read somewhere that said if yield numbers were below 20%, the school had a hard time managing its budgeting plans. So certainly making a massive number of admissions come from ED would immediately increase yield. Seems like they may have gone too far and I’m glad, even if it’s a little disingenuous in how they reported, that they are backing that down a bit.
Created from their CDS with some of the fields being calculated (i.e. it assume 100% ED acceptances attend).
But since Tulane does not truly meet 100% of demonstrated need, it might be more reasonable to assume that several of the ED acceptances cannot make the numbers work. Might make better sense to ratchet down the estimated percent of ED acceptances who attend.
Agree with your statement overall but IMO from an analytical standpoint for something like this adding that complexity (and additional assumption on what that % would even be) is unnecessary. More important is simply the consistency in the calculation from one year to the next.
That makes sense. But several students/families cannot make the numbers work with the FA package with loans, etc. So since we know 100% don’t enroll, maybe arbitrarily lower the number (consistently across all years) to maybe 90%? Just a thought, since we can see that using 100% doesn’t make the numbers add up.
And this is where leaving the numbers as-is makes the most sense IMO. I sincerely doubt it’s a 10% loss of ED. My sense is that the true number for most schools is more like 1%-3% but could end up in a ton of conjecture/debate as to what that real % is. Providing the numbers at 0% lets the user discount however they see fit.
According to CDS they do meet 96% of need. This is a more complicated calculation to try and assess the impact of. While some students might be at 100% others are at 85% (and some might not have done a calculation on what “need” is prior to applying!).
Right. But they also include loans in their aid offers and some simply can’t manage it. And some of the offers differ for instate and OOS students.
Completely agree - and over time if a school shifts aid to/from Merit based to Need based that % will change and how it impacts enrollment… Lots of different factors which I think much of senior people on this forum lament the transparency in the NPC’s (most schools).
It would be great if the numbers were not clear as mud!
Unfortunately we can only guess at the magnitude of ED admits that do not matriculate. I expect it’s quite small, but I don’t know the specific number. We only need a small portion for RD yield to start looking more realistic. Some examples are below. Note that 90% yield on ED results in a much higher yield on RD than EA, which seems unlikely unless Tulane is doing something to motivate RD admits to attend more so than EA. Instead I’d expect the ED yield is 93-95%. I am assuming that students deferred to RD are being reclassified as RD, for stat reporting purposes.
Yield Rate with 95% of ED admits matriculating
ED: 95%
EA: 697/2614 = 27% Yield
RD: (1867 - 697 - 1193*0.95) / (4077 - 2614 - 1193) = 14% Yield
Overall: 1867/4077 = 46% Yield
Yield Rate with 93% of ED admits matriculating
ED: 93%
EA: 697/2614 = 27% Yield
RD: (1867 - 697 - 1193*0.93) / (4077 - 2614 - 1193) = 22% Yield
Overall: 1867/4077 = 46% Yield
Yield Rate with 90% of ED admits matriculating
ED: 90%
EA: 697/2614 = 27% Yield
RD: (1867 - 697 - 1193*0.90) / (4077 - 2614 - 1193) = 36% Yield
Overall: 1867/4077 = 46% Yield
I agree with this from a reporting standpoint but in practice it would make people the they have a greater shot at the RD round than they really do. Tulane loves kids that love them and I believe someone deferred from EA - and writing a letter of continued interest and engaging with AO - is going to have a much greater shot in the RD round than a RD application. My belief only and we’ll never know for sure because schools never release that kind of information.
One additional point about the RD acceptance rate at Tulane…they use RD to fill holes in their class. For Tulane, that often means more disadvantaged students are needed for the class, and relatively fewer affluent students.