If you’ve ever seen the Umich stats, you know that it’s weird.
2014-2015 year: Freshmen
APPLICANTS - 51,753
ADMITTED - 13,555
ENROLLED - 6,269
Anyone else find that not only is the acceptance rate is 26 percent, but that even so many of those accepted don’t want to come to Umich? Why???
I feel like that’s a really high yield (almost 50%) for a state school.
I can I think of many reasons but probably the two biggest are:
It’s not really a surprising number.
It’s not weird at all.
High caliber students with multiple options . . .
Most public universities have even lower yield rate. Many of the students applied to and accepted by UMich may also apply to other top schools like Ivies or offered with great scholarships by other schools in similar tier. Note that most students would be accepted by more than 1 school but can only go to one. So for UMich having a yield rate at near 50% is indeed very good. Remember UMich does not use ED to boost yield rate.
Lastly, the stat you posted is for 2015-2016 freshmen, not 2014-2015.
Very high OOS enrollment implies a very high percentage of applications are from OOS applicants. Typical OOS applicants will be applying a many schools, and will reject all acceptances but 1.
Potentially also several hundred are IS applicants who apply to Michigan as a safety, and eventually are admitted by a school they prefer over Michigan.
A ~50% yield rate is actually considered very high:
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/college-admits-2013/
Dartmouth has a 48% yield. Caltech has 43%.
50% isn’t bad at all when considering:
lots of OOS are unaware that financial aid for them will be so lousy, compared to other schools they get into (including other public schools in their own state)
many who get accepted will also get into elite private schools, and UM wasn’t their first choice
then again, 50% is rather bad considering:
it’s almost always the best option for IS kids, so the OOS yield is probably rather low. Improving financial aid for them would have the biggest impact and also the option most within our direct control
The yield rate for OOS is around 1/3 of in state students at UMich. Having over 40% OOS certainly would not help the yield rate. In any case, a near 50% yield rate is never a bad rate. Historically, UMich’s yield rate was around 40%. So even with an increase in OOS student population, the yield rate still goes up. That is indeed a very good sign.
Here is a list of yield rate from 2013.
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2015/01/21/national-universities-where-the-most-accepted-students-enroll
Schools with similar yield rate include Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown, CalTech, in addition to many public universities like UT Austin, UOK, UWI, etc. But none of the public in that range has such a high OOS student population as UMich.
“Anyone else find that not only is the acceptance rate is 26 percent, but that even so many of those accepted don’t want to come to Umich? Why???”
I’m surprised that you are surprised. Here are some figures. Note that Michigan’s interquartile range on the ACT is exactly equivalent to 3 of the Ivys, and roughly equivalent to Penn. Michigan’s yield is also roughly equivalent to some very solid schools…inter alia…Dartmouth, Hopkins Duke, Georgetown, Berkeley…
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/college-admits-2013/?_r=0
Georgia Institute of Technology 38.21
Johns Hopkins 38.67
Dartmouth 48.53
Michigan 41.81
Vanderbilt 41.48
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2015/01/21/national-universities-where-the-most-accepted-
students-enroll
Cornell 51.8
Univeristy of Chicago 53.4
Dartmouth 47.8
Georgetown 46.9
Duke 45.5
UVA 40.3
Michigan 40
Berkeley 39.8
Johns Hopkins 37.4
ACT 25th 75th
Brown 30 34
Cornell 30 34
Dartmouth 30 34
Michigan 30 34
Penn 31 34
OP is just a high school student and not so familiar with college admission process. That’s why he is surprised. Nevertheless, many students do not realize the decrease in admission rate and increase in admission stat at UMich in the last feel years sometimes you see people calling UMich a safety or low match in chancing threads.
Michigan’s yield rate is consistent with other good universities. As Blue85 points out, most good universities have yield rates that range between 30% and 50%. Very few universities of Michigan’s caliber have yield rates that exceed 50%.
What do you find weird about those numbers?
What I find weird is that so many apply yet so few enter in a school that is fairly easy to get into.
I’m struggling with why you are still struggling over this. It’s not like UMich is the only attractive acceptance these students receive. Nor is it the only financial package to weigh.
With an admission rate of 26%, I would hardly call that “fairly easy.” EasIER relative to HYSP, maybe, but “easy” is not a word I would use to refer to UM admissions. If you look at this year’s admission thread, you will see many students with superlative stats who were waitlisted or outright rejected.
Make sure that as you prepare your list of colleges that you are going to apply to, that you have a realistic view of each school’s admission standards and plan accordingly.
Michigan’s OOS admit rate this year is just barely over 20%. That is not “fairly easy” to get into.
BeCambridge, your logic is flawed. If, as you seem to think, Michigan is easy to get into, shouldn’t its yield rate be lower? It stands to reason that the more selective the university, the more in-demand it is and the higher its yield.
But I still fail to see how Michigan’s yield is low. Its 40%-45% yield rate is comparable to Berkeley, Caltech, CMU, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins and Northwestern.
At any rate, as others have pointed out, once the admit rate is lower than 40%, and the majority of the students admitted are ranked in the top 5% of their high school class and have unweighed GPAs and standardized scores that rival those of other top universities, it can no longer be described as “easy” to get into. 10 years ago, Chicago’s acceptance rate was 40%. Northwestern’s admit rate was over 30% 15 years ago. Some Ivy League schools had admit rates in the 35%-40% range in the 1990s. None of those universities were ever described as “easy” to get into. Michigan is now experiencing a similar drop in admit rates. When evaluating the selectivity of a university, it is more important to gauge the strength of the applicant pool, and the strength of the students who are admitted and who enroll. In this regard, Michigan is very selective.