Why do UVA and Michigan have such low yields?

Pizzagirl
Sat, 04 Feb 2012 05:35:40 +0000

I also think you vastly overestimate the degree to which college admissions is just a single national market in prestige. It is that for a few people; I mean something like a few thousand people, out of the hundreds of thousands who will enroll in college in the fall. But for most, other factors predominate. Geography, for example, plays a big role. Many Ohioans are satisfied with Ohio State, which is a pretty good school in many ways. If they want something better, there’s not much to choose from in-state: a few good LACs (Oberlin, Kenyon, and a few others). Case Western, but in some ways that’s not much of an improvement, if it is one at all, over Ohio State. So if they aim higher, many will look to better schools nearby. So what are some of the most popular options? Nearby Michigan (1,008 SAT score reports sent) is the #1 choice, followed by Northwestern (953, another Midwestern school), Harvard (772, popular everywhere), then Cornell (726, and just a few hours drive from the Cleveland area) and Notre Dame (653, just down the road in Indiana0. Notice a pattern here?



bclintonk, you are on a roll with your posts and I couldn’t agree with you more. It seems that kids like goldenboy - who I suspect is from one of those “elite powerhouse boarding schools” that are oh-so-important in their own eyes and about whom the rest of the nation doesn’t give one minute’s thought to – “play” in their own backyard because the Ivies are in their own backyard, and extrapolate that therefore those are “national schools” and that the kids everywhere else are aspiring to those same choices. For the vast, vast majority of students, staying close to home is a huge factor. It just so happens that different schools are in different backyards. It’s the rare kid who really does a true national search, and such a kid is typically from an affluent family for whom money is no object.