<p>haha aw thanks for the thanks, but I’ve said before that Tufts wasn’t my first choice - it was in my group of “regulars” as opposed to “reaches” and “safeties.”</p>
<p>I don’t think the low yield necessarily says that Tufts is people’s safety. They could have declined matriculation because Tufts was a reach but another school is giving them lots of money. Or because it was on the same level as other schools they got into, but they simply liked another better - for location, for the way the campus felt, for the size, whatever. </p>
<p>It’s smart for you to exclude state schools in a yield comparison (haha, you have a future in econometrics!), but it would actually be interesting just to see their numbers, in order to try and glean to what extent a Tufts or NYU applicant would opt for a less expensive college. Some of the top-ranked students in my grade went to The College of New Jersey, which is ranked the best state school in NJ and was offering them full tuition, plus some money they’d get upon graduation, and a free laptop. It’s a really good deal that’s hard to turn down in the face of “pay 40,000 dollars a year.”</p>
<p>Another thing that just occurred to me - so we’ve all heard about how lots more kids are applying to college every year. And that kids are, on average, applying to greater amounts of colleges. Just by probability, it seems to me that if applicants apply to more and more schools, the proportion of them that will matriculate at Tufts will go down. I guess this has been counterbalanced by the fact that more students are applying in total.</p>
<p>Plus, another thing I’d like to take into account is that while we ARE looking at percentages, a 24% yield at NYU still amounts to, what, 5,000 people? Every year they accept as many people as their student body, like 20,000, and though it’s a small percentage of 20,000, it’s still a lot of people. Tufts’ 31% leads to a class of 1200. So I think there’s more here than just what’s on the surface. Also, if you look at the list that was provided, the schools that have high yields are mostly self-selective - like, BYU has a yield of 79%, probably b/c it’s the college-of-choice for Mormons. Yeshiva University likewise retains a lot of its acceptances - but if you really want to preserve your life as an orthodox Jew, that may be exactly where you want to do it. Tufts caters to a more diverse crowd of kids, kids who could probably fit in at multiple colleges and excel. While I can hear an account of a student here and say, “What a Tufts kid,” it’s not like these characteristics are defined by the person’s religion, or race, or other characteristics like that. And - surprise! - I like that about my school.</p>
<p>Anyway, it’s interesting to think about this question. But maybe it’s also a blessing! Perhaps the people who chose a “name” school over Tufts are the type of prestige-whores that we wouldn’t want here anyway. Perhaps 1/3 of Tufts acceptances really favor a program we have here (IR, pre-med, philosophy, whatever) that doesn’t exist or is subpar at another of the schools they were accepted into.</p>
<p>Or maybe, like me…they’re Ivy League Rejects. :-D</p>
<p>(oh, and just a quick point: BC doesn’t have ED, but they do have EA).</p>