2015 Acceptance rate?

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of Michigan
81

bclintonk - I’m not sure I’d agree. If Michigan had ED and RD, they would not get nearly as many applications in the ED round as they do EA today; and those that don’t apply ED rather than EA, are not all going to apply RD. Michigan would have fewer applicants, its acceptance rate would go up, not down; however it’s yield rate would certainly climb with ED/RD vs. EA/RD.

Now, over time the acceptance rate will continue to fall but isolating the change in one year from EA/RD to ED/RD, the acceptance rate would rise.

82

^ Not so sure about that, wayneandgarth. I’m persuaded that the total number of applications might be smaller with ED/RD than with EA/RD, but that doesn’t mean the acceptance rate would necessarily increase. It depends how many seats they fill out of the ED pool. Michigan can now be used as a kind of “safety” because of EA: anyone can apply EA without committing to attend until they’ve heard from all their other schools. So even if Michigan isn’t one of your top choices, there’s little reason NOT to apply EA, unless you just need more time to get your application together. On the plus side, you could know by December that you’re admitted to a very good school. On the negative side–well, there really isn’t one, since you’re making no commitments. They could reject you outright in the EA round, but then you at least have that information early, which is probably more valuable than having it late. More likely, though, they’ll defer you to the RD round, in which case you’re in no worse shape than if you had applied RD. And if they accept you, great! You then have that that acceptance in your back pocket, and you can wait to see what happens with the rest of your schools which could even include an ED or SCEA school that’s truly your first choice. So my guess is Michigan now gets many thousands of OOS EA applications and has a fairly low yield on its OOS EA admits, because that EA pool includes thousands of applicants for whom Michigan ranks fairly low on their wish list.

Full disclosure: my own daughter was one of these. She liked Michigan a lot, but it was maybe 7th or 8th on her list of preferences, the others all being LACs. She was disappointed to be deferred to the RD round then ultimately waitlisted at her ED school, but she was delighted and tremendously relieved to be admitted EA to Michigan; in fact she was so relieved that she almost decided to attend, but she decided to be patient and wait for RD results and was accepted at all the other schools she applied to, and enrolled at one. Multiply that by thousands and what do you get? A large EA applicant pool, yes, but a low yield and consequently a need to accept large numbers in the EA round.

Now switch from EA to ED and what happens? Well, you get fewer ED applications than you formerly got EA applications. But that’s OK, because the EA applications you’re losing are from the applicants least likely to accept an offer of admission. You then get close to 100% yield from those you admit from the ED pool, so you don’t need to admit that many–just enough to fill up 25% or 30%or 40% of the class, whatever your target is depending on the strength of the ED pool. There’s no reason the RD pool should shrink; in fact, it’s almost certainly bigger because some of those who formerly would have applied EA decide it’s still worth it to apply RD even if they’re not prepared to sign up for ED. So you’re now filling the remaining 60 to 75% of the class from a larger RD pool, with a yield probably similar to what you formerly got in the RD round.

Admit rate is a function of the number of applications you get, yield, and the number of seats you’re trying to fill. If your overall yield goes up substantially with EA (as it should), you can live with a somewhat smaller applicant pool without raising your admit rate.

83

I do not think application figures would drop wayne…at least not from applications that matter; those that are seriously considering attending Michigan. And if Michigan fills half of its class with ED students, as do Cornell, Penn and several other of its peers, Michigan’s acceptance rate will definitely not rise as a result of the drop in overall applications resulting from having switched to ED. In fact, there is a good chance that it will continue to drop.

I hear that Michigan is seriously considering switching to ED, but one of the main reasons that is not happening is because very few public universities offer the option and Michigan does not want to break ranks.

By the way, some universities offer EA, ED and RD options to applicants.

84

bclintonk - I understand your point about not needing to accept as many when the yield rate is maybe 90%+ in ED. I also agree that the number of RD applicants would rise further than with EA/RD. But, certainly the number of ED applicants would be much less than in EA. I really think in the first year of the change, the total applicants would drop due to a substantial lower number of ED applicants in comparison to the EA applicants.

Michigan seems to be managing its yield better and better while getting large increases in applicants annually, so it may be best to stay the course with EA/RD.

Both of my sons were EA applicants, accepted and enrolled. I really don’t think either would have applied to Michigan ED as, at the time of application, they weren’t 100% sure of Michigan as their 1st choice.

But I do appreciate both your and Alexandre’s well thought out points. Thanks.

85

“Both of my sons were EA applicants, accepted and enrolled. I really don’t think either would have applied to Michigan ED as, at the time of application, they weren’t 100% sure of Michigan as their 1st choice.”

Of course with all three options available, they wouldn’t have had to wayneandgarth. ED would ONLY be for those students who view Michigan as their first choice.

86

While over enrollment being an issue for years, I really don’t think they worry about the yield rate and want to implement ED.

87

rjk - if ED were in place, I wouldn’t think that EA would remain available. Even if it were, the acceptance rate for EA would likely drop as a chunk of the class would be enrolled ED.

On a related thought, I would guess if ED were in place, that a larger than normal % of applicants would be In-State as that is the absolute preferred option of many in Michigan but there is certainly less certainty of that OOS. Again, that could change with an improvement in OOS financial aid.

88

bclinktonk,

I don’t know what you mean by low EA yield but it’s still higher than RD yield. So EA also artificially increases overall yield. All schools do some sort of yield management, including the ones using EA. For example, students that got accepted to Michigan EA would more likely devote more or or even all of their energy on the reach schools going forward. They are also less likely to apply to as many schools as they would if they didn’t have Michigan in the bag. The end result is they have fewer choices when the decisions come, which increase their chance to matriculate at Michigan.

Also, while your analysis is insightful, I think if NU were using EA instead of ED, its application pool would be larger. So the admit rate would be less than 17%.

89

ChaChaanTeng, it is not likely that NU would receive that many more applicants if it replaced ED with EA. With ED, most of those would have been willing to apply EA but not ED would still apply, but RD. The few who are willing to apply EA but reluctant to apply RD would not have a real impact on the total applicant pool, certainly not enough to drive down admit rates. Let us be honest, schools like NU (private universities) are obsessed with admit rates. If they could lower their admit rates be switching from ED to EA, they would do so in a heartbeat.

90

" For example, students that got accepted to Michigan EA would more likely devote more or or even all of their energy on the reach schools going forward. They are also less likely to apply to as many schools as they would if they didn’t have Michigan in the bag. The end result is they have fewer choices when the decisions come, which increase their chance to matriculate at Michigan.

Those same top students would also be applying to other reach schools at the same time they are applying to Michigan. Do you honestly think top applicants are going to wait until the end of December to start applying to top privates?

91

@Alexandre, not true. Those people who apply EA or ED and get in to their top choice would not apply in RD if the switch was made to EA from ED. There absolutely would be a jump in applications if a switch was made from ED to EA. Just look at how many EA apps UChicago and Georgetown get. However, you’re wrong to assume that NU cares solely about lowering the admit rate above all else. The current NU president cares a lot about forming a student body heavy in students who have NU as their first choice. Obviously, ED would achieve that better than EA.

92

EA acceptance at Michigan could affect some students’ applications to other schools at the margins. My D2 is a case in point. She wanted to go to a top LAC, but we told her she needed a safety. The University of Wisconsin Madison was her ultimate safety (as Minnesotans we get tuition reciprocity), but she strongly preferred Michigan to Wisconsin if she was going to end up at a big school. Michigan wasn’t a safety, of course, but she knew she’d hear from Michigan EA before her Wisconsin application was due, and when she was accepted EA at Michigan, she never submitted her Wisconsin application. But she ended up going to one of the fine LACs that accepted her.

If Michigan had ED but no EA, she would have applied RD both to Michigan and Wisconsin, and likely would have been accepted at both. There’s no way she would have chosen Wisconsin over Michigan, and in the end the EA acceptance didn’t really increase Michigan’s chances of landing her; that was entirely contingent on how well she did with the schools higher on her priority list, and she had those apps in long before he got her Michigan EA acceptance. I realize every case is different, but I think in general Michigan’s EA pool consists of two groups–those for whom Michigan really is their first choice, and those like my daughter for whom Michigan is not their first choice, but it’s somewhere in their “acceptable” range, behind some other schools. The problem with EA is that the admissions committee can’t tell which applicants are in which group, so they “waste” a lot of EA offers of admission on applicants who aren’t that likely to attend. ED would allow them to separate out the first group, those for whom Michigan is their first choice, and offer admission to the best of them. Most of the second group would apply RD anyway, though you might lose a few of them. I doubt that EA offers to that second group sway very many to enroll at Michigan; they’ll come if they don’t get into their higher priority schools, just as they would if they were accepted RD. And many who apply EA are deferred to the RD round anyway.

93

“Alexandre, not true. Those people who apply EA or ED and get into their top choice would not apply in RD if the switch was made to EA from ED.”

But PurpleTitan, EA/ED responds no earlier than December 10. It is unreasonable to assume that applicants will wait until then to submit their applications to other universities.

I also disagree with the notion that switching from EA to ED or ED to EA will significantly alter the size of the overall applicant pool, or that switching from ED to EA will lower the acceptance rate.

“However, you’re wrong to assume that NU cares solely about lowering the admit rate above all else.”

I did not mean to suggest that private universities care solely about admit rates. As you point out, there are other consideration, including fit, desire to attend, academic qualifications, community involvement etc…But within all those, private universities definitely care about admit rates. If, as some suggest above, switching from ED to EA would substantially increase the applicant pool and lower the acceptance rate, I think most private universities would gladly switch to EA.

94

@Alexandre,
Hmm. All the non-HYP Ivies and Northwestern and Duke have only ED, not EA. I believe JHU and Rice as well.

Chicago, Georgetown, MIT, and Caltech have EA instead of ED.

What differentiates those 2 groups? If elite privates have lower admit rate as a key goal, as you say, why aren’t they all one or the other?

95

PurpleTitan, I think the numbers actually support the notion that in most cases, elite private universities prefer ED over EA overwhelmingly.

HYPSM know that their brand is powerful enough not to need ED. Those schools have yield rates in the 60%-80% range, even without ED. Caltech is a niche school. Their only true competitor is MIT.

Beyond those 6 schools, the vast majority of elite private universities offer ED, not EA. Chicago and Georgetown are the notable exceptions, which I admittedly do not understand…especially Chicago. Just look at the numbers among top LACs and Universities. The picture is pretty clear:

ED:
Amherst College
Bowdoin College
Brown University
Bryn Mawr College
Carleton College
Carnegie Mellon University
Claremont McKenna College
Colgate University
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Davidson College
Duke University
Emory University
Harvey Mudd College
Haverford College
Johns Hopkins University
Middlebury College
Northwestern University
Pomona College
Rice University
Swarthmore College
Tufts University
University of Pennsylvania
University of Notre Dame
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Washington University
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Williams College

EA:
Georgetown University
University of Chicago

96

Northwestern’s yield without ED would have been higher if other schools also do away ED. It’s unfair to single out a school and hypothesize what its yield “should” be when you hold other schools’ policy unchanged. Northwestern doesn’t shower admits with merit-based scholarships and its FA, while not bad, isn’t among the best.

By the way, Michigan is cheaper than many schools. That in itself helps a tons in yield against the privates. But then there are many flagships that are cheaper than Michigan OOS. I don’t know what the real point of this exercise and discussion is. It’s not like yield necessarily reflects desirability when finance gets in the way.

97

Don’t get me wrong ChaChaanTeng, I am not singling out NU. All elite private universities seem to favour ED, not just NU. I am in fact a huge proponent of NU. As far as I am concerned, it is on par with Chicago, Duke, JHU and several of the Ivy League. Naturally, I also happen to consider Michigan in that group as well. :wink:

98

ND also has EA instead of ED. So does BC. Maybe the Catholics believe that, while marriage should be binding, college decisions shouldn’t be?

Not sure how to explain Chicago, though in economics, they believe in choice.

99

I know it’s only slightly related, but what are the predictions for US News rankings? Do you guys think Michigan will move?

100

Michigan will likely not move up the rankings anytime soon…not significantly anyway. My guess is Michigan will hover between 27-30 for some time. The US News methodology is designed with private universities in mind, so public universities are usually locked out of the top 20. Of course, if Michigan were to package its figures the way that its private peers do, you could see it move into the top 15. For example, if it included certain expenditures in its operating budget, or omitted graduate students from its student to faculty ratio, or introduced mandatory freshman seminars etc… But public universities cannot take their liberties with such matters.