<p>Has anyone wondered why a 4th rate magazine ( US News) created a Best College in the US list? Could it be to simply sell magazines? Why do people pay attention to this dumb list? The magazine is hardly worth grabbing for free in your dentist's office. Harvard is and always will be number one. Can't wait to see how the change in ED status affects yield. Now that will give many quite a challenge! Looking forward to reading the press releases once the numbers come out.
The press releases will read something like this " oh we fully expected it" or
" we are so pleased that we dropped and need to use all of our waiting list " or " our quality has actually risen and we have a better class because the entire waiting list was special" or " we are so pleased with our success having a poor yield is something to strive for" or " this is the best waiting list ever in the history of our prestigious school" or " we no longer call it the waiting list we call it - the glad you stuck around list"</p>
<p>Harvard's regular decision yield should stay where it has been, or go up (since the hard core Harvard-bound students can no longer apply EA and will be found in the RD pool). Since the EA program had near ED yields, the overall yield may drop slightly, but not likely below the current RD levels. </p>
<p>They may miss some top students who would have been admitted and attended if they could have applied EA, but who applied and were admitted to Yale, Stanford and MIT instead. They might not lose that many to the other top colleges, as students who would have been admitted to H, may not go for the remaining early admission Ivies, or other elite privates and give up their shots at Harvard. The H admisssion pool is so competitive that it may be difficult for those outside the Harvard admissions office to guess how many star students it lost due to lack of EA. I suspect the numerical qualifications will be unchanged, since they have far more applicants with sky high numbers than they can admit. </p>
<p>This may be more of a challenge for Yale, where they have to wonder whether they will see a lower yield on their EA admits. Yale may find that it gets EA apps from students who would have applied to H, if they could have, and now perhaps will hold on to their Yale EA admission to see whether they get in H RD. Princeton will have a related question as they cannot lock up anyone early, and have to assume they will lose most cross admits to H, but they don't know how many that will be.</p>
<p>If Harvard's median M + V SAT plummets to unheard of levels, like 1450, we will know the experiment backfired. Otherwise, H could still lose out on the more risk averse of the very top students, but only H would know. H could protect against this with recruitment in the fall and early write letters to the IMO gold medalists and similar types to prevent them from going elsewhere. </p>
<p>This should be entertaining.</p>
<p>well, there's no risk to getting EA elsewhere and applying RD to Harvard, but I think there is a mental exhaustion factor that may play in here - I see seniors very keyed up and wanting to be done with the uncertainty, and so if they already have a great choice, they may decide they are perfectly happy and don't want to be in emotional limbo for another 3.5 months. I had not realized how strong this factor could be till now, when I see my daughter's class really coiled up and longing to be done with the whole process.</p>
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<p>This was one of several interesting comments in a very interesting post. On my part, I'm willing to go out on a limb now that early program applications have been submitted to other colleges and predict that Harvard will suffer NO erosion in the numerical stats of its next enrolled class, year-on-year. I will make the further prediction that there will be a noticeable decrease in the median family income level of enrolled Harvard students, as it appears that that is part of what H, P, and VA have in mind in eliminating their early programs. What I don't dare predict :) is what Yale and Stanford will do about this.</p>
<p>Dont worry about Harvard. Yale and Stanford will benefit greatly- P will hold the bag.</p>
<p>Apparently you're paying enough attention to the "dumb list" to make a thread about it.</p>
<p>I agree with tokenadult that there will be no numerical erosion. Harvard routinely turns down students with many 800s in their SAT Is and IIs, and so do Stanford, Yale, Princeton, etc. So if they miss some who decide to go elsewhere, the last thing they need to worry about is the SAT scores holding up. There are enough super-high scorers to fill up all the top colleges and then some.</p>
<p>As I indicated, I suspect the numbers will not change. However, the very top students, who are defined by accomplishments, not SAT scores, may head elsewhere if H cannot assure them of admission in the fall. Since H can fill up their spots with other students with top scores, this may not show up in SAT mean, but it would be apparent to the H admissions office if fewer superstars enroll.</p>
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the very top students, who are defined by accomplishments, not SAT scores, may head elsewhere if H cannot assure them of admission in the fall.
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<p>I agree that this is a distinct issue, but I think that this isn't a problem for Harvard either. Plenty of students who were deferred to the regular round of the admission process by Harvard last year, when Harvard still had a single-choice early admission round, were happy to enroll when they were admitted. This year, when everyone knows that Harvard is putting all applicants into one pool in the regular round, it should be even clearer to the very top students that they should wait until April to compare offers.</p>
<p>You listen because 4th is only two ranks below 2nd. Watch out, if the magazine rises to 2nd or 1st, you might have to make a shrine and start worshiping it.</p>
<p>^^good point... we need another magazine to rank the various college rating systems...</p>
<p>check this NUS</a> accorded World's Top 20 universities ranking</p>
<p>World #1 is Harvard.</p>