<p>According to Tufts Daily: Tufts</a> Class of 2017 by the Numbers</p>
<p>Verses 39% for Class of 2016: </p>
<p>Class</a> of 2016 acceptance rate lowest in history - News - Tufts Daily - Tufts University</p>
<p>yikes</p>
<p>There are a lot of things I could say about that, most of which would bring wrath down upon my head. :D</p>
<p>I saw that and thought, “there is no earthy way we would do something like that.” Lo and behold! The Daily got that wrong, and added 1 to the tens column. The correct number would be 41%. A bit higher than last year, but the ED pool was also much larger this year than last year. </p>
<p>Either way, happy to set the record straight and thanks to the OP for bringing it to my attention. I expect the Daily to correct the error shortly.</p>
<p>41% is still extremely high. It helps though to manage Tufts’ yield problem. Yield is a function of brand power, an issue that has been a perennial challenge for Tufts.</p>
<p>Tufts students almost all love their time there and love the school. There’s nothing wrong with taking students who really want to be there and have school spirit - does anyone want to attend a university wherein everyone is doing time like a prison sentence? </p>
<p>There’s also a big financial aid (or lack thereof) component: even a “need blind” college can manage its scholarship budget by taking disproportionately from the ED piles. (I see that Tufts is not quite need-blind, although I think it was right before the Great Recession.) Some universities, no names here, had a reputation of favouring admissions criteria that were proxies for wealth (e.g. strong SAT scores, elite athletics, musicians); although they are not perfect indicators of wealth, they work well enough when considering a population of hundreds or thousands of admittees. All the prestige of being need-blind, none of the hard work. </p>
<p>But, as Tufts explicitly is not fully need-blind, that’s probably not what is going on here.</p>
<p>The statistic that gets my attention is that only 52% of admitted applicants applied for aid. That means that approximately 50% of the admits come from the top 5% of US earners. Interesting.</p>
<p>Xwords, you’re assuming that the household income distribution of the admitted class is the same as that of all applicants. That’s not necessarily true.</p>
<p>Slitheytove - here is my logic:</p>
<p>1) 50% of admits did not apply for aid. This means that you can afford to pay $57k per year for your kid to go to college
2) if you can afford $57k to spend on your kids tuition you probably have a HH income of $175k per year
3) per Wikipedia the top 5% of US HH make $186 k per year
4) now of course we don’t know how admit/accept ratio will pan out, but if it is proportionate, I think my logic holds up</p>
<p>Xwords, my mistake–I misread your post to be “approximately 50% of the applicants”. Your logic is spot-on–sorry!</p>
<p>They fixed it. It now says 41%. Slightly higher, but not absurd. Heck, even some Ivies have close to 30% ED decisions from their pool. It’s a function of many things - sometimes student quality, sometimes gauging the class size, whatever. It’s not a huge deal considering that overall stats of those that have been admitted thus far are clearly a stellar pool of applicants.</p>
<p>Xwords: the only thing is that households with college-age children are higher earning than all households, and once you factor in harsh realities (eg kids who are at schools wherein 80% of the graduates are not literate at gradation aren’t going to be ready forTufts), it becomes clear that it’s not 5%. </p>
<p>Factor out all households with 85 year olds living on Social Security, all households that are a grad student or a recent grad. Leave yourself with middle-aged people with kids. Factor out any household wherein the kid stands no chance of being able to do the work (eg, inner cities, Detroit, or a totally dysfunctional household). Then so your percentage calculation.</p>
<p>Gah! 51%, 41%, whatever. I should’ve applied early decision. I was extremely close, but chose not to because I liked the idea of shopping around for aid and was confident in my app. Now I’m sitting on the wait list hoping that the demographic yield ends up tilted in my favor, i.e. a low percentage of students from New Mexico choose to enroll. </p>
<p>If I was denied ED in December, I would’ve still had time to apply to other schools (y’all know how it works) and if I was accepted but there ended up being no way I could afford Tufts come May 1st, the deadline for applications at the University of New Mexico is in June (which is awesome both in a convenient and hilarious way). Oh well, it’s a decision I’ll have to live with. I’m sure I’ll love college whether it’s at Brandeis, UNM, or Tufts (don’t stop believing), or anywhere else. </p>
<p>But maybe if I take the Flying Spaghetti Monster emblem off the back of my car and start going to church it’ll have some effect on making the unlikely a reality. Worth a shot.</p>
<p>While I once thought that anything over about 35% of an incoming class was on the high side for ED admissions, that is no longer the case (and hasn’t been for some time).
Barnard is over 44%, Brown is at 37%, Cornell at 39%, Dartmouth over 41%, Duke over 44%, JHU at 41%, Middlebury 42%, Northwestern over 43%, and Penn was recently in the 47-49% range, but no longer reports that statistic. (I wonder why.)
So when viewed in comparison to other schools - including even the non-HYP Ivies (for whomever thinks that’s important) - 41% is definitely not “extremely high.”</p>