<p>They forgot Yale, obviously. Ooops. It would have been third, with 70%, a scootch above Princeton.</p>
<p>The LAC list is really interesting. None of the standard prestige schools has a yield over 50%, and lots of other schools do. And I would not have thought that Barnard and Williams had essentially the same yield (or that it would be much higher than Amherst's). My sense is that those schools are very good at picking for "fit".</p>
<p>Also interesting is the comparatively very low yield of Cal Tech.</p>
<p>To be fair, one reason Williams has a higher yield than Amherst is that it accepts more of its class early. However, to be fair to Williams, a greater percentage of its class applies early.</p>
<p>Having a kid at each school, I can attest that my experience of the admissions process was that it had everything to do with fit.</p>
<p>Berea's yield is far higher than both Williams and Amherst, and it is much harder to get into to begin with, as about half the U.S. population is disqualified from even applying.</p>
<p>Except for the enrollment managers at schools, yield has little or no significance at all. Why would students pay attention to a figure than is often indirectly proportional to admission is a mystery. </p>
<p>Fwiw, yield varies differently among institutions and might follow a different curve. In the same yield, you may find students that would not consider going anywhere else as well as students who have ... no other choice. </p>
<p>And, that last part, might illustrate the point Mini tried to make. Oh wait, he wanted to say something else.</p>
<p>By the way, the listing of the LAC is hopelessly flawed by mistakes and misrepresentations. It's not the finest hour of US News.</p>
<p>"Except for the enrollment managers at schools, yield has little or no significance at all."</p>
<p>A high yield suggests that it is a first choice school for most students, which may have a positive effect on the student body i.e. I'm here because I want to be, not because I was rejected at the school(s) I really wanted to attend.</p>
<p>Very few schools publish the distributed acceptance and yield curves. Rice does: </p>
<p>Care to calculate how the yield moves as the stats of the accepted students decrease. Compare the yield of the top 2% and the yield of the 11-50% range.</p>
<p>Point taken. I too have noticed that few school publish the distributed acceptance and yield curves, and now I better understand why schools obfuscate the information they choose to provide. Thanks.</p>
<p>These data are a year old, by the way. Also note how well last year's top ED schools (Princeton, Penn, Brown, and Columbia) fared compared with the rest of the similarly-ranked schools.</p>
<p>arcadia-- thanks for posting. would sure love to see these lists with binding ED excluded...to get closer to the question of yield when choices were available...anyone up for some calculations?</p>
<p>PC, while I am ready to cut/paste data in an Excel spreadsheet, in this case you may want to ask yourself how the removal of the ED numbers would make the data presented by USNews any ... better. While it may reinforce the impact of the use of ED among the elite schools, what do you think would an analyzis of the ED rounds reveal at the top 20 or 30 LACs? </p>
<p>What is there to learn (as an outsider) from the numbers of ED at Smith as an example. They routinely accepts close to 80% of all ED applicants and their yield must be over 90%. All in all, how large an impact do those 150 or 200 students have on more than 3,000 students and an accepted pool well above 1,500 students. </p>
<p>What would be next? Analyzing the use of the waiting list to boost the yield? Once you start, there is no end in digging deeper. </p>
<p>Does any of this make us any wiser? </p>
<p>PS I'd be more impressed with USNews if they bothered pressuring Middlebury to count ALL their acceptances and not conveniently discarding the Winter admits to boost their admission rates.</p>
<p>a few quick yield calcs from the class of '11 report along several lines like you cited for Rice, show the same yield patterns, as expected.</p>
<p>Applicant SAT CR
range : yield
750-800 : 32.2%
700-749 : 43.2%
650-699 : 46.3%
600-649 : 51.8%</p>
<p>SAT M and Writing yield distributions were similar.</p>
<p>Interestly, yield for accepted students that were not "class ranked" appears to be significantly higher than yield for those that were ranked: 44.3% versus 37.7%. Likewise, yield for private school acceptees was greater than for public schoolers: 46.9% versus 37.7%. probably a link between those stats as its usually the private schools that don't rank. Not sure on how to interpret these yield numbers, although I'm sure we could come up with a couple of theories.</p>
<p>hmmm....yes, lots to ponder...gut reaction was that from a consumers standpoint, acceptance rates are always interesting when ED is removed, but that logic doesn't necessarily work with yield.....guess I usually just figure out a better question once I'm about 2/3 the way through constructing my spreadsheet :) Jumping to analysis again...</p>
<p>ps...who wins the Williams-Amherst rivalry when ED is removed?</p>
<p>I have noticed that high yield for HYP-type schools is used as evidence of greatness, while high yield for less-famous schools is used as evidence of...Oh, they take everyone.</p>
<p>All in how you spin it. I prefer to think it's all about fit.</p>
<p>For some reason, I like Wheaton's figures. They accept about half of the people who apply, and then about half of the people they accept actually come.</p>
<p>This list makes me feel sorry for admissions officers thinking about how much room they have in their dorms for freshmen at Rochester and Fordham and American University. These are great schools, but of the kids that are accepted, only 17-20% enroll. This requires some pretty perfect guessing, doesn't it? If they over-guess how many will actually come, they can let kids in off the wait list, which is not so bad, I suppose, but if they under-guess and this is a year when a lot of kids really want to come there, there won't be enough dorm rooms...</p>