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What do they care about yield? They have a wait-list that they can always tap into.
MIT, with its nonrestrictive EA, has about the same yield as Harvard, and rarely ever admits anyone from wait-list, so their yield must be predictable enough.
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Brenzelâs comment about Caltech wasnât about legacy but the fact that diversity is not one of their goals. He was contrasting it with MIT which did (before the Supreme Court decision) have such a goal. The discussion was getting off the topic of the podcast so they dropped it
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It is still easier if they need to use the wait list less.
Also, wait lists do not help in an overyield situation. The remedies for overyield are limited to stricter interpretation of admission conditions (regarding grades in in-progress courses and the like) or paying students to defer.
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Itâs more than just a few percentage points. The study that is the focus of this thread found that legacy status increases chance of admission by an average of 4x at Ivy+ colleges, after controlling for test score, academic and non-academic ratings, race, gender, etc. The Harvard lawsuit found analysis found legacy status increased chance of admission by an average of 6x (more in rebuttal analysis), with full controls. Without this strong advantage, there would be a huge drop in portion legacies.
However, this does not mean that eliminating legacy preference is going to have a dramatic change on the racial diversity of the class. As the study highlights, there would be a more significant impact on portion of class that is top 1% income or top 0.1% income. The author singles out legacy boost as the most influential single factor in âexcessâ portion of class that is top 1%, after controlling for test scores.
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Brenzel has a different perspective The âhysteria â over legacy is about one group of elites getting worked up over another elite groupâs perceived advantage. Itâs so unfair! Itâs sucking all the attention away from our disgraceful public schools
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Exactly. And, even in a world where the only approach undertaken is âletâs accept fewer now so as to more or less guarantee that we undershootâ and then just take the rest from the WL, youâre now going to your ânext tierâ of applicants by definition.
(BTW another âremedyâ for overshooting is increasing density e.g. two in a single, 3 in a double, which, ugh. And, has already largely been done).
Also, kind of a surprising take to ask âwhat do they care about yield?â Like, itâs become the stat seemingly most focused on for some time now (beyond USNWR rank of courseâŠ)
This is not what the Chetty study has now shown us.
Thereâs a great graphic in there somewhere that shows that legacy applicants had a very small difference in acceptance rate to non-legacy applicants for colleges they were not a legacy at.
But the legacy boost was massive.
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If they are the same people they would otherwise admit, then I donât really see the difference.
That was a rhetorical question. Thanks for making my point for me 
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Oh, I know. I was just summarizing what former Yale dean Jeffrey Brenzel claimed on the podcast (because someone wanted a summary.) I donât agree with Brenzel at all.
That only handles dorm issues. Overyield can also mean that some classes will be over enrolled, so either they will have to be larger than desired, or some students will be excluded from them. That same could apply to popular majors.
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Except theyâre not otherwise they wouldâve admitted them in the first place rather than WL them.
Itâs very difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on not understanding it. ~Upton Sinclar
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Of course was just adding to your list. And also why I put the word in quotes 
On the question of whether ED is having an effect in suppressing admission of students at the middle levels of wealth, I would note only that if this were so you would expect to see a divergence among the schools represented in Figure A.4 of the study, whereas all of them show roughly the same dip at roughly the 70-80 percentile. Chicago, which definitely does have ED, as @TheVulcan has noted, seems to be middle of the pack so far as I can interpret the lines for the schools, which more or less converge.
I was responding to your point about accepting fewer applications than they otherwise would if they werenât concerned about overshooting:
Besides, donât all these schools routinely say that their WL applicants are just as qualified and âable to do the work hereâ?
Amazing how little moral currency gets left when one goes around squandering it.
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If you are accepting fewer then you are de facto prioritizing. And even if that were not the case (which it is) youâre now also having to compete with another school for those kids who, having been accepted elsewhere, begin to âlove the school that loves you.â And beyond becoming emotionally invested sooner or later are also financially invested owed to non refundable deposits.
ETA: and Iâm fact, yielding kids off the WL is a thing with its own distinct strategy, which at the end of the day will often prioritize the kid who will yield over another you may actually prefer. Not remotely optimal.
As to your second comment, it only holds if you reduce the qualification to âcan do the workâ which has been amply demonstrated is part of but not remotely all that can and does get considered.
That has no effect on the quality of the additional applicants you are deciding to waitlist.
This is no quantum mechanics. There is no measurement problem. They are still the same people they would be had you admitted them.
I understand that in the end, these are all games of money and rankings. I just donât like it when schools not only pretend otherwise, as is their wont, but expect their presumably very intelligent applicants (and their families) to believe it.
Except that it does. Whether the adcom draws the line at 500, 1000, 2000 or wherever, a preference is being expressed. Whatever combination of qualities (and IPs) theyâre looking for are best fit by that 500, 1000, or 2000, and less so by everyone else even if they can do the work and exhibit qualities which are still good and sufficient but nonetheless different.
You obviously donât like this world as it exists. But it exists none the less.
Except as Iâve pointed out, theyâre not. Owed to the competition problem at the very least. Once youâve WLâd them, you risk losing them. No school is 100% yield off the WL, not functionally (I qualify bc many schools will call and ask if youâll yield before technically accepting you off the WL; the point is some kids say No at that time for any number of reasons).
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