<p>
[quote]
Again, the above information concening yield and acceptance rates is outdated and in some cases incorrect.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But how off is the data? If the current data is different, it's only incrementally.</p>
<p>God bless information asymmetries that make the Ivies what they are!</p>
<p>Big surprise for a very low yield for Caltech. Maybe MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, CMU and Cornell took those passers away.</p>
<p>
The data you posted for Penn is actually for the class entering Fall 2005 (acceptance rate of 20.8%). Penn's acceptance rate for the class entering Fall 2006 was 17.7%, and for the class entering Fall 2007 it was 16.1%. The yield for the class entering Fall 2007 was 66.5%.</p>
<p>
[quote]
WOW, 66% of the people that could go to Chicago don't?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Perhaps the new financial aid initiative will change this picture for University of Chicago. Quite a few of my son's friends were admitted to Chicago, and every one of them really wanted to attend, but those relying on need-based aid found far better offers elsewhere, and at least one found a far better merit offer elsewhere. Not one ended up enrolling at Univ. of Chicago.</p>
<p>Caltech even offers merit money....</p>
<p>
[quote]
I also found it interesting that only one private college outside of the NE made it into the top 12. That school was ND
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Stanford is not in the northeast.</p>
<p>chronicidal,
You're absolutely correct-sorry for the error. Still a pretty impressive record for the Ivies though with all 8 in the top 12 privates. </p>
<p>kyledavid,
The yield numbers for the publics look impressive on a blended basis, but reality hits when you look at their OOS yield numbers. For strong state universities, it is obvious why they have high IS yields, but from the data that I have seen, the OOS yields of the most competitive publics commonly are 30% or below. </p>
<p>temima,
Thank you for your consistent, wonderful contributions. It would be even more helpful if you were to add (or correcting if you feel that an error has been made) to the thread by providing data on any of the schools, perhaps even for your favorite school, Johns Hopkins. I have not been able to locate the CDS for Johns Hopkins (current or historical) and would really like to understand better the numbers that make up their low acceptance rates and comparatively low enrollment yields.</p>
<p>
[quote]
For strong state universities, it is obvious why they have high IS yields, but from the data that I have seen, the OOS yields of the most competitive publics commonly are 30% or below.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, yes, that's to be expected. For the very few who get in OOS, they would pay as much as they would for a private, and they're most likely not offered much, or any, financial aid. The fact that they're able to attract even that many is impressive, so you have to put it in perspective. It's just like LACs: none have a yield anywhere near the tippy-top privates (HYPSM); the top ones have yields right up the alley of Berkeley, Cornell, etc. But to judge those yields as inferior to HYPSM would be wrong; comparatively, those are pretty awesome. So you'd have to look at public OOS yields comparatively, too.</p>
<p>Also, since the majority of those accepted are in-state, we would need to look at geography, so we'd also look at the yield of east-coast students at, say, Stanford. I daresay it'd be much lower than the overall yield.</p>
<p>The yields as reported are very misleading, especially for schools with ED programs where essentially the ED yield is 100% which causes the total yield to become highly inflated. This is particularly true for Ivies such as Penn, Brown, Cornell, Columbia and Dartmouth and even Princeton. Yield is also inflated through the use of a waiting list which often has a near 100% yield. True accounting for comparison purposes would therefore eliminate the candidates acepted through ED as well as the waiting list. A truly representative yield can easily be calculated from the CDS for each school. </p>
<p>Some schools like Chicago and Caltech who do not have any binding ED programs would actually rank higher if the yields were compared at the RD level where candidates actually have a choice. At the RD level only HYSM have a yield over 50%.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Yield is also inflated through the use of a waiting list which often has a near 100% yield.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, not many are taken off the waiting list at top colleges, so it wouldn't make much of a difference.</p>
<p>Brown accepts the least ED-ers in the Ivy League. By contrast, Penn routinely accepts half the entering class through the ED route, vastly boosting their yield rate. This is one of the many reasons Penn is accused of "cheating" in the USNWR rankings.</p>
<p>Although Brown is known to make very liberal use of the waiting list. In 2005-2006, 99 students or 8% of enrolled students were accepted at Brown through the waiting list. The same year, Brown accepted 571 students or 41% through ED . Together with the 8% admitted through the waiting list, nearly 50% of enrolled students were admitted under a largely binding basis.</p>
<p>
[quote]
actually no, I said what I meant.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Then compare the math/science rankings at Harvard and MIT and you will find no significant difference.</p>
<p>cellardweller,
I think you make a very good point about ED and its impact on the reported yield rates. I would agree that it does distort the overall number and sometimes significantly. And dcircle's examples of U Penn and Brown are well made and support your point. But should a college be penalized in the yield measurement if they have a lot of qualified students willing to sign up early on in the admissions cycle? I think perhaps using the overall number is still best while maybe giving a shout-out (or maybe even some comparative quantitative boost?) to those colleges that employ EA or no early programs at all and still end up with high yields. The likely result, as you suggest, is that HYPSM, owing to their highest levels of prestige and perceived quality, will end up at the top and then a noticeable gap to everyone else. </p>
<p>Perhaps more interesting than the absolute currrent ranking by yields would be how the yield rates are changing as colleges change their admisssions process and their reputations rise/decline among college matriculates. For example, it will be very interesting to see how Princeton does this year as well as U Virginia, given that both colleges have eliminated ED and any early admissions programs vs last year when they took in 1/3 or more of their classes that way. </p>
<p>Again, if anyone has any historical data that they can post about various of these "top" colleges, then please provide. Thanks.</p>
<p>kyledavid,
Part of the difficulty in comparing acceptance and yield rates at top publics to top privates is that the publics very often have different levels of achievement required by different groups of applicants. IS students are usually held to a lower standard and so making the direct statistical comparison to the top privates for IS students alone may be giving them more credit than is warranted. And of course there is a very large financial benefit to staying in state, so the yield numbers benefit strongly from this. OTOH, the OOS applicants/enrollees are very much worthy of such standing and are the ones that likely have the most choices across a variety of colleges. But of course, the cost for the OOS public college student is often not hugely discounted from private college rates. </p>
<p>As for geographical yield, you and I can only guess, but I would tend to agree with you that geography matters in ultimate matriculation decisions. Frankly, when I look across the college landscape, I am continually impressed with the adcomms of the top colleges and their abilty to manage their enrollment class sizes so well. In such an uncertain, fluid environment for the applicants and the colleges, the colleges rarely seem to miss their enrollment targets by much.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any insights into whether private education systems promotes elitism more so than public systems? It always seems interesting to me how most of the developed countries have a solid public system of higher education that charges their citizens fees of moderate to none, yet the US is somewhat dominated by private institutions of higher learning where, frankly, a large sum of expenses is to be incurred to attend. I understand that most top tier private universities also offers excellent financial aid to its accepted students, but the numbers nonetheless remain what they are.</p>
<p>I dare not make a statement of what is elite and what is not as I simply do not possess enough knowledge of the structures of higher education in various developed countries to pass a judgment, there could very well be a different system in place that'd make a public university more elite than any others. I'm very curious, however, as to how everything works in the US compared to the others.</p>
<p>Anyone care to shed some light onto this issue?</p>
<p>temima,
1. I have looked on the Johns Hopkins website. Johns Hopkins either does not publish its CDS or I am not looking in the right place. I asked the school several days ago if they publish one and I never got a response. If you have the link and wish to inform us of its public existence by actually providing a link, then that would be a constructive contribution. </p>
<ol>
<li> Re the quality of the information that one gets from sources like collegeboard.com, USNWR, etc, I believe that you do a disservice to the vast audience using these sources in your continuous attempts to cast doubt over their veracity. Are you seriously suggesting that their information is broadly wrong because they have an incorrect date for submission of test scores? Is that your proof?<br></li>
</ol>
<p>By this point of our exchange, I think it is perfectly clear to all where one should put their confidence.</p>
<p>hawkette:</p>
<p>I maintain that the overall yield is meaningless because of the ease in which it is distorted by ED and waiting lists. If yields are going to be compared and serve as a measure of relative desirability by students you simply cannot calculate it the way you did and expect to derive some meaningful ranking. This is partially why it is no longer used as a measure of quality in most rankings. RD yields are on the other hand comparable. There is still distortion because of merit aid incentives, but the effect is at the margins. </p>
<p>
[quote]
But should a college be penalized in the yield measurement if they have a lot of qualified students willing to sign up early on in the admissions cycle?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Do you seriously believe that schools without ED would have any difficulty attracting qualified applicants to sign up early if they switched to ED. The evidence is rather the opposite, ED tends to attract a slightly less qualified pool of applicants than RD which benefits from signing up for a binding admission program. They essentially get a bonus for applying ED. ED programs always involve a compromise. For a college to operate without one requires a strong level of self confidence. A RD yield of 30% is more significant than a total yield of 40% with ED. </p>
<p>RD is where the rubber meets the road. The RD yield helps answer the basic question of where students who have a choice elect to matriculate.</p>
<p>
Brown accepts the least ED-ers in the Ivy League. By contrast, Penn routinely accepts half the entering class through the ED route, vastly boosting their yield rate. This is one of the many reasons Penn is accused of "cheating" in the USNWR rankings.
</p>
<p>Penn admitted 48% of the Class of 2011 through ED. With respect to the rest of the acceptances--which by definition were RD and not binding on the admitted applicants--Penn's yield rate was 50.4%:</p>
<p>Penn:</a> Undergraduate Admissions: Statistics for the Class of 2010</p>
<p>Penn's RD yield is the highest among the Ivies after HYP (e.g., it's higher than Brown's RD yield). Additionally, up until this year, Princeton admitted a similarly high percentage of its class through ED. Anyone who knows anything about the facts would not single out Penn as "cheating" in the USNWR rankings because of its use of ED, any more than one would accuse Princeton of having "cheated" through its extensive use of ED.</p>
<p>Also, HYSM are obviously not the only schools with RD yields over 50%. Furthermore, Penn made very limited use (20-30 admits) of its waiting list for the Class of 2011.</p>
<p>It helps to know the facts. :)</p>