<p>For all practical purposes, admissions from the waiting list are binding. It is a well known game. They won't take you off the waiting list if you don't enroll. With 20-30 admits from the waiting list, the true RD yield for Penn in 2007 was less than 50%.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>At least for Penn, that is not true. As the Dean of Admissions reported to the Trustees regarding the Class of 2011:</p>
<p>
[quote]
About 48% of the class was admitted during early decision, and for the first time the early decision pool of admitted and enrolled students was stronger than the regular decision pool of admitted and enrolled students.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>See page 6: <a href="http://www.archives.upenn.edu/primdocs/upa/upa1_1/2000to09/20070615tr.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.archives.upenn.edu/primdocs/upa/upa1_1/2000to09/20070615tr.pdf</a></p>
<p>The ED pools are often self-selecting, highly qualified, and highly motivated.</p>
<p>Again, it helps to know the facts. :)</p>
<p>
Barely, if at all. There were 2459 RD admits, and 1239 RD matriculants (assuming that there was a 100% yield for ED admits, which of course there wasn't--at least a few end up not attending). If we assume that 30 of the RD admits were off of the waiting list--which I believe is on the high side--that would leave 1219 RD matriculants out of 2419 RD/non-waiting-list admits, for a yield in that group of 49.8%. However, excluding waiting list admits from the RD yield is really a bit disingenuous since, unlike ED applicants, they are not contractually bound to accept Penn's offer once it has been made (and have real alternatives at that time as they presumably have been admitted to other schools).</p>
<p>At this point, you're really splitting hairs.</p>
<p>But facts get in the way of such a good anti-penn narrative!</p>
<p>
[quote]
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
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So if Brown accepts 41% of their class through ED, and Penn accepts 48% through ED, the difference is a whopping 7%...and the rest of the Ivy League fits in the same bracket. That Penn should be called out for this is absurd.</p>
<p>
[quote]
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
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I think it should be pointed out that other countries' higher education systems also promote elitism, just a different kind of elitism. For example, it is far more difficult to simply get into * any* university in Europe, as there are few private universities and the public universities are extremely selective - far more so than the US public universities. Furthermore, students in many European countries are 'tracked' at a young age and segregated into groups, some of which are designated as worthy of going to college, and others that are not and will instead be shunted to a trade/vocational school. If you don't happen to be placed in the college track, then, you're just not going to be able to go to college (at least, not unless you leave your country). </p>
<p>The upshot is that a significantly lower percentage of people in most Western European countries go to college than do Americans (Gersemann 2005). For example, I believe something like 10-15% of all Germans age 25+ are college graduates, compared to 27% of Americans age 25+. {Now, granted, part of the reason for that is that the European K-12 system is better such that Europeans don't really need college as much as Americans do. But that's not the fault of American colleges. There is strong evidence to indicate that the US college system is simply more open and available than the systems in most European countries.} </p>
<p>The upshot is that I would say that those other countries are just elitist as the US is, just in a different way. Sure, if you happen to be a German kid who gets tracked into the college system and then you happen to get admitted to the top universities in Germany, you're golden. You'll get an excellent education at a dirt-cheap price. But what if you're in the majority of German kids who are not tracked into the college system? Then that means that, unless you're willing to leave Germany for another country (i.e. the US), you won't get to to go college at all. I don't know about you, but that seems rather elitist to me.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there are too many kids going to college in the US who should NOT be going...They end up not graduating, taking 6 years to graduate, or graduate and then end up with relatively low paying entry jobs in fields by happenstance. The NYTimes (not my favorite newspaper) had an editorial written by some professor recently stating that many kids would have been better off financially and in terms of long term happiness if they had gone to a trade school. While Europeans do not have the choices Americans do in terms of college, many college applicants would be benefitted by a European concept.</p>
<p>
[quote]
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.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, let me tell you this. There are indeed thousands of students at the best private schools like HYPSM who are indeed getting full merit rides, and it has nothing to do with financial aid. The vast vast majority of these students are middle class and up, with some of them even coming from families of millionaires, or are even millionaires by their own hand, yet are still getting full merit rides from top private schools. </p>
<p>Impossible, you say? Ridiculous? Except for Stanford sports, HYPSM don't give out merit aid, do they? Sakky, you must have lost your mind, right?</p>
<p>Actually, I have not lost my mind. It is not at all ridiculous. In fact, these merit rides are given out as a matter of course. What I am talking about are the financial packages given out by HYPSM and other top private schools to the doctoral students. The vast majority of these students will receive some sort of financial package which usually pays for all tuition and provides a stipend without regard for your financial status. For example, I know a guy who had become extremely rich from starting his own wealth management firm and before that was a highly successful management consultant at Bain and McKinsey, and then decided (now that he's old and has made all the money he needs) to return to school and complete his doctorate at Harvard so that he can become a college professor and enjoy an academic lifestyle, as he clearly doesn't feel that he has anything left to prove in the private sector. Yet, despite him being extremely wealthy, Harvard is paying him a full doctoral stipend anyway. </p>
<p>The point is, even if you're not poor enough to qualify for financial aid, you can still indeed go to the very best private schools in the world like HYPSM and not have to pay so much as a dime. You just do so for graduate school. And the fact is, not only do many of those schools actually have more graduate students (and hence, more open spots) than they do undergrads, but they're also more grad-focused anyway. In particular, Harvard, Stanford, and to some extent MIT run arguably better grad programs than they do undergrad programs.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Unfortunately, there are too many kids going to college in the US who should NOT be going...They end up not graduating, taking 6 years to graduate, or graduate and then end up with relatively low paying entry jobs in fields by happenstance. The NYTimes (not my favorite newspaper) had an editorial written by some professor recently stating that many kids would have been better off financially and in terms of long term happiness if they had gone to a trade school. While Europeans do not have the choices Americans do in terms of college, many college applicants would be benefitted by a European concept.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Aha, but this is an argument for elitism (however you want to define it). </p>
<p>The point is that the European higher education system is also elitist, just in a different way from the US system. Now, whether that elitism is a good or bad thing is a separate question. But we shouldn't kid ourselves to think that the European system isn't elitist. Take a German guy who can't get into college because he wasn't tracked into the proper system when he was a kid and try to convince that guy that the German system isn't elitist.</p>
<p>"i'm very surprised to see harvey mudd, considered the most selective lac by usnwr, being last on the list."</p>
<p>It really isn't too surprising since the admissions pool is highly self-selective. Mudd is a specialty place and isn't mainstream like HYPS so they average student applicant has higher stats than other comparable institutions.</p>
<p>I did a little more digging and was able to find some historical acceptance rate and yield data. The following is taken from the 1997 Best Colleges issue (published 9/19/96). I only have data for the top 25 national universities in that year. Four of our the schools that were mentioned in the opening post (UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA and USC) were not ranked in the Top 25 in that year and thus cannot be included in this comparison. If anyone has the issue and can supply their acceptance rate and yield data and/or the data for the LACs, then please post. </p>
<p>Here is the data for the colleges that I have for both years:</p>
<p>ACCEPTANCE RATE </p>
<p>Most Recent , 1997 USNWR , Change in Acceptance Rate , </p>
<p>19% , 56% , 37% , Wash U
40% , 71% , 31% , U Chicago
35% , 58% , 23% , Vanderbilt
28% , 43% , 15% , Tufts
37% , 51% , 14% , Emory
14% , 27% , 13% , MIT
21% , 33% , 12% , U Penn
57% , 69% , 12% , U Michigan
13% , 24% , 11% , Columbia
30% , 40% , 10% , Northwestern
10% , 20% , 10% , Yale
13% , 23% , 10% , Dartmouth
35% , 43% , 8% , Johns Hopkins
12% , 19% , 7% , Stanford
20% , 27% , 7% , Caltech
27% , 34% , 7% , Cornell
32% , 39% , 7% , Notre Dame
15% , 21% , 6% , Brown
24% , 29% , 5% , Duke
38% , 42% , 4% , U Virginia
39% , 43% , 4% , Wake Forest
11% , 14% , 3% , Princeton
9% , 12% , 3% , Harvard
25% , 26% , 1% , Rice
22% , 22% , 0% , Georgetown
37% , 35% , -2% , U North Carolina</p>
<p>27% , na , na , UC Berkeley
39% , na , na , Carnegie Mellon
27% , na , na , UCLA
27% , na , na , USC</p>
<p>ENROLLMENT YIELD </p>
<p>Most Recent , 1997 USNWR , Improvement in Yield , </p>
<p>65% , 48% , 17% , U Penn
60% , 43% , 17% , Columbia
70% , 54% , 16% , Yale
67% , 53% , 14% , MIT
67% , 55% , 12% , Stanford
37% , 26% , 11% , Emory
39% , 30% , 9% , Vanderbilt
32% , 23% , 9% , Wash U
68% , 60% , 8% , Princeton
56% , 48% , 8% , Brown
55% , 49% , 6% , Notre Dame
32% , 26% , 6% , Johns Hopkins
50% , 46% , 4% , Dartmouth
78% , 75% , 3% , Harvard
34% , 31% , 3% , U Chicago
39% , 36% , 3% , Wake Forest
43% , 40% , 3% , Duke
41% , 38% , 3% , Northwestern
41% , 39% , 2% , U Michigan
46% , 45% , 1% , Cornell
51% , 50% , 1% , U Virginia
37% , 38% , -1% , Rice
57% , 58% , -1% , U North Carolina
31% , 32% , -1% , Tufts
47% , 51% , -4% , Georgetown
37% , 43% , -6% , Caltech</p>
<p>41% , na , na , UC Berkeley
23% , na , na , Carnegie Mellon
39% , na , na , UCLA
32% , na , na , USC</p>
<p>hawkette,
Your "most recent" acceptance rates appear to be taken from the 2005-06 academic year (i.e., 2007 USNWR). I checked.</p>
<p>The "most recent" enrollment yield may be old too. I don't have data for the other schools, but for "Michigan's Fall 2006 entering class:</p>
<p>Applications received: 25,733
Admissions granted: 12,196
New students enrolled: 5,418"</p>
<p>Thus for the 2006-07 academic year,
acceptance rate = 47.4%
enrollment yield = 44.4%</p>
<p>Sakky,
The best deal for a "free" Harvard education is to get an EMBA.</p>
<p>Below is the RD yield for Ivies + SM as compared to total yields for class of 2011.</p>
<p>Harvard is still in a league of its own, although it bunches up just below with MIT, Stanford and Yale in that order all close to 60%. Princeton, interestingly with an ED program until this year was somewhat lower in the RD round at 54%. Most likely, Princeton's overall yield will probably drop below the 65% mark as they eliminate ED. Harvard's yield will probably also drop by a few points.</p>
<p>Virtually all ED schools have a significant drop averaging 15% between their total yields and their RD yields, with Penn having the highest difference and Dartmouth the lowest. Clearly these schools would have a major drop in their overall yields by following the lead of H&P and eliminating ED.</p>
<p>It does show how misleading a total yield is until you unpack the numbers. </p>
<pre><code> Yield Rd Yield % Diff
</code></pre>
<p>Harvard 79.5% 75.0% 4.5%
MIT 68.9% 59.4% 9.5%
Stanford 69.8% 59.2% 10.6%
Yale 70.0% 58.9% 11.1%
Princeton 69.5% 54.2% 15.3%
Penn 66.5% 49.8% 16.7%
Columbia 62.7% 47.2% 15.5%
Brown 55.3% 41.7% 13.6%
Dartmout 50.8% 40.3% 10.5%
Cornell 47.0% 36.1% 10.9%</p>
<p>^ You've backed out a high-side estimate of waiting list admits from Penn's RD yield. Have you done the same thing for all the other schools on your list, several of which had a significantly higher proportion of waiting list admits among their RD admits than did Penn?</p>
<p>I think it's been mentioned but the Stanford data is outdated. Acceptance rate was lower (10%) and yield passed YP to 71% for class of 2011.</p>
<p>Class</a> of 2011 currently numbers 1,745
Edit: citing source</p>
<p>I used the official data from the Stanford 2007-2008 CDS (Fall 2007) on their web site. It shows 2,464 admits for 1,722 enrolled for a 69.88% official yield. </p>
<p>For all schools I backed out any ED, EA or waiting lists admits which are not RD admits. The school with the largest number of waiting list admits was Brown with 106.</p>
<p>I have been trying to find the Common Data Sets for many colleges. If you have them and can post a link, then please do so. My hope is to get updated acceptance rates and yield rates for all of the colleges below.</p>
<p>Using MorsVenit's data from above, which is verified by their publicly available Common Data Set, I have posted below Stanford's acceptance and yield numbers for their class entering in Fall 2007. If you have data on the other schools, please update below and please provide documentation of where your data came from. Thanks. </p>
<p>Acceptance Rate for students entering Fall 2007 , Yield Rate , College</p>
<pre><code> Princeton
Harvard
Yale
</code></pre>
<p>10% , 70% , Stanford
U Penn
Caltech
MIT
Duke
Columbia
U Chicago
Dartmouth
Wash U
Cornell
Brown
Northwestern
Johns Hopkins
Rice
Emory
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame
UC Berkeley
Carnegie Mellon
U Virginia
Georgetown
UCLA
U Michigan
USC
U North Carolina
Tufts
Wake Forest</p>
<p>Acceptance Rate for students entering Fall 2007 , Yield Rate , College</p>
<pre><code> Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore
Wellesley
Carleton
Middlebury
Pomona
Bowdoin
Davidson
Haverford
Claremont McK
Wesleyan
Grinnell
Vassar
Harvey Mudd
W&L
Smith
Hamilton
Colgate
US Naval Acad
Oberlin
Colby
</code></pre>
<p>Here is an update with Dartmouth, Cornell, included:</p>
<p>Princeton
Harvard
Yale
10% , 70% , Stanford
U Penn
Caltech
MIT
Duke
Columbia
U Chicago
15%, 52%, Dartmouth
Wash U
21%, 47% Cornell
Brown
Northwestern
Johns Hopkins
Rice
Emory
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame
UC Berkeley
Carnegie Mellon
U Virginia
Georgetown
UCLA
U Michigan
USC
U North Carolina
Tufts
Wake Forest</p>
<p>Acceptance Rate for students entering Fall 2007 , Yield Rate , College</p>
<p>Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore
Wellesley
Carleton
Middlebury
Pomona
Bowdoin
Davidson
Haverford
Claremont McK
Wesleyan
Grinnell
Vassar
Harvey Mudd
W&L
Smith
Hamilton
Colgate
US Naval Acad
Oberlin
Colby</p>
<p>
[quote]
The best deal for a "free" Harvard education is to get an EMBA.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Uh, a Harvard EMBA? What's that?</p>
<p>With thanks to MorsVenit, here are a few more yield numbers that are drawn from the respective college newspapers for Harvard, Yale, MIT and Princeton (Stanford has published their 2007-08 CDS).</p>
<p>na, 68% Princeton
na, 79% Harvard
na, 71% Yale
10% , 70% , Stanford
U Penn
Caltech
na, 69% MIT
Duke
Columbia
U Chicago
15%, 52%, Dartmouth
Wash U
21%, 47% Cornell
Brown
Northwestern
Johns Hopkins
Rice
Emory
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame
UC Berkeley
Carnegie Mellon
U Virginia
Georgetown
UCLA
U Michigan
USC
U North Carolina
Tufts
Wake Forest</p>
<p>Acceptance Rate for students entering Fall 2007 , Yield Rate , College</p>
<p>Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore
Wellesley
Carleton
Middlebury
Pomona
Bowdoin
Davidson
Haverford
Claremont McK
Wesleyan
Grinnell
Vassar
Harvey Mudd
W&L
Smith
Hamilton
Colgate
US Naval Acad
Oberlin
Colby</p>