<p>I just heard of somebody who was turned down by UMich (Deferral) LSA, but was accepted to UPenn Wharton. If this is true, what is going on? I can really think of no justification on the side of the UMich AdCom (besides a REALLY bad essay). I also heard of someone on CC who was accepted to JHU BME (the best BME program in the nation, I can only think Duke could possibly beat it), but was turned down from UMich CoE. These are only two stories amongst the many qualified applicants who were turned down. Full disclosure: I received a deferral myself, but these two cases I present here just seem crazy. I can perhaps understand my deferral, but I cannot understand cases like these.</p>
<p>They want a high yield rate.</p>
<p>Yield rate is the percentage of kids who get accepted that actually end up going to the school.</p>
<p>Colleges can get high yield rates by rejecting people they know won’t actually attend. So if they think that you’re overqualified, and that you are just using them as a backup or safety school and your real dream is some Ivy League, they will reject you.</p>
<p>The school most notorious for this is Wash U in St Louis, but there are countless more. It’s all part of the dirty college game, similar to UChicago, a place with an 8.4% acceptance rate, sending dozens of mail to anyone who got above a 20 on their ACT.</p>
<p>But that might not be the case for Michigan. Last year, Michigan was so incompetent that they literally didn’t finish looking at all of their applications by the notification date, so what they did was defer every single person that they didn’t look at yet. Last year, a lot of people got deferred in december but got accepted in January.</p>
<p>But who knows? Michigan also had too many freshmen last year, they didn’t have enough dorms for all of them. The president said himself they weren’t going to let that happen again. One way of accomplishing that is by accepting less people.</p>
<p>Yup, that is what I was thinking too- their C7 of their Common Data Set does indicate that they take “Level of applicant’s interest” into consideration for admission. </p>
<p><a href=“http://obp.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubdata/cds/cds_2013-2014_umaa.pdf”>http://obp.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubdata/cds/cds_2013-2014_umaa.pdf</a></p>
<p>I find the possible reason for deferrals being that they did not manage to read all the applications very insulting. Students spent A LOT of time on those applications, and most pay an application fee. If this is truly the reason, that would be very disgusting on the part of the AdCom. </p>
<p>We’ll see what happens I guess.</p>
<p>Jeez, didn’t you read the previous thread that you started, OP?</p>
<p>Note that UMich didn’t deny outright, just deferred, @chris2. So no, they’re not going to admit kids who are just using them as a safety and have a <1% chance of actually becoming UMich students, but those kids who demonstrate interest may have an edge in the RD round.
As for the yield game being dirty, keep in mind that a college is trying to form the best class that they can. Only kids who actually accept can help them do that. How does admitting a kid who has a <1% likelihood of actually enrolling serve the college’s interests?</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan, point taken. I realize that UMich has the full right to do this, given that they acknowledge it in the Common Data Set. However, if what @chris2 said about UMich possibly deferring applications they just did not get to has any truth to it- that would be disgusting. </p>
<p>They are notorious for doing this to protect yield rates. </p>