<p>It may have been made up, but it's not too far from the truth. Middlebury often receives ~300 applications for transfer students and usually admits under 5. I remember reading it in a brochure I took from the admissions office when I visited...</p>
<p>College Pr0w1er, printed in 2005, has the following printed stats for Midd transfers: 234 applicants, 13 accepted, 6 enrolled.</p>
<p>I agree that the % acceptance rate and raw numbers for Midd transfers in 2007 are likely very low. But to cut and paste unattributed quotes as if they were facts is not very helpful. It should be pointed out when it happens.</p>
<p>I have seen the "we received over x00 applications and accepted only y transfers" in several rejection letters. </p>
<p>Amherst: admitted 11 out of over 200.
Bowdoin: admitted 3 out of nearly 200.
Yale: admitted 30 out of over 770.</p>
<p>Did anyone see such a quote in a Midd rejection letter for this year?</p>
<p>This information is available in the college's common data set. For last year (fall 2006), Middlebury received 199 transfer applications, admitted 7, and enrolled 4.</p>
<p>The year before (fall 2005), there were 230 transfer applications, and the college admitted 1.</p>
<p>I don't have the information for this year's class.</p>
<p>If they're going to only accept one person, they mine as well not even bother having transfer admissions.</p>
<p>From what I understand Bowdoin is not going to the wait list</p>
<p>i know someone who got off the waitlist this week</p>
<p>This is to address issues raised in posts 7-10.</p>
<p>Middlebury reports their admission rate as 21.6% from 6,205 applicants and 1,339 acceptances in their ’06-’07 Common Data Set (CDS), resulting in a 21.6% acceptance rate (source section C1: <a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/3225523C-06B4-4A35-ADE9-9E31EAE0A606/0/CDS2006_2007.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/3225523C-06B4-4A35-ADE9-9E31EAE0A606/0/CDS2006_2007.pdf</a> ). The CDS is the basis for all other secondary reports, like US News, and the same data are reported by Middlebury to the feds (<a href="http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cool/index.aspx)%5B/url%5D">http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cool/index.aspx)</a>. The fed report shows 6,184 applicants (almost the same) and an acceptance rate of 21.6%. Middlebury’s fact book (<a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/7263728D-2A5D-4E85-8954-8DC88A58BCF2/0/admissions06.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/7263728D-2A5D-4E85-8954-8DC88A58BCF2/0/admissions06.pdf</a>) reports the same 6,184 applicants, but a September acceptance number of 1,338 (pretty darned close to 1,339) and a September acceptance rate of 22% (21.6% rounded to the nearest percentage point)….but also reports a February acceptance number of 168, no rate given for February acceptance but a combined September + February acceptance rate of 24% ([1,338+168]/6,184 = 24.4%). Note that the Sep & Feb acceptances came out of the same application pool of 6,184. To your question, BrownPlease, Middlebury does NOT include the Febs in their publicly-traded acceptance figures, and therefore does not "significantly raise their rates with the unnecessary February admits."</p>
<p>So there lies the rub….Middlebury includes only September admits in their "official" acceptance rate, with a pool of applicants that also produced some February admits. 21.6% is reported to the world (& US News), but one could argue that a number equivalent in intent with other peer institutions is 24.4%. Not a heck of a lot of difference, but I suspect what folks have a problem with is why do they do this…seems so self-serving. The only answer that I can hypothesize is that the CDS instructions and fed definitions can be interpreted to mean only fall freshman enrollment, effectively excluding Feb enrollment….and how do you separate out the Feb applicants?....well, you can’t. I’m not aware of any other very selective institution like Middlebury having such a large amount of non-Fall freshman enrollees, so I don’t think any other highly selective institution has this problem. One other interpretation of the CDS and fed definitions is to include the Febs in with the next school year’s freshmen…after all, second semester Febs are still freshmen, aren’t they?…and the definition of “first time” used in fed reporting and the CDS is “a student attending any institution for the first time at the undergraduate level”….but doing so would complicate the applications number because the freshman Febs in any given Fall came from a different applicant pool than the September freshmen. No easy answer to this, & I suspect Middlebury’s relatively new admissions director knows of this problem & has bigger fish to fry on changing the reporting processes that he inherited, like straightening out that SAT reporting stuff a year or 2 ago. I think the only answer would be to clarify the CDS & fed reporting definitions.</p>
<p>On a related topic, I believe Middlebury only reports their incoming freshman SATs for their September admits, but do not include the Febs. I do not have any hard proof of this, but the fact book page linked above includes SAT averages (not quartiles as reported in the CDS & elsewhere)…those fact book averages are for September enrollees only, and no separate or combined SAT averages are included for Febs. Also, on Middlebury’s admissions profile (<a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/admissions/applying/classprofile%5B/url%5D">http://www.middlebury.edu/admissions/applying/classprofile</a>) which includes generalized SAT scores for the Class of ‘10, there’s a note implying that only September data are used. Hence, these two data points suggest Middlebury excludes the Febs from public SAT reporting (as they’ve done for acceptance rates, too); therefore, I would bet that the CDS SAT ranges (& those subsequently reported in US News) are September only….this would only matter if the Feb scores were materially different than the September scores, but we have no way of objectively assessing this question. It would be self-serving if the Feb enrollees had substantially lower SAT averages than the September enrollees, as the combined averages & ranges would be lower than those currently publicly reported. Again, I suspect these problems are certainly known by the Midd folks, and due to the uniqueness of their Feb enrollment influence and hazy reporting requirements, they have a tough problem.</p>
<p>while I'm on "reporting"....one other Middlebury reporting question for you....what is Middlebury's official enrollment? Well, I hear the number 2400 bantered about quite a bit...that's what the CDS reports at least. But if you don't exclude off-campus/abroad study (other similar institutions don't)....the number is more like mid 2600's....have a look:
On-campus only: <a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/9A06002A-4B5B-46DA-B1E4-D54A878483EE/0/Falloncampus06.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/9A06002A-4B5B-46DA-B1E4-D54A878483EE/0/Falloncampus06.pdf</a>
On & Off campus: <a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/EA526836-42BB-48D8-8289-7D35A3A5D6F5/0/allfall06.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/EA526836-42BB-48D8-8289-7D35A3A5D6F5/0/allfall06.pdf</a></p>
<p>This reporting anomaly (please tell me if I'm wrong, I have checked out several other colleges & they do not exclude even sizable populations of abroad students) has other potential ramifications to other stats that use total enrollment as a base number (assuming its the CDS enrollment number that's used), like Faculty-student ratio & per student endowment. Yikes!</p>
<p>ps...its easy to critique this stuff because Middlebury provides much data to folks like us. Many colleges are not so forthcoming.</p>
<p>I have also never gotten a good handle on how large, say, the class of '08 at Middlebury is. Do these Feb enrollees graduate in 3 1/2 yrs or are they considered part of the next class? Colgate is the only other similar school I know of that also has Feb Frosh, although it, at least, used to be much smaller as I know my year it was only 11 people.</p>
<p>This year's Febs are considered Class of '11.5. They graduate in four years just like the rest of the class, except they do it in February.</p>
<p>Gellino-- The CDS B3 section gets close to answering your graduating class size question, at least from a historical standpoint. Here's the tally of Bachelor's degrees conferred from the 3 CDS's posted on Middlebury's IR site ( <a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/instres/fall02_cds.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/instres/fall02_cds.htm</a> ):</p>
<p>Number of Bach degrees awarded
7/1/03 to 6/30/04 - 632
7/1/04 to 6/30/05 - 613
7/1/05 to 6/30/06 - 666</p>
<p>So, if one considers a ~94% freshman retention rate, the number of degrees awarded is about right for the amount of September and February students passing through every year. It appears, therefore, that the mid-year graduation of the Febs is counted in this degree total.</p>
<p>Here's a breakdown of amount of Febs as entering freshmen in each year, derived straight from Middlebury's fact book admissions data summary ( <a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/7263728D-2A5D-4E85-8954-8DC88A58BCF2/0/admissions06.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/7263728D-2A5D-4E85-8954-8DC88A58BCF2/0/admissions06.pdf</a> ):</p>
<p>Sch Yr / Ttl Frsh /%Febs
1996 620 15.8%
1997 672 15.3%
1998 683 16.4%
1999 648 18.2%
2000 693 18.6%
2001 622 17.7%
2002 716 18.3%
2003 700 17.1%
2004 694 16.9%
2005 667 17.1%
2006 672 15.6%</p>
<p>As you can see, the Febs do constitute a sizable share of freshmen. In the last 5 years, the number of entering Febs has ranged from 105 to 131. By the way, it appears that Midd is trying to slightly lessen the number of Febs in next year's class to 90 (source: <a href="http://community.middlebury.edu/%7Ephinney/welcome/%5B/url%5D">http://community.middlebury.edu/~phinney/welcome/</a> ), for a total Sep + Feb enrollment of 690.</p>
<p>Using the same base data on entering Sep & Feb freshmen, here's an extrapolated total undergraduate enrollment estimate summing the trailing 4 years of entering freshmen....this ignors dropouts (which would take the enrollment est down), and transfers (which would take the enrollment est up.)</p>
<p>Sch Yr / Est Enrollment (sum of 4 years entering freshmen)
1999 2623
2000 2696
2001 2646
2002 2679
2003 2731
2004 2732
2005 2777
2006 2733</p>
<p>Thorough work as always, Papa. So, I guess Middlebury is much closer to the size of Colgate or Wesleyan and less like Williams or Bowdoin than I thought it was when I was applying.</p>
<p>At any given time, there are around 2,400 students on Middlebury's campus. Febs occupy the rooms of students who are studying abroad or who are otherwise off campus.</p>
<p>Middlebury should be spelled M<em>dd</em>*bury for all the asterisks next to its name.</p>
<p>Perhaps every college should be exactly the same? That way we wouldn't need any asterisks at all.</p>
<p>But are there really more students studying abroad or off campus in the Spring semester than the Fall semester? Feb froshes were only a small component at Colgate and I didn't see the point of it there either. It generally seemed liked the lesser applicants too as I often wondered if it was better to be wait-listed or Feb froshed (definitely allowed to start late or maybe be allowed to start on time). Is that the case at Middlebury too?</p>
<p>More students study abroad in the spring semester. The college has always maintained that Feb admits are no less academically qualified than fall admits. College studies have shown that Febs hold more leadership positions on campus than Septmeber admits, and do as well or better than September admits in terms of GPA. BTW, Middlebury's Feb program has been in place since before U.S. News started ranking colleges.</p>
<p>Honestly, I think being a Feb. admit would be kinda cool. Party with some friends at the state school, travel, coach at your old HS, all that fun. I would like being a Feb. admit somewhere WAY more than being rejected/waitlisted(and the 2% shot that gives you).</p>
<p>SAT Scores: My understanding is that Midd used to report SATs of accepted students and not the actual enrolled freshman class scores. Big difference.</p>
<p>Longhorn--that has never been the case. Middlebury used to only report the SAT I scores for students who submitted them for evalution during the admissions process, but now reports the scores for all students, regardless of whether they were used in admissions or not.</p>