<p>Yield rate is the number of students that got accepted into a UC and actually goes there right?</p>
<p>So whenever a school lists their acceptance rate, if you factor in the yield rate then they're actually accepting more than what their acceptance rate says?</p>
<p>So for example, a school that has 100 applicants, 50% acceptance rate, 50% yield rate.
So that means 50% got accepted but only 50% of those applicants that got accepted actually goes, so that is only 25 students, so UC's admit 25 more to make up for those who did not attend it right?</p>
<p>So to put it short, UC's admit more than what their acceptance rate says so?</p>
<p>I know its a lot to read but thanks for any answers!</p>
<p>No. Using your data, UC’s admit 50% (acceptance rate) X 100 applicants = 50 admission offers handed out (admitted).</p>
<p>Among those 50 admitted applicants, some will take the offer and enroll, some will not. With your data, it means 50% (yield) X 50 admitted candidates = 25 enrolled.</p>
<p>Univ. has control over the acceptance rate (admission committee decides how many admission offers to make in a given year), but no direct control over yield (it’s up to students to enroll or not). This is one of the trickiest issues for adcoms, because Univ. ultimately wants a freshman class size “c”, but in order to get that number Univ. adcoms have to make an (informed) guess about the yield (y) so they admit as many applicants applicants (a) so as: a = (c / y).</p>
<p>Problem is: for a reason I (and many forummites and bloggers and advisors) don’t agree, yield plays an overrated role in USNews ranking, higher yield being perceived as a signal of desirability. In other words, in a lower proportion of students admitted to Harvard is expected to turn off the offer comparing to a 4th tier private for-profit college, in normal conditions.</p>
<p>As universities know this and do react to that, what do they do to pump their yield? They enact Early Decision programs and, even worse, turn back a lot of “overqualified” candidates not likely to attend if they’re unable to compete in Merit Aid. That is why is quite common for Ivy-bound strong applicants to be turned off by immediately lower-tier schools if they don’t have a special hook: a lower yield (e.g., accepting many slightly overqualified candidates most likely to go to the Ivies and having many of them turning off admission offers) would be deemed to make those schools “safeties” or “undesired”.</p>
<p>I would strongly favor the enrollment rate as a more accurate measure of selectiveness, but I don’t see any change soon, especially when the biggest “ranking” novelty in the market was Financial Times’ laughable try, using “Rate My Professors” scores as a 20% weighted component.</p>