<p>Do you guys think its a good thing or bad for the school reputiatinon? On the one hand its good since better yield means greater selectivity next year. On the other hand more students means that student/faculty ratio is going to go up.
Do you think Amherst planned this?</p>
<p>The change in student faculty ratio wont be significant; especially on an individual scale. Admissions will most likely be corrected in future years, as this years overenrollment probably represents an upward shift in the public perception of Amherst.</p>
<p>That and Amherst has gotten some very good publicity as of late, being mentioned repeatedly in the WSJ and NYTimes as being extremely selective. The NYTimes article on Harvard's review of their undergrad program, and the reference to Amherst as the "ideal" when it comes to teaching, will definately help Amherst's reputation.</p>
<p>Amherst will just admit significantly less kids next year. Overenrolling will just be a bit of a logistical headache for them. Their overenrollment is par for the course this year, what with other equally prestigious schools not using their waitlist at all.</p>
<p>But what if this was part of the grand Marxist plan? ) to increase enrollment</p>
<p>this was not part of Marx's plan. they were aiming for a class size of 440, and they accepted the appropriate number of kids to yield approximately that class size based on previous years' yield rates. what went wrong is that more kids chose amherst than admissions would have anticipated.</p>
<p>true dat true</p>
<p>So has Marx's plan not begun?? I thought a key feature of that plan was to expand class size by 20 students . .</p>
<p>The aim of 440 is probably evidence of his plan already in place. Amherst has ~1600 students, for an average of ~400 in previous classes.</p>
<p>As for the reputation, I think it looks good--they still had low acceptance rate but a high yield. 40 extra kids is probably not going to significantly affect class quality.</p>
<p>Actually there are 433 kids in the current first year class so 440 represents a tiny increase (unless there was overenrollment in the class of 2010 too). And the total number of Amherst students is currently 1648. Assuming attrition of about 5% per class, that translates into roughly 430 per class.</p>
<p>now there are over 480...tiny increase? its almost 10 percent</p>
<p>this increase in class size was UNINTENTIONAL. they had a stated aim of 440 kids for the freshman class, which is approximately equal to previous class sizes (as stated before, class of '10 is 433 kids). </p>
<p>the recommended increase in class size by the Committee on Academic Priorities was just that - a recommendation. the CAP report included numerous other suggestions, and the college had made no decision on which policies to adopt. meetings were still taking place even as admissions decisions were being made. </p>
<p>simply put, there is no way that this class size increase could have been a result of the CAP report.</p>
<p>Yeah, there are over 480 according to the website, and even with summer melt, there will still be at least 470-75. This increase was definitely not intentional, and is all about an increased yield (probably in part because of the beautiful weather on accepted students weekend, compared to the rain last year, and the good press Amherst has been getting recently). I'll be curious to see if there is a higher percentage of low-income students in this class given the extra people who enrolled (since that was the reason for CAP's plan to increase the class size).</p>
<p>Lemonjello,
good point</p>
<p>...while the Williams yield dropped a few percent this year:(</p>
<p>If the Williams yield dropped this year, could have been due to the bad press of the "poster scandal." Bad timing with accepted students, many of whom may have been deciding between the rwo schools.</p>
<p>what "poster scandal"?</p>
<p>A student at Williams and her non-student boyfriend in his late 20's posted pictures of Hitler on students' doors, and the poster graphics were based upon a previous poster advertising the campus event for Holocaust Memorial Day. She did stuff like take the Star of David from the Holocaust poster and reshaped it into a marijuana leaf. But the main thing was that students woke up and found big pictures of Hitler on their own doors. Then a Jewish student group called a meeting, held in the town, but the campus administrators didn't attend, so there was some criticism that they were silent. The girl maintained it was her free speech right. I'm not from Williams so I'm only reporting what I heard elsewhere. Sounded ugly, and something the college admin should have addressed. There was some identification of the boyfriend with racist organizations, and the girl remained angrily attached to her right to do this without any accountability to anyone else.</p>
<p>check out this article about how elite colleges are admitting fewer off the waitlist this year.apparently Amherst expected a yield of 36% which turned out to be around 40 %. </p>
<p>Yeah, and it also says that Amherst said that they are admitting a grand total of 0 people, which just disappoints me that the one waitlist I stayed on was the one that I had absolutely no shot of getting off of.</p>
<p>Does anybody have a link that shows that 480 people have enrolled in the class of '11 at Amherst? Or was this information revealed only to accepted or waitlisted students?</p>