<p>Why God; why?</p>
<p>On the contrary, WashU has ignored me for the most part; NU send me quite a bit of mail.</p>
<p>I guess I should have posted links or something? </p>
<p>My apparently not-so-funny joke is rooted in a series of articles that had been posted on here awhile back; Northwestern was setting goals to attract more applicants and lower their acceptance rate. At the time, lots of people made the analogy. </p>
<p>I guess this thread just reminded me of it. </p>
<p>I'll post the links if I find them.</p>
<p>I'm sure a number of schools are trying to attract more applicants and lower their acceptance rate. I think the main flaw with WUSTL is their absolute NEED to waitlist everyone they don't accept... that's just an abuse of the waiting list. Hahaha.</p>
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They're pulling somewhat of a WashU, but to a lesser extent.
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<p>I know this was said in jest, but the situations are hardly similar.</p>
<p>NUs admin has been much less aggressive than WUSTL (much less schools like Duke) with regard to the whole admissions game.</p>
<p>NU adopted the common app. later than most of its competitors and doesnt offer full merit-based scholarships.</p>
<p>WUSTL, in particular, has used a combination of strategic admissions: extensive use of merit aid, two rounds of early admissions, and planned, heavy reliance on the waitlist.</p>
<p>In addition, NU has increased the size of its enrolling classes. WUSTL, otoh, is planning to shrink the size of its classes.</p>
<p>I'd say a 26% admit rate.</p>
<p>(.3 x 21,941) / 25,000 = .26</p>
<p>It makes me wonder, though -- if the class is 2,062 and 6582 were accepted, that means they had a 31% yield, rather low for a top private, especially one with an ED program that ensures 25% of its class.</p>
<p>I also don't think this is anything like WUStL, but rather a genuine interest in the school. Now that a few of the elite ED programs are gone, students are turning to U Chicago and NU and Georgetown and Yale for early programs. It's a good shift, I think, one that may help NU's yield (an elite school with less than a third yield even after binding many students through ED would need it).</p>
<p>^ Yield has dropped as the no. of apps have gone up.</p>
<p>Plus, NU doesn't take as nearly a high no. of EDs as some of its peers.</p>
<p>Shouldn't the yield go up as the # apps go up? As in, the school is more desirable, it's more selective, and is perceived as "better." Or at least the yield would stay the same. Stanford, for example, keeps getting more apps, but the yield has actually gone up. Berkeley too has gotten more apps, and it's gone up slightly. From what I've seen, it either stays the same or goes up, but I've never seen it actually go down.</p>
<p>And perhaps NU doesn't take as high a raw # of EDs as some of the others, but 25% of the student body? That's pretty significant. (Though P'ton was the king of that a while back -- I think it enrolled half of its class through ED.)</p>
<p>^^ raw yield % is not indicative of much of anything except in this case that northwestern is sharing more cross-admits with HYP-types than in the past.</p>
<p>This is evidenced by the fact that the SAT average went up by a significant margin, meaning that while yield is dropping, the quality of applicants is rising, meaning it is now entering the bottom of the top peer group of schools (ie: it still loses cross-admit battles with HYP but is now sharing many more of the same applicants)</p>
<p>It's great the NU is sharing applicants, but that really doesn't matter if NU isn't able to attract them.</p>
<p>Yield may be indicative of the students' perception of it. It's most indicative of NU's abilities to predict who will enroll and who won't.</p>
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This is evidenced by the fact that the SAT average went up by a significant margin
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<p>Correlation does not imply causation.</p>
<p>Plus, it doesn't make sense that the average SAT of enrolled students would go up even though the HYP-type-level students are enrolling elsewhere.</p>
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Plus, it doesn't make sense that the average SAT of enrolled students would go up even though the HYP-type-level students are enrolling elsewhere.
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It does when there's an increase in students applying to colleges. An increase in students -> increase in HYP-type-level students + HYP type schools holding class sizes the same = increase in average SATs of enrolled students at other elite schools.
Not a perfect formula but you get the point.</p>
<p>Well Northwestern must be doing something right since it now has the third most freshman National Merit scholars (249) in the country. It must be attracting its fair share of HYP-type-level students considering it has more freshman National Merit scholars than Y (183) or P (179) and is catching up to H (285).</p>
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Correlation does not imply causation.
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</p>
<p>what? are you just quoting lines you remember from 11th grade statistics class?</p>
<p>The overall number of national merit scholars at HYP and Northwestern are not comparable, because HYP do not sponsor their own merit scholars. The figure comparable to HYP at Northwestern this year is 63, still a formidable amount. See: The</a> Chronicle of Higher Education</p>
<p>To say that merit scholars who are sponsored are not closely comparable to non-sponsored students is a weak argument. Yes, more students are chosing HYP without sponsorship which indicates HYPs overall desirability but Northwestern is attracting these HYP-type-level students by sponsoring their scholarships nevertheless. They didn't have to chose to go to Northwestern afterall. Wash U, Duke and Chicago all give much more merit aid than Northwestern and the Ivys but one cannot discount the quality of the students who chose one of these schools because of it. If every student at Northwestern were a school sponsored National Merit scholar, I dare say the Northwestern student body would be better than HY and P.</p>
<p>I don't get it either.</p>
<p>My post was in response to icy9ff8 (post #14) and he/she has provided an explanation on post #19
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If a student has the opportunity to study at any of these elite schools for the same tuition and on the same transcript, it makes selection of Northwestern over an Ivy much easier.
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I still don't get it. I know a couple students at UW-Seattle who went to Oxford for exchange. I don't see how that would boost UW's applications at all.</p>
<p>Exchange is an opportunity to study abroad and experience a different culture. I don't see any appeal to NU students to exchange to the East/West coast just to get some "Ivy experience".</p>
<p>One other comment about HYP not sponsoring merit scholars. They are still using money as an incentive now offering financial aid to families at an increasingly higher level (now including families who make $180,000 a year at H). Though not technically merit aid, being able to offer money to families at these income levels amounts to merit aid at most schools. The end argument is when Harvard decides to offer financial aid to all families regardless of income.</p>
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it doesn't make sense that the average SAT of enrolled students would go up even though the HYP-type-level students are enrolling elsewhere.
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</p>
<p>regardless if it makes sense to you or not, it is what happened. the average SAT of the admitted students also went up by about the same margin (to 1463). the switch to common application is one of the reasons why the yield goes down and the number of applicants goes up. before the switch, the yield was around 40%.</p>
<p>also the admit rate was 26% or 27% (i saw both listed before), not 30%. NU is slow to update their numbers on the website and their admission page even has numbers that were like 3 years old.</p>
<p>article in the NY Times about increase in college applications....can search for it online.</p>
<p>Yes, I expected that sort of response. However, to become a school-sponsored merit scholar is to reach the finalist level (a group of about 15000), and then select a sponsoring institution. To be one of the 2500 national merit winners is to go through the next, highly competitive step in the selection process. A comparable statistic to Northwestern's 249 would be the number of merit scholars plus the number of merit finalists at HYP, a number that is undoubtedly very high at each school, though the exact figures are not published. I acknowledge that the figure of 249 is very impressive, but that does mean you can imply that it makes Northwestern equal to (or greater than) HYP in student body strength.</p>