@gallentjill – it seems to me that a very high stat student from NY applying to WUSTL is pretty obviously using it as a backup. So yes, yield protection – but it goes very far beyond “demonstrated interest.” Schools like WUSTL are much more sophisticated in the way they use data & information for enrollment management.
@calmom You may be right, but kids from our district seem to really like that school and there are plenty of acceptances. In fact, for the past three years, every accepted student from our school attended. But, I’m not saying they don’t know what they are doing. If I were the parent of a high stat student looking at WUSTL, I hope I would have seen that graph before letting my kid get her hopes up.
Somehow I doubt that any high stat students from your district who apply ED to WUSTL are getting rejected. So if indeed WUSTL is truly a top choice, they have an alternative. If they aren’t going to apply ED, then if they truly feel WUSTL is among their top choices, they need to clearly articulate the reasons why. Not just showing up for a visit or opening the emails that WUSTL sends – but getting across the message that if accepted there is at a strong likelihood they will attend. WUSTL has past data to look at in terms of expected yield – and if they are seeing the top end students from regions such as yours turn them down, they are going to respond accordingly. So if that is an incorrect categorization for a given student… that student needs to make certain that is reflected very clearly in their application.
^ I agree with calmom. It kind of bothers me when people use terms like “yield protection” or “Tufts syndrome” as a pejorative, to suggest there’s something wrong with a school that rejects a high-stats kid. Look, their job is to fill their class, and not only to fill it with the applicants with the highest stats—a computer could do that. But if they’ve made 20 offers to high-stats kids from your school and gotten 20 rejections, what mileage is in it for them to make an offer to the 21st? Ir’s quite pointless, and it just messes up the yield model they’re using to try to project how many applicants they need to admit to fill up the class without overshooting or undershooting their target. Of course, the 21st could really be different from the other 20, but unless they have some concrete evidence of that, they’re likely to say, “No.” And as calmom suggests, the way to tell a school “I love you” is to apply ED.
The other time a school like WUSTL or others in a similar range of selectivity might turn down an extremely high-stats applicant is when they’ve already decided to admit 20 others who look like carbon copies—similar demographic, similar community, similar interests and life experiences, similar (or the same) school, and so on. They don’t want a monochromatic class, and sometimes it’s just a question of the order in which your application comes up in the process. GPAs and test scores and curricular rigor aren’t the only things they’re concerned about.
In either case, they don’t owe you an offer of admission based on prior academic achievements. They just aren’t in that business.
Seems to imply that an applicant above that stat line needs to apply ED to WUStL to show a high enough level of interest.
Not good for top-end stat students for whom WUStL is a high choice but not a clear first choice, or who want/need to compare FA offers, so they would not apply ED.
However, some colleges do not use level of interest to reject “overqualified” applicants. But they presumably assign yield estimates to each admit, so that they can manage the size of their incoming class.
“Demonstrated interest” is not the sole criteria for making yield predictions, and probably isn’t even the primary factor in most cases. I mean really … it seems to me rather naive for parents & students to think that the secret to admissions is to simply go through the same motions that every other applicant also can replicate.
I don’t think a kid from the NY school district who really, truly had WUSTL as a top choice from is out of luck if they don’t apply ED… but they do have to convince WUSTL of their sincere interest. WUSTL has a 36% yield, so I’d assume that it’s not worth it for them to admit any student who has a less than 1:3 chance of accepting.
Obviously, Naviance data doesn’t tell anything about what those particular students put in their apps or what their individual preferences were in terms of the schools they were applying to.
Why wouldn’t it be worth it? For example, they may have to admit 10 or 20 “overqualified” students to get 1 matriculant (versus getting 2 matriculants for every 3 “reaching” students they admit), but that may allow them to add a few more students at the top end of their stats range, which would be good for their rankings. (Numbers and odds are hypothetical examples only.)
It has long been know that Wash U considers applying ED as the most effective way for a student to show “demonstrated interest”.
They also have WL’s numbering in the thousands each year- mostly filled with “qualified” students who applied Reg Admisson
We live in a well off suburban area in NJ , and the results thread from CC is a pretty good proxy for what I am observing with admissions to selective colleges from our local public high school. WashU , Tulane , Tufts, Northeastern are highly sought after in my neck of the woods, and the ED kids are far more likely to get in. Students who have been accepted to HYPS were athletes or URM or legacy - not more than 1 or 2 at most per year. Regular round for unhooked applicants to top selective universities was a disappointment for many. However, female, non-Asian American STEM applicants in our area (this may be a new URM) did get some good acceptances to top tier engineering schools. (My older kid DS17 is plugged into the grapevine of tech kids from his hs robotics team).
Remind me never to ask you for investment advice.
Once again we assume “high stat kids” are “overqualified” because it’s the easiest measure of comparison. CC is riddled with this false narrative.
In 2014 (latest data set available), WUSTL enrolled 180 freshmen from Illinois, the most of any state, representing 10.8% of its freshman class. California was second with 180 (10.4%), followed by New York 158 (9.1%), Missouri 115 (6.6%), and Massachusetts 104 (6%). New Jersey (69), Maryland (54), and Pennsylvania (41) also sent more than most other Midwestern states (Ohio 47, Minnesota 40, Wisconsin 31, Michigan 26, Indiana 21, Iowa 14, Kansas 14).
In 2016 (latest CDS available) WUSTL’s overall admit rate was 22.8% and their yield was 36.6%. But they got there by taking 35% of their entering class from the ED pool, and another 3% from the waitlist. I won’t bore you with all the math, but that means their RD admit rate (excluding WL) was around 21% and their RD yield (excluding WL) was around 26%. That’s a worryingly low yield figure.
Under the circumstances I’d be worried about yield, too, and I’d take active steps to manage it, not so much for the sake of protecting my selectivity stats (though there’s that, too) as in the interest of actually filling my class with a diverse mix of the best-qualified students I can actually land. And that would mean I wouldn’t willy-nilly hand out acceptances to the highest stat kids. I’d use ED aggressively (check). I’d make sure I had a good and deep waitlist so that if I need to go to the waitlist I could negotiate individually with waitlisted kids and make offers only to those who say they’ll definitely come if offered (check). And I’d carefully examine yields from several recent admissions cycles to spot trends. Do I get a higher yield from Illinois and Missouri kids who are more local, than from NJ kids who in the past have applied and been admitted in large numbers but seldom actually enroll? If so, I’d favor Illinois and Missouri kids over similarly credentialed NJ kids. Are there particular schools where, regardless of location, I’m getting an especially high or especially low yield? If so, I’d favor applicants from the high yield schools and perhaps even cultivate a “feeder” relationship with them, while discounting similarly credential applicants from the low yield schools. Am I meeting my other institutional goals—racial and ethnic diversity, geographic diversity, gender balance, first-gens, a diversity of academic and extracurricular interests, etc., and if I’m not there, do I need to accept some slightly lower-stat students to achieve those goals even if it means turning away some higher-stats low-yield kids. And so on.
There are many factors that go into this. Bottom line, we shouldn’t be surprised when any high-stats kid gets turned down by any highly selective school. Such schools never promised to accept all and only the highest-stat kids, or even the highest-stat kids with the most impressive ECs, essays, and recs. It just doesn’t work that way.
WUStL seems to have consistently low Pell grant student percentages (even compared to other highly selective colleges). So perhaps they play the interest game, use ED aggressively, etc. to help tip their class away from high-need students to fit their financial aid budget? (Although it looks like WUStL is also need-aware for individual applicants in admissions.)
It’s unfortunate that some schools reject kids based upon level of interest. Some kids don’t have the resources to visit every school they want to attend.
There are ways to demonstrate interest without visiting. I would also assume that financial means and geography are considered when they look at whether a student visited or not.
Colleges don’t reject kids based on “level of interest”-- they make decisions based on predictions of likelihood of attendance.
This is critically important: in the RD round they have a certain number of slots to fill. Let’s say a hypothetical college has room for 750 students and takes 300 ED, leaving 450 spots to fill in the RD round. Let’s also assume that historically they have a 40% yield rate – that means, to fill those 450 spots they need to accept 1,125 students. If they mess up on their predictions, they can end up with a class that is significantly under-enrolled – a problem – or a class that is overenrolled, also a problem. Underenrollment can be addressed by going to their waitlist – so there is not much downside if the college mistakenly judges a well-qualified student unlikely to attend and puts that student on their waitlist. If the college guessed wrong and there is space for that student, then they can pull the student from the waitlist.
On the other hand, if the college guessed wrong and that student would have come… but the class is full so the college doesn’t go to the waitlist – then no problem for the college, because they have met their enrollment goals so they don’t need that particular student in any case.
There are a multitude of factors colleges use to predict yield. One of the many factors is demonstrated interest – but it is not the only factor. It can’t be, because it’s too easy to fake – and colleges know that the savvy students are aware of the need to go through the motions of pretending to like the college.
Similarly, there are multiple ways that a student can demonstrate interest… one of which is visiting the campus. But again it is not the only way.
Students aren’t getting rejected because they didn’t happen to visit. They are getting turned away because of a combination of factors that lead the college to favor the students they do admit.
Probably one of the biggest factors in predicting an admit’s likelihood to yield is how the admit “ranks” among the admit group. When UC Statfinder existed, you could look up yield rates by admits’ GPA and SAT scores. It was not surprising that, for any given UC campus, yield rates were higher for admits with lower GPA and SAT scores. Students who were “reaching” for the campus are more likely to yield, because it may be their “most desirable” choice. On the other hand, students at the top end of the admit range may have many more “desirable” choices to choose from.
Of course, cost and financial aid is also a big factor in likelihood to yield. That is why colleges may offer merit scholarships and preferential packaging of financial aid for admits they see as especially desirable to the college but who may have other options.
Those colleges that use “level of applicant’s interest” presumably do not want to increase their admit rate (a USNWR ranking factor) and lower their yield rate by admitting an additional 100 “overqualified” applicants in order to get an additional 1 or 2 additional top-end matriculants. Other colleges do not mind having to do this, and do not play the “level of applicant’s interest” game to decide admissions (though they presumably do predict each admit’s yield based on his/her “ranking” within the admit group).
Consideration of level of interest is not a “game” – it is a relevant factor to yield prediction, and yield prediction is a necessary part of the admissions decisions for most selective colleges.
If college X admits 100 “overqualified” applicants with the expectation that 1 or 2 might enroll – what happens when they are mistaken, and 50 enroll? Where do they put those extra 48 students if the dorms are already filled to capacity? Are they going to have to hire extra staff or faculty to meet the needs of those students?
And what’s this whole myth of the “overqualified” student? The colleges are admitting the students they want based on a spectrum of institutional priorities. It’s not a linear, numerical process. It is a broad scale, qualitative process.
I doubt that there is an admissions officer on the planet who places nearly as much credence in a few points of SAT or ACT score as everyone on CC does. There is a value to the school in terms of prestige or rankings to maintain or increase score distribution… but it doesn’t matter to the school which particular students are pushing up the score range. If 75% of their students have SAT scores between 1350-1600… then the school is not hurt in any way by admitting a student with a 1300 SAT… and maybe in the eyes of the school that “lower” scoring student has something to offer that a particular high scorer doesn’t. Admissions is all about selecting a student body with diverse abilities and interests to fill multiple roles. “Qualified” is context-specific.
To the school, the scores mean very little on the individual level --and if the school offers ED, that represents an optimum time to lock in higher scoring students. If the school’s wants to increase their score range by, say, +20 SAT points – then the way to get there wouldn’t be by admitting a bunch of high scorers who are not all that likely to attend. Rather, using ED and merit money to bring in high scorers is much more effective.
Yield estimation mistakes can occur at the “top”, “middle”, and “bottom” of the admission class, rather than being unique to the “top” of the admission class.
A college’s designation of an applicant as “overqualified” need not be by stats alone – indeed, it may be that a holistic admission review says that the applicant is easily admissible, but is likely to have many other choices that this college tends to lose in cross-admit choices, hence only a 1-2% (or otherwise very low) estimated chance of yielding.