CC and Helpful Waitlist/Yield Info in New York Times' "The Choice"

Applying to College
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<p>College Confidential's list of colleges currently making waitlist offers gets a nice shout-out this morning in "The Choice," The New York Times' daily admission blog. </p>

<p>Writer Jacques Steinberg (author of The</a> Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College) also highlights acceptance-rate and "yield" data for several colleges and universities, both public and private (with more such data to come in future columns as the stats roll in). </p>

<p>"Yield" is the term admission officials use to describe the percentage of admitted applicants who actually matriculate. When estimating how many candidates to accept each spring in order to end up with the ideal number of freshmen in the fall, enrollment managers have to focus on the anticipated yield, drawing on figures from previous years as well as on their assessments of how other factors (e.g., number of current high school seniors, the economy) might affect past trends.</p>

<p>The number of waitlist offers that a college makes are, of course, closely linked to how good these yield estimates were.</p>

<p>To see today's "The Choice" or to keep an eye on stats for schools that interest you, go to The</a> Early Line on Admission Yields (and Wait-List Offers) - The Choice Blog - NYTimes.com</p>

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<p>THank you for the article, Do you know anything about Williams waitlist in the case of internationals?</p>

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<p>Try asking on the Williams forum.</p>

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<p>I am a bit confused on this yield factor. E.g if a college gives admission to 100 students, and has a yield of 75%, then I would think it will take 25 students off the waitlist. Is this not correct? If this is so, I dont understand the # of students being taken off the waitlist in the colleges mentioned in the above article.</p>

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<p>ruar12–When college officials decide how many students to admit, it’s based on an estimated yield. So, let’s say that 50% of all admitted students typically enroll at College X. If the admission folks are looking for 500 freshmen to show up in September, they will admit 1000 applicants, expecting half of these to say yes. </p>

<p>But if only 480 students say yes, then 20 waitlisted students may be offered places in the class. </p>

<p>But if 550 students say yes, then they’re in trouble. So most enrollment managers tend to be a bit conservative. It’s usually more sensible to take students off the waitlist than to be spreading out sleeping bags in the dormitory common rooms!</p>

<p>So, regardless of the yield–whether it’s 20 percent or 75–if the admission officials have estimated accurately, there will be little or no waitlist action.</p>

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<p>Thanks, S_R. </p>

<p>So, if all the admitted students say yes, then the college would be in real trouble! This is what was surprising. If the college send out 2000 admissions letters, it should be prepared to admit all (100% yield), if it comes to that. So might as well try to fill the gap by taking more off the waitlist if yield is less.
I am reading a bit on this yield factor and selectivity rankings etc, so may be there is more to it on how colleges “play” this game.</p>

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<p>Another term pertinent to this discussion that you may hear in admission circles is “Summer melt.” </p>

<p>Once May 1 passes and colleges have a sense of how many of their admitted students have enrolled (i.e., the yield) then they fill the remaining spots in the class from the waitlist --as described above.</p>

<p>But they must also factor a “Summer Melt” estimate into their calculations. That’s the number of enrolled students–the ones who have said they will definitely come–who actually won’t … for a variety of reasons.</p>

<p>As with yield calculations, enrollment managers rely heavily on past data to determine how many future freshmen will drop out of the class before September. Any figure that’s much lower–or higher–than the norm can raise a lot of blood pressure in admission offices.</p>

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<p>Sally…I’m perplexed. This year all we heard about was “record number of applications” for numerous schools but most specifically, the more selective ones. Although students are applying to more schools, the actual number of 17/18 year olds across the nation HASN’T increased over last year according to the census. (In fact, there were slightly fewer born in 91/92.). All this aside, on May 1, these same schools boasted record LOW acceptance rates. Well, my obvious question is how can they have BOTH record low acceptance rates and record HIGH yield rates for the same or smaller number of students? It simply doesn’t make statistical sense. With record yields, many of these schools will be taking few if any off the waitlist. Furthermore, with all the discussion about how the economy was going to affect admissions this year, I’ve seen little, if any evidence, of this. Can you explain?</p>

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<p>I was thinking the same thing, too, and I’ve chalked it up to my Youth Sports Score-Report theory. What the heck is that? Well, my husband has been coaching my 13-year-old son in various sports for nearly a decade. Usually the way the leagues operate is that, after each game, the home-team coach is supposed to report the score to the league’s Webmaster so that the score can be posted on the league Web site and the standings adjusted accordingly. Not surprisingly, my husband and I started to notice that when the home team won, those scores were called in right away. But when the home team lost, it could take more than a week to see the scores on the Web site … especially when they were going to have a significant impact on the standings.</p>

<p>Well, similarly, even though it seems like a lot of colleges are weighing in with higher-than-usual yields, you’ll also notice that a lot more schools have not reported their numbers yet.</p>

<p>Also–another theory (feel free to attack at will :slight_smile: ): With so many seniors sending out so many applications (as you’ve noted), it has become harder and harder to get into the most sought-after colleges. Back in my day (40+ years ago :frowning: ), if a student applied to, say, four “elite” colleges, he or she often got into four elite colleges … or at least three. So yield numbers were lower in those days, as an applicant picked just one destination. But nowadays, it’s more of a crap shoot. Although some admissions brass will insist otherwise, most of us have seen how commonly a top student will get into Princeton but not Brown or Yale while another will get a fat envelope from Yale but not from Princeton or Brown. So, with fewer students having fewer choices at the uber-high end of the admissions totem pole, yield figures are going to look better for the colleges.</p>

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<p>For the past couple years, since the economy tanked, I’ve been insisting that a family’s desire to see a child at a “name” college has trumped concerns about the cost. For some, it’s a buy-now-pay-later situation. That is, parents who could have afforded an Ivy (or its ilk) in the past without loans will now borrow what is needed in order to make their “dream school” a reality. Again, most of the publicity we see is about the big application numbers at the more celebrated institutions. But there are still plenty of students out there who are making college choices based on price tag … and in many cases, these are tough choices that they wouldn’t have had to make a few years ago before Mom got laid off or Dad lost his business. If you look carefully, you’ll see that state schools–especially the flagship universities and other prominent publics within a state–are seeing more applications, too. For example. SUNY Binghamton, which is marketing itself as a “public Ivy,” has seen a dramatic jump in application numbers over the past few admission cycles.</p>

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<p>Another factor is that more kids are applying to college than before, meaning a higher percentage of high school graduates are applying than in decades past. Because our society has become credentialist, and then the disappointment sets in when johnny has a B.A. in business but is working in the mall when he graduates college or suzie has an M.A. in history but is working a temp job. I read a syndicated article this morning that says we should be targeting kids towards their natural skillsets, not what credentials mommy and daddy want to brag about at the country club or grocery store line. It would serve these kids better, and be better for society. It would also result in fewer drop outs from college…something colleges hate…lost revenue and a bad statistic they deplore. Not everyone is meant for college…and certainly not everyone at age 18. </p>

<p>I am a proponent of sending kids to the military (fewer than 10% of jobs in the military are combat related), so they can mature, get a wonderful college bonus and GIBill, and then if they decide to attend college they are ready to go and be productive, if not, they have solid skills for jobs learned in the military. </p>

<p>This is where community colleges also come in. They are more skillset targeted and less on lofty liberal idealism and credentialism.</p>

<p>I am not saying to undermine kids dreams, but only give them better advice on where they may be happies and find rewarding employment as adults. </p>

<p>Finally to answer some questions from above, seldom do schools experience a deviation from the norm of their yields more than a few percentage points in a given year. There are many reasons for that and part of that is their mission statement and how they go about recruiting students. Not every college can be a “Little Ivy” nor should they. Second and Third tier schools fulfill a valuable social need in educating solid but not stellar students…and prepare them for the workforce and being productive citizens. </p>

<p>The proliferation of the common application and the inane world of college rankings means that many schools gets thousands of applications from kids who are either not very well qualified for their elite school or have insufficient resources to pay for it or sometimes not even any intent to attend there. I know lots of kids who turned down scholarships at LAC’s and attended instead a state flagship to be closer to home, and overall lower cost. Its the fickleness of kids. Some like to collect acceptance letters. </p>

<p>40-50 years ago most colleges were very colloquial…regional schools at best. Many schools are named after their immediate village or community. Now, we are a zany society and kids from California attend school in the East and South and kids from the Northeast attend school in the West and South etc. Often chasing “prestige”. Is the quality of education really that different between one school and another comparing apples to apples? Not really. The experience can differ by campus culture, geography, weather, sports etc. </p>

<p>Bottom line is big changes are coming sociologically in our country whether we like it or not. People will wake up and say, “Hey, I dont need to spend 100k or more on a college education. I can go to community college, develop a skill and do just as well.”</p>

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<p>Just wondering- aren’t acceptance rates and yield independent factors?</p>

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<p>Not really; colleges adjust their acceptance rates primarily to accomodate changing yield rates.</p>

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<p>I went to public high school in Missouri. While most kids still went to the state flagship, we had kids going everywhere, all over the country. And this was back in the early / mid eighties. It’s not a new phenomenon.</p>

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<p>Colleges also use tactics like Early Decision, Early action etc. to reduce their risk. If they need 1000 students, and admit 425 students in early decision, let us say 25 do not accept for financial reasons, they have 400 committed students and need to just fill 600 slots. So even if the yield changes slightly, the impact may not be as much as if they had to fill 1000 slots.</p>

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<p>The number of students is about the same, but the number of applications per student has been increasing. Hence, the number of applicants at many schools is up resulting in lower acceptance rates.</p>

<p>1) acceptance rate = accepted / applicants
2) yield = enrolled / accepted</p>

<p>Once offers of admissions are made, the number of applicants to a particular school has no bearing on yield at that school.</p>

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<p>I agree with standrews - 30 years ago, the average student applied to 1-4 colleges. Now, my GC says that the average of applications per college is about 12. Also, since more students are applying to college, this results in a drastic increase in applications.</p>

<p>This, in turn, increases selectivity, because schools have larger applicant pools. Let’s look at, for example, Princeton. This year they had enough applicants alone to fill more than SIX Princeton classes (or, at least, that’s what they wrote in their rejection letter…haha :wink: ), meaning that they probably admitted a record low amount. Many of these applicants, in turn, probably applied to a lot of other, probably very selective, schools. Statistically speaking, they are unlikely to get into many of these schools simply because of the large applicant pools that each college has, and the low acceptance rates each one posts.</p>

<p>How does this translate into yield? When a student is accepted to Princeton, he/she is probably a stellar student, but simply from a statistical analysis point, he/she has a very low chance of being admitted to other schools of similar caliber. Therefore, if a student manages to beat the odds and get into a highly selective college, he/she is more likely to attend that college simply for the sake of having gotten in, resulting in higher yields for selective colleges. Does that make sense?</p>