Class of 2011 yield to reach record high of 67%

<p>Sristi - I was making a joke in response to the idea that CAS students were getting a state college education. Sorry if the humor did not come across. Penn is Ivy League quality w/ or w/o Wharton - Wharton just happens to be extra hot at the moment - one stock market crash and it wouldn't be that hot.</p>

<p>Would you guys PLEASE stop referencing that study. It was a hypothetical analysis of school choices based on a survey of students - primarily in the northeast and primarily middle and upper middle class. It was NOT based on actual admissions data from ANY school. It does not reflect actual admissions choices, the impact (for good or ill) of ED/SCEA, the influence of financial aid or even peer pressure. It's really a measure of name recognition and overall populatity more than anything else. Look up the study yourselves and READ the explanatory notes. The pretty tables in the analysis may excite the uninformed, but a careful review takes out the sensational crap.</p>

<p>So to answer the prior post, Penn and many other schools can have great admissions performance irrespective of this very much abused study's results. The school admit stats are more relevant than this Revealed Preference Ranking can ever be.</p>

<p>Not to mention that the data on which the revealed preference study was based was collected from high school seniors 7 years ago. </p>

<p><a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Obviously, the Penn admissions picture has changed drastically since then.</p>

<p>I personally turned down Penn Wharton for Columbia College due to preference but I think Penn is an awesome school. </p>

<p>But... one reason why Penn's yield is always so high is because compared to peer schools, Penn has been known to do some yield protection. What does this mean? It rejects people likely to get into HYPMS. This effect is actually part of what brought Penn up so high since the 90's (when it was ranked in the teens). Penn's director of admissions, rightly so, decided to focus and target ED students that are set on coming to penn. With more dedicated students, a happier student body, Penn inevitably rose.</p>

<p>But Penn today still Yield Protects whereas peer schools like Columbia & Brown aren't as shy to compete for HYPMS for their students althought they still do lose most of the time. The result is a lower yield. But yea, when Penn and Princeton start having the same yield... you have to look at all the facts. And it's no secret that Princeton suffers a lot too because it's on the backburner when cross admits are choosing between harvard, yale, stanford, and princeton. Princeton loses a lot of students in that one which decreases their yield.</p>

<p>Bottom line. Penn and Princeton are not going after the same kids.</p>

<p>^One thing you have to understand about cross-admits is that no school, not even H, wins 100% of cross admits. So anecdotes that so and so chose C over Wh. don't mean anything. </p>

<p>As for Penn and P not going after the same kids, I suppose if you mean College you may be right (although there are lots of cross admits anyway - they can't totally predict who is X-applying) but in the case of Wharton and esp. the special programs (Huntsman, etc.) they are in fact targeting the exact same pool and in many cases (I dunno the %) they are winning. At Penn Previews where they were trying to lure accepted students you could tell the PowerPoint they gave to Wh. admits was based on the theme "Why a Wharton degree is better than an Economics degree from some other Ivy League school that is located either in Cambridge or New Haven whose names we won't mention." Wh. this year had an admit rate that was as low as H and Y. This is not to say that College is not good, just that Wh. is extra hot at the moment so Wh. is no longer shy at all about competing for HYPS kids. I'm sure Wh. still loses X admits with H but maybe not as many as in the past when it would lose 80+%. For the spec. programs, they may even be winning against HYP.</p>

<p>"It rejects people likely to get into HYPMS".....</p>

<p>Yet another completely unsubstantianed post. If you have any proof to support your assertion, please provide it. Otherwise, it has to be deemed as simple ego-massaging on your part, so you can feel better re yields and admit ratios.</p>

<p>MIT, CalTech, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth - all these schools have very self selecting applicants who want to attend those places because of the institutions' unique characteristics. They don't need to yield protect. Neither does Penn - it wants the students who want it (hence the essay questions used in the app process).</p>

<p>Re the applicants qualities and whether they'd get into HYSP- sorry, wrong answer yet again. The same pool of students applies to all these schools. Its the same 20,000 - 30,000 students each year who have the grades, ECs, and hutzpah to strive for an Ivy. All these schools are competing for the same large pool of qualified students.</p>

<p>Check the applicant overlap data. HYSP takes the best of the lot (as they are the superelite schools), but it's lunacy to claim Penn rejects all who may go to HYSP. How could that possibly be done and fill a class as large as Penn's freshman group. </p>

<p>You guys should grow up LOL</p>

<p>The phenomenon being referred to here ("insecure" schools rejecting those they think will get into HYP) is known as "Tufts Syndrome."</p>

<p>Note how it isn't named "Penn Syndrome."</p>

<p>There are people who turn down those schools for being "mere mortals" at Penn's College. My hallmate got into Harvard and he came to Penn CAS. I took advantage of my double-legacy at Stanford--and came to Penn CAS. Personal preference does matter and thank god for it. I think Columbia is a great school. The campus is gorgeous and the Core curriculum is something that every Western undergraduate should have to study before he/she can call himself educated.</p>

<p>That being said, you couldn't pay me to spend my precious, magical undergraduate years in New York City. I have my whole life to do the NYC thing. College only comes around once and for four fast years (or 5 in my case :D)</p>

<p>r&b - I would not be at all surprised if certain schools (including Penn) try to manage yield by weeding out people who they thought were overqualified and would end up going elsewhere. That's the rational thing to do, that's what I'd do if I were Stetson. The "Revealed Preference" study, for all its bogusness, showed a "notch" for a lot of schools where instead of admit rate climbing in a straight line, declined after a certain point above that school's average SAT. Do you have any proof that they are NOT doing this? </p>

<p>Maybe if you are applying to CAS and have 2350 SATs and you write a dynamite "Why Penn Essay" (one that explains why you didn't apply ED and yet shows some actual ties to Penn and Philly) they might take you, but otherwise why wouldn't they think - hmm, here's someone we are probably going to lose to HYPMS, so if we take him it will just mess up our yield. If you are talking about someone who is a truly "stellar" candidate, the chances are extremely high (in the absence of other factors) that that person will get into a "better" school and will reject Penn in favor of that school, so why "waste" an admit on that kid? </p>

<p>Obviously this is a guessing game and they can't guess right all the time, nor do they shoot themselves in the foot and reject 100% of people who are over the average admitted SAT ( given the low admit rates to HYPMS, even if you are 2400 you may not get in to any of them, so Penn has a chance to pick up some of these people just by luck), but they would be foolish (given that yield is something that goes into the ratings and gets talked about) not to take the chances of losing an applicant to a "higher" ranked school into consideration as part of the whole admit/reject decision.</p>

<p>Johnnyk - Everyone knows that Penn does not lose 100% of X-admits with HYPMS. It's nice of you to "testify" but it wasn't necessary. Anyone who hasn't heard by now that it's about "fit" and not numbers alone is brain dead. </p>

<p>That being said, it's a fact that Penn does lose the majority (again but not all) of the X-admit battles with HYPMS. The RP study (as bogus and outdated as it is) said it was as high as 94/6 in the case of H - let's discount that and call it 80/20 - that means that Penn loses 4 of 5 X-admits to H, which sounds about right to me. In RD, Penn is trying for a 5o% yield - one out of two (combined w. ED this gives them 67% yield). So they have to take "the Tufts Effect" into account - if they took nothing but people who were "likely" at HYPMS, they'd end up with a 20 or 25% yield RD. I'm guessing that they "balance" the admits this way, just like they balance race, gender, geography, etc. - say 1/3 admits for which Penn IS the reach school (say they get 80% of those), 1/3 admits for which Penn is "in the same range" - say they get 50/50 with those places (e.g. Columbia, Dartmouth), and 1/3 superior candidates, of which they get 20%. I have no data to prove this but common sense says they do it this way - otherwise they would just start at 2400/4.0 and work their way down the admit list and it's clear that they're not doing that.</p>

<p>

No school does that. It's obvious that admissions decisions at all top schools are about a lot more than just the numbers.</p>

<p>I think the point here is that Penn does not "yield protect", i.e., preemptively reject applicants simply because it believes they will also be accepted at HYPS, etc. If it did, the RD yield would be much higher than 50+%.</p>

<p>BTW, one side effect of this is that the matriculated pool does not have as high an avg. SAT as the admitted pool, which I believe is the case (for Penn and most other places too). I don't recall the #s or even if they release them, but I think that's true. If I did the math correctly, based on the above assumptions there would be around a 20 pt. drop from admitted to matriculated.</p>

<p>a 20 point drop is not statistically significant on the sats.</p>

<p>If "yield protect" means flatly reject all people who are likely at HYPS then I would agree w/ you. But, if it means limiting the # 0f applicants who are HYPS likely to no more than a certain % of the admits in the way I describe above (and trying to improve over the random odds using the "Why Penn"essays, etc.) then I would bet that they "yield protect" in that way.</p>

<p>It is (significant) if it is in the same direction year after year - it's not like it will wander 20 up one year and 20 down the next - I'll bet that there is a slight but real dropoff from admitted to matric. SAT every year. 20 pts is just a guess - the real # may be higher. Again this is not just Penn but almost everywhere , the lower SAT "reaches" will be more likely to attend than the higher SAT "superstars" who are more likely to choose a "better" school.</p>

<p>Actually I was referring to this study instead. Flawed it may be, but so will every other one that does not work in your favor ;) However, what this does demonstrate is that time and time again Penn loses in cross-admits against its peer schools. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/09/17/weekinreview/20060917_LEONHARDT_CHART.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/09/17/weekinreview/20060917_LEONHARDT_CHART.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Furthermore, when you cite the fact that Wharton and Penn's other special programs win cross-admits more often than not against HYP and the likes, you are only bolstering my case that normal CAS (who enrolls more than half the total incoming class in any given year) is not as attractive and impressive as its counterparts elsewhere. </p>

<p>
[quote]
MIT, CalTech, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth - all these schools have very self selecting applicants who want to attend those places because of the institutions' unique characteristics. They don't need to yield protect.

[/quote]

This is so wrong, but since I am not familiar with the first three, I am going to only comment on Dartmouth here. There are actually two types of self-selectivity -- one based on admissions criteria, and the other based on fit. Unfortunately, Dartmouth doesn't seem to be able to benefit from either of them -- in other words, Dartmouth only attracts applications from those who are competitive for admissions because it is least well known in pop culture (and thus have a higher admit rate), but those who they do admit sometimes have no intention of attending in the first place and applied just because it's easy to (thus lowering the yield). In this regard, Dartmouth needs to adopt yield maneuvering methods such as the "Why x university" essays -- otherwise, it has no other way of knowing who is likely to come and who isn't. Schools like Columbia seem to have the best of both worlds because of this. Penn definitely does better at the former, and sometimes at the latter as well. But to simply lump the two types of self-selectivity into one category is very misleading. </p>

<p>
[quote]
schools like Columbia & Brown aren't as shy to compete for HYPMS for their students

[/quote]

Please. As much as I like to bash Penn on this, Columbia is probably the most notorious for yield protection in the Ivies. The amount of waitlists it hand out to over-qualified candidates is only second to Wash U. The only reason that its admit rate is sub-10% is because so many weak applicants apply. </p>

<p>
[quote]
I think the point here is that Penn does not "yield protect", i.e., preemptively reject applicants simply because it believes they will also be accepted at HYPS, etc. If it did, the RD yield would be much higher than 50+%.

[/quote]

Wash U has a yield of 35%, does that mean it doesn't protect its yield?</p>

<p>Interesting discussion. Here's my 2cents. To get the low admit rate, you keep the school small. After all you are looking at same pool of people about 23,000ish applying to these overlapping institutes, by keeping your school small with fewer departments, you'll have a glorifying admission rate to self congrat:-) Most of these schools takes in about 1500 students a year to achieve 10% admit rate, when you get to 2500 students, you get 15%, when 4000 (NYU, USC, UCLS etc) you admit 25%. Most important is you recruite happy and able students. No matter where you go, Yale, Penn or USC these students all can do the work. Lot of time it's the luck of the draw to determine where you end up spending four years of your college life.</p>

<p>Talking about size of the school to get incredibe rejection rate, let say Rice in Texas. It only has room for 800 students a year. If they up their applicants to 23,000 a year, the admit rate will be 5.2% with 67% yield. </p>

<p>You guys are all good students, congratulation.</p>

<p>

That's the exact same 7-year-old study to which I linked above (look at the sources at the bottom). I, for one, have never seen any actual cross-admit figures (and I mean actual enrollment choices of admitted students, as opposed to the same flawed, 7-year-old survey results that keep beeing thrown around). If you know where they are, I'd like to see them. Otherwise, all we have to go on are admit rates, yields, average SATs/GPAs, etc. And, taking into account Penn's much larger class size and diversity of programs (Wharton, College, Nursing, Engineering), its dramatically improving admissions stats hold up very well.</p>

<p>

Again, do you have actual RD statistics to show that it does?</p>

<p>^I haven't seen any real actual X-admit #'s other than the study, but that doesn't mean the study is totally wrong. Yes, it was a small survey and 7 years ago, so probably it isn't as lopsided as it showed then when they had H vs. Penn at 94/6. But do you really think that it is now 6/94 or even 50/50? Just because you don't have the hard data doesn't mean you can't apply common sense. I think the study had a grain of truth in it - probably the #'s in there were right to within 10 or 20 pts at that time. So I would put zero weight on the close calls - e.g Penn vs. all the low Ivies - Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, etc. - just because they called those 46/54 or something doesn't mean a thing - the true number might be the other way around or by now even 60/40 in Penn's favor. But if you look at the ones that were really lopsided w/ Penn in the teens (HYPMS), then I'd bet money that Penn is still losing the majority of those X-admits - maybe they are now getting 1 of 3 or 1 of 4, but they ain't getting better than half, especially in CAS.</p>

<p>McCash - "After all you are looking at same pool of people about 23,000ish applying to these overlapping institutes"</p>

<p>Where do you get 23k from? Penn alone gets almost that many applications. Are you saying that every Penn applicant applies to every top 20 school - that's not true. There are 35K people who get above 750 SAT M but Penn reaches much deeper into the pool, down to 600M is some cases, where there are potentially several hundred K of students. Even if you are talking only about the HYPMS pool, there are potentially way more that 23k people who could realistically apply. </p>

<p>The # of apps a school gets is somewhat proportional to the # of slots available - all 23k people in your imaginary pool are not going to apply to Rice and more will apply to Penn than to Rice. In fact Rice has a 25% admit rate. How would they "up" their applicants? The one thing the school does NOT control is how many people apply - they can try to influence this by advertising, even waiving the app fee, but in the end the students not the college decide whether to apply.</p>

<p>Percy: When I mention 23000, it was just my rough estimate for each ivy's, Stanford and few others applicants, a ball park rough figure. I use Rice as an example because the school is small per student number wise. </p>

<p>What I meant was if Rice can somehow up their applicants to 20,000 plus, then you'll be looking at 5 or 6% admit rate. The size of the school has lot to do with the admission rate. You keep the school small, reject 90% of the applicants on paper look tough, but, in reality, in many high schools UCLA bound students are just as talented as Harvard bound students. Ask any Penn students face to face, they will agree with me.</p>