@websensation: They’re correlated. Higher yield rate means lower acceptance rate.
Hence why almost everyone (besides MIT and Caltech) have ED or some form of restrictive EA and why you may see more gaming (taking more off WL, Z-list, transfers, spring admits).
@TheGreyKing -
I got that email as well and started a thread with the admissions info in the Vassar forum earlier this evening 
@websensation I see your question on “most selective” as a definitional issue. Agree with @PurpleTitan
“Most selective” from the point of view of the filtering of candidates by the admissions office has to be the acceptance rate measure. The yield rate, assuming level playing field comparisons - this assumption must hold for comparisons to make sense - is desirability from the applicant’s perspective and is a selection process performed by the applicant, whether it is Enroll / Admit (=Yield), or Applicants / Place(enrolled) = (Applicants / Admit) x (Admit / Enrolled student) = 1/Admit Rate x 1/Yield. The number of places or ultimate enrollment is more or less a given, for both parties, in the short run.
Two schools with 1700 spots: we cannot conclude ex ante one is more selective than another because one has 15 applicants per place while another has 20 applicants per place, but we can say the latter is for whatever reasons, more popular or desired.
Of course the two things have a strong correlation - such is consumer behavior. We covet what is hard to get.
Selectivity by itself is not very meaningful in the absence of data on the applicant pool. If one college has a much stronger pool of applicants than the other, their acceptance rates can’t be directly compared unless more detailed pool level data are made available.
I thought it would be interesting to see the list ordered by number of students applying, rather than percent accepted:
NYU (RD+ED1+ED2) 15,722 out of 75,037 (< 21.0, incl. 19% for NY campus)
BU ~14,184 out of 64,473 (22%)
USC 8,258 out of 64,256 (12.9%)
Cornell (RD+ED) 5,288 out of 51,328 (10.3%)
Stanford (RD+SCEA) 2,040 out of 47,450 (4.3%)
Penn (RD+ED) 3,731 out of 44,491 (8.4%)
Harvard (RD+SCEA) 1,962 out of 42,749 (4.6%)
Florida 14,866 out of 40,849 (36.4%)
Northwestern (RD+ED) 3,392 out of 40,425 (8.4%)
Columbia (RD+ED) 2,214 out of 40,203 (5.5%)
Tulane ~6,598 out of 38,813 (17%)
Duke (RD+ED) 3,097 out of 37,390 (8.3%)
UVA 9,850 out of 37,222 (26.5%)
Georgia Tech (RD+EA) ~7,832 out of 35,600 (22%)
Brown (RD+ED) 2,566 out of 35,438 (7.2%)
Princeton (RD+SCEA) 1,941 out of 35,370 (5.5%)
Yale (RD+SCEA) 2,229 out of 35,306 (6.3%)
WashU (RD+ED) 4695/31300 (15%)
BC (RD+EA) 8,400 out of >31,000 (< 27.1%)
Johns Hopkins (RD+ED) 2,894 out of 29,128 (9.9%)
Emory (RD+ED, excl. Oxford-only apps) ~5,135 out of 27,759 (18.5%)
Georgia (RD+EA) < 12,700 out of 26,500 (< 47.9%)
VIllanova (RD+EA+ED) 6,545 out of 22,727 (28.8%)
Dartmouth (RD+ED) 1,925 out of 22,033 (8.7%)
MIT (RD+EA) 1,464 out of 21,706 (6.7%)
Santa Clara (RD+ED) ~ 7,954 out of 16,233 (49%)
Wesleyan (RD+EDI+EDII) 2,186 out of 12,788 (17.1%)
Colby 1,602 out of 12,313 (13.0%)
Swarthmore (RD+ED) 980 out of 10,749 (9.1%)
Pomona (RD+ED) 713 out of 10,245 (6.9%)
Williams (RD+ED) 1,163 out of 9,559 (12.2%)
Middlebury (RD+ED+Febs) 1,696 out 9,230 (18.4%)
Bowdoin (RD+ED1+ED2) ~935 out of 9,081 (10.3%)
Barnard (RD+ED) 1,088 out of 7,897 (13.8%)
Wellesley ~1,267 out of 6,670 (19%)
Davidson ~1,066 out of 5,700 (18.7%)
Haverford 877 out of 4682 (18.7%)
Harvey Mudd (RD+ED) 594/4101 (14.5%)
Olin 125 out of 882 (14.2%)
Adding Vassar:
NYU (RD+ED1+ED2) 15,722 out of 75,037 (< 21.0, incl. 19% for NY campus)
BU ~14,184 out of 64,473 (22%)
USC 8,258 out of 64,256 (12.9%)
Cornell (RD+ED) 5,288 out of 51,328 (10.3%)
Stanford (RD+SCEA) 2,040 out of 47,450 (4.3%)
Penn (RD+ED) 3,731 out of 44,491 (8.4%)
Harvard (RD+SCEA) 1,962 out of 42,749 (4.6%)
Florida 14,866 out of 40,849 (36.4%)
Northwestern (RD+ED) 3,392 out of 40,425 (8.4%)
Columbia (RD+ED) 2,214 out of 40,203 (5.5%)
Tulane ~6,598 out of 38,813 (17%)
Duke (RD+ED) 3,097 out of 37,390 (8.3%)
UVA 9,850 out of 37,222 (26.5%)
Georgia Tech (RD+EA) ~7,832 out of 35,600 (22%)
Brown (RD+ED) 2,566 out of 35,438 (7.2%)
Princeton (RD+SCEA) 1,941 out of 35,370 (5.5%)
Yale (RD+SCEA) 2,229 out of 35,306 (6.3%)
WashU (RD+ED) 4695/31300 (15%)
BC (RD+EA) 8,400 out of >31,000 (< 27.1%)
Johns Hopkins (RD+ED) 2,894 out of 29,128 (9.9%)
Emory (RD+ED, excl. Oxford-only apps) ~5,135 out of 27,759 (18.5%)
Georgia (RD+EA) < 12,700 out of 26,500 (< 47.9%)
VIllanova (RD+EA+ED) 6,545 out of 22,727 (28.8%)
Dartmouth (RD+ED) 1,925 out of 22,033 (8.7%)
MIT (RD+EA) 1,464 out of 21,706 (6.7%)
Santa Clara (RD+ED) ~ 7,954 out of 16,233 (49%)
Wesleyan (RD+EDI+EDII) 2,186 out of 12,788 (17.1%)
Colby 1,602 out of 12,313 (13.0%)
Swarthmore (RD+ED) 980 out of 10,749 (9.1%)
Pomona (RD+ED) 713 out of 10,245 (6.9%)
Williams (RD+ED) 1,163 out of 9,559 (12.2%)
Middlebury (RD+ED+Febs) 1,696 out 9,230 (18.4%)
Bowdoin (RD+ED1+ED2) ~935 out of 9,081 (10.3%)
Vassar (RD+ED1+ED2) ~1994 out of 8,312 (24%)
Barnard (RD+ED) 1,088 out of 7,897 (13.8%)
Wellesley ~1,267 out of 6,670 (19%)
Davidson ~1,066 out of 5,700 (18.7%)
Haverford 877 out of 4682 (18.7%)
Harvey Mudd (RD+ED) 594/4101 (14.5%)
Olin 125 out of 882 (14.2%)
According to an admission newsletter Bates acceptance rate this year was “~18%” 7,688 applicants.
Do we know what northeasterns rate looked like this year?
Sorry, my contact at Caltech says they don’t want to release the numbers until everything is final next fall. Some admitted students may hear the number of applications at Prefrosh Weekend later this month. The admission rate is easy to figure from that.
While we don’t know the acceptance rate, there were 62,268 applicants for 2,800 spots. Assuming a yield of around 20% (from prior years), that puts the acceptances at 14,000, for an acceptance rate of 22.5%. Given that Northeastern was overenrolled by 300 students last year, the yield rate could be increasing, lowering acceptances. There’s been a floating number of 19% that has gone uncited, which would put acceptances at 11,831 and an expected yield of 23.7%. I don’t think any official acceptance rate has been announced beyond the number of applications.
Tufts 14.6%: http://now.tufts.edu/articles/select-admissions
Vanderbilt was dropped off the list. Where does it fit in?
Vanderbilt didn’t release how many ED applicants it had. it’s still an unknown.
Vanderbilt didn’t release how many ED applicants it had. it’s still an unknown.
Vanderbilt didn’t release how many ED applicants it had. it’s still an unknown. Probably about 35,000 total applicants?
It appears the number of applications have increased about 10% this year. If this trend continues (there’s no reason to doubt it won’t) and if yields are held roughly constant (they will at the most selective colleges but may drop at the less selective ones), we’ll see admit rates drop by another 10% or so. So, here’s an prediction: Stanford’s admit rate will be below 4% next year and reach 1.5% in a decade. Welcome to the college admission lottery.
I have to think that at a certain point (and that point might be right now for Stanford, Harvard et al) sub-5% acceptance rates don’t benefit the colleges. How could they possibly have time to choose the candidates that are most likely to succeed at their school?
The answer is that they can’t. The question is whether or not that actually matters to them, and the evidence seems to imply that it hasn’t mattered in quite a while. The overwhelming majority of applicants to selective colleges are fully capable of “succeeding,” so the selection process is not chiefly about selecting those most likely to do so. Rather, it seems to be about achieving some kind of apportionment based on the school’s admission priorities. If that leaves 90-95% of the applicant pool high and dry, so be it.
If these colleges ever start to whine about this state of affairs and the difficulty of sifting through so many thousands of qualified applicants, they are not likely to find much sympathy, in my view. To the extent that this trend is even a real problem to selective schools, it is one almost entirely of their own creation.
@penandink – if I were queen for the day – 1) do away with binding ED and legacy preference and 2) at the highly selective colleges, call it what is and do a lottery among students qualified for entry. Could subdivide students into groups like humanities, STEM, and maybe give weighted preference for URM and first gen. (Guess athletes would have to be figured out separately.)
Better yet, do a matching system like for med students and their residencies where both students and colleges rank their choices. None of this will happen, of course, but it’s worth telling kids that in fact it is a lottery now once they’ve achieved a certain level of academic performance – just a very subjective one with little transparency.
I don’t buy for a second that these highly selective colleges want all the applicants they are getting. Because they are spending millions marketing themselves to students who are long shots to get in even when they don’t need to. I’m not talking about the money they spend marketing or doing outreach to under-represented or under-privileged students. I’m talking about sending expensive flier and brochures to millions of students they know by location and demographics are not under-privileged. Some of them do so relentlessly. I’m not surprised by Swarthmore’s lower admit rate and higher # of applicants for example because they are aggressive marketers sending email after email and pretty mailer after mailer, all trying to not only convince prospective students of the value of their school but suggesting how easy it is to apply. They are buying their large application pool.