The match and safety schools at my kids’ high school are just insanely good colleges and universities.The issue is that nearly all of the kids want to go to T10 schools and there is a ton of pressure to tout those as the “ideal.” I don’t think it’s a fair comparison to the average strong school as to what makes a safety.
And yes, I agree that it’s becoming more and more meaningless to measure yield with so many schools filling up half their spaces in ED unless you’re going to parse that out.
Someone should start a thread about College Admissions Statistics Class of 2023. That might be an interesting subject to discuss. :>o
From Duke Chronical. Good luck tonight everyone. https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2019/03/duke-university-admission-acceptance-rate-regular-decision-class-of-2023
“More than 41,600 students applied for admission this year – the highest number ever received – with 36,761 applying under Duke’s Regular Decision program. Among the Regular Decision applicant pool, 2,101 students – or 5.7 percent – will receive a notice of acceptance inviting them to become members of the Class of 2023. Another 81 students who applied Early Decision and whose decisions were deferred to March will also learn they have been admitted.”
NYU: 16% admit rate - 12307 from nearly 85k applicants. Expected class size is unchanged at around 6500. Median accepted SAT 1480.
The accepted # has been falling quite sharply the last couple of years (by a good few thousand) even with the same class size - I expect this improved yield reflects a larger intake from ED, which they said they would do. The press release today doesn’t give the number accepted ED; they previously said over 14k people applied ED.
Duke needs more math majors. 37,761 (RD) + 4,852 (ED) = 41,500. Not 41,600.
That’s 155 less acceptances compared to 2022. I wonder if they expect a larger yield or want a smaller class.
If the RD yield stays the same at 37.2%, then the class size would drop from 1740 to 1684.
Makes me wonder if the ED deferred/accepted wasn’t 181 instead of 81.
I know I am stating the obvious here, but it’s very deceiving to compare schools that only offer EA with schools that offer any variety of ED options. There are many schools that appear to be more selective than some other schools on paper because they offer differing admissions options. You really need to peel back the onion to figure out your chances for admission at some of these schools.
Also, another obvious point that I feel like making…a school with a 30% admit rate might not accurately reflect the applicant’s chances of admittance to his/her choice of program. For example, a school that has a 30% admission rate overall, might have a very difficult computer science program, or business program and those admission rates are much lower and/or the applicants need much higher stats than some applicants applying to less competitive programs.
Stats can be deceiving.
@collegemomjam , agree totally, but I think schools won’t generally release by-department stats because they don’t want students to try game the system by applying to the “easier” department with an eye on transferring later.
@SJ2727 – I know of a few schools that release college-specific admit rates: Georgetown, Cornell, CMU, and UVA. I am sure there are many others that do also. I believe that CMU does not make it easy to transfer.
@CT1417 - ok, I stand corrected, sorry. (Actually, I knew that about Georgetown, but forgot.)
30 percent and 40 percent mean 6 and 7 out 10 kids are really sad. That’s still really selective. Especially if the pool is highly qualified.
@privatebanker agree. People with insanely high stats are being rejected left and right from colleges that should be easy matches for them, even bordering on safety territory.
Boy oh boy am I glad the twins are my only children…these numbers are crazy insane!
Did someone post this already?
7.44% overall at Penn. 44,960 applied, 3,345 admitted. Targeting 2400 class size. Half admitted through ED.
I can’t help but get a little annoyed when these elite schools write articles (I realize for their own newspapers) year after year about having their most competitive year ever. I am not trying to take anything away from Penn, I know it’s an amazing school. But, and forgive me if I’m wrong, I’m pretty sure year before last they were emailing students that opened their application on common app and never applied AFTER the deadline to let them know there was still time to apply. When a school has an 8% admission rate, why would they need to do this? So they can get to 7.5%? I know other schools do this too, not just them. But I feel like enough already with these games. I would love to see the frenzy stop. But I know it will only get worse. Sorry for venting.
@collegemomjam
They wanted to let the world know they were finally elite, because their admit rate wasn’t sub 8% until today.
I think that was UChicago? And then a couple did it this year, too. But yes, I agree. Stop the numbers game!
Yes, it was U Chicago this year and I think Penn last year. And someone already said a few pages back that Chicago is gaming the system worse than anyone…they are trying to hold on to that #3 in US News. US News should start peeling back the onion themselves.
I think it’s disingenuous when school’s release the stats of their accepted students. Who you accept is largely irrelevant, what really matters is the stats of your matriculated class. This trend tends to be abused by schools at the lower end of a tier who are used as safeties. It aesthetically puffs up their numbers on announce night but only serves to add confusion.
FYI last year there were 15 schools with sub 9% acceptance rates. I suspect we will see a comparable number this year sub 8% with another 5 or so sub 10%.
@Nocreativity1 I think you are right.
I’m sure many of you have already noticed this also, but if you look at a lower tier school’s middle 50%, it can be deceiving in the opposite way that an upper tier school’s middle 50% can be.
For example, and I’m making these numbers up:
If a student sees Dartmouth’s middle 50% is 1430-1580 and they have a 1500, they might think they have a decent chance. But we all know without a hook, you need to be a lot closer to that 1580 to have a real shot.
On the flip side, a lower tier school, let’s say Rowan University in NJ, might have a middle 50% of 1050-1250, yet they admit students below that 1050 all of the time because, yes, as @Nocreativity1 pointed out, a lot of students use Rowan as a safety (it’s a great school and cheap for NJ residents!) so the numbers are totally inflated. And their yield is really low.
I like comparing stats at times because it’s a quick and easy way to get a feel for the competitiveness of the school/caliber of the students (if you look at score ranges), but we have to realize while they may be directionally correct, they can be very misleading.
US News no longer includes acceptance rates in its college rankings:
“New for 2019, acceptance rate (1.25 percent in last year’s ranking) has been completely removed from the ranking calculations to make room for the new social mobility indicators.”
Agree that ever lower acceptance rates at least at the top are getting out of hand but schools chasing rankings is likely not the major cause. It is still stunning that acceptance rates are dropping so far so fast: Duke is at 7.2%, UChicago likely under 6% and Amherst at 10.8% not to mention those colleges (HYPS) at 5% or lower. Acceptance rates have to start stabilizing with fewer college age applicants in the coming years, right? Then again maybe not…