<p>Whatsausername:</p>
<p>As I said before, it could be that some specific admits (e.g. athletes) declined, and the school needed to select others from the waitlist that could fill the same role.</p>
<p>^In addition, notification before May 1st makes it more likely that they will enroll at Chicago.</p>
<p>Oh, okay. I hope UChicago3 is wrong; I really, really want to go to UChicago , so I’m hoping they accept more students from the wait list. </p>
<p>This is so depressing :(</p>
<p>Just accepted my spot and declined places at 5 ivies. I do wonder if yield is going to be unusually high this year, since it seems like many people are doing the same. In particular, I met 3 or 4 people at Dimensions that all made the same choice I did.</p>
<p>I’m a little confused, can someone clarify whether schools like Chicago are using the wait list as a mechanism to protect yield? An unusually high number of qualified students appear to have been wait listed. I’m asking this question out of curiosity, it is not intended to offend anyone.</p>
<p>Yes they do. If they see on the application that the student is in a feeder high school for college X, attended enrichment programs in college B, etc, they will waitlist that student as they are unsure whether the student really wants to attend UC. Since all schools do that, it is a musical chairs game. Throw in the mix this year the early decision return at H and P, the limited historical data that UC has from utilizing the commonapp and how it affects yield, so every school has to protect itself.</p>
<p>Ana1,</p>
<p>If what you said is true, that will be really bad for the ones truly want to go UC. It now makes more sense for what happened to a school I know. It is a MIT and Caltech feeder school and historically students apply MIT,Caltech and UC early. At the end all picked MIT and Caltech over UC. So this year UC seemed punished them by rejecting all but waitlist one very qualified student. It is so happened that this student really wants to go to UC.</p>
<p>I’m not at all clear on how using a waitlist can “protect yield.” </p>
<p>If anything, to “protect yield” schools would want to AVOID the waitlist as much as possible, and maximize how many initial offers are accepted by admitted students. The more schools use waitlists, the more their yield drops.</p>
<p>Example:</p>
<p>U of C accepted 3344 students for a class of ~1400. Current yield, without using a waitlist, would then be ~42% (1400/3344). </p>
<p>If lots of these accepted students deny UChicago’s offer and go elsewhere, UChicago will be forced to use the waitlist. So, say, UChicago needs to dip 200 deep into the waitlist. The overall numbers would then be:</p>
<p>3344 Admitted + 200 Admitted off Waitlist = 3544 accepts total.</p>
<p>Yield, then, would be 1400/3544 = 39.5%.</p>
<p>So, using the waitlist hurts yield - it doesn’t protect yield at all. I’m not sure what the debate is about.</p>
<p>Silly. If Chicago was targeting a class of 1,400, and accepting 3,344 students only produces 1,200 enrollments, that’s a yield of 35.9%. That would imply that in order to get a full class of 1,400 without using the waitlist, it would have to admit about 3,900 students (with a yield of 35.9%).</p>
<p>However, if it admits 3,344 students, and put another 2,000 students on a waitlist, then it can negotiate on a student-by-student basis with the waitlistees to make certain that no offer is extended to a student who isn’t prepared to accept it. That means your waitlist admissions function like Early Decision in boosting yield, and your final numbers show a yield of 39.5%, which is meaningfully better than 35.9%. The ~350-acceptance difference between a no-waitlist admission strategy and a heavy-waitlist strategy represents a difference of well over 1% in acceptance rate, too.</p>
<p>Even if there is no actual negotiation with waitlistees, you probably have a much higher yield on waitlist offers than you would have on late-March RD offers. If someone takes affirmative action after May 1 to remain on the Chicago waitlist, that’s a pretty good indication that they would rather attend Chicago than wherever else they have sent their deposit.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why, JHS, UChicago would use the waitlist to enhance yield in any way. The best way to protect yield is to admit the EA and RD students as carefully as possible, and use the WL very very sparingly after that. E.g. if UChicago wants a class of 1400, admitting say, 3000 and getting as close to 1400 of those 3000 to accept would lead to a very strong yield. Then, say only ~1350 or so of the 3k accept, take 50 of the high-yield wait list kids to complete the class. </p>
<p>I’m not sure why UChicago would need high-yield WL admits to boost yield, as by now they can probably ballpark the yield for normal admits pretty accurately, and then use WL sparingly. As a further example, I think, by this point, UChicago can safely say that ~40% of its EA and RD accepts will attend. The WL can then be used carefully after that to fill in the class as needed. </p>
<p>The numbers this year seem to bear that out. I’d be very surprised if UChicago takes more than 50-100 WL kids, max, despite WL’ing a whole boatload of these applicants.</p>
<p>JHS you hit it on the head why they use the WL. I had checked at our school’s naviance that is a feeder for one of the ivies and all the other top schools accept only 1 student every year, but waitlist many. Almost everybody who accepted the WL in the other top schools got in.</p>
<p>@Cue7,
“As a further example, I think, by this point, UChicago can safely say that ~40% of its EA and RD accepts will attend.”</p>
<p>But the problem is UChicago does not know who these 40% will be. For example, if all else is equal, but student A attends a feeder school for Princeton, and student B has no affiliation, then ad com will pick B and waitlist A as the WL are free points. If student A joins the WL, then UChicago knows that the student really wants to go there. If ad coms know from historical data that students in school Blue Grass prefer other schools at the end, then UC will be hesitant to accept even the top candidate from that school due to this uncertainty. But will waitlist the student.</p>
<p>Another point in support of JHS. Let’s say they admitted 50 students from the WL. Were these the first 50 students they offered admission, or where they the first 50 who said they were ready to commit, when they were approached by UChicago.</p>
<p>Ana1,</p>
<p>I imagine that the accepted WL candidates are the ones who are “high yield” i.e. the ones who state they will attend if accepted. </p>
<p>Also, overall, I disagree - I think schools can generally predict the rough % of the class that will accept offers of admission. They can’t predict specific admits, but they know +/- say 3% points, what the rough yield will be. </p>
<p>Schools can then keep a big waitlist to ensure that, if specific candidates turn them down (athletes, specific types of scholars, etc.), the school has “backups” they can use. This is why use of the waitlist is most likely pretty sparing. </p>
<p>Even last year, when UChicago was still adjusting to a new admissions strategy, they only accepted ~80 students off the waitlist. This means that, of the ~3400 offers UChicago made last year, they were pretty accurate about the % of students who would accept the offer.</p>
<p>@Cue7, </p>
<p>If I really like student A but worry that wil go to another school, then I put the student on the WL. Thus, I hedge my chances if this person really wants to come to my school, plus I also use the data to confirm my suspicions whether the student will come or not and use it next year in my prediction model. I also maintain the name of my school as a prospect for next year in that high school. UChicago has been marketing itself lately to more areas in order to increase yield, thus they lack accurate data for all areas. Add the EA at H and P, the financial crisis and the unpredictability on what school will offer a better offer to the applicant. The unknowns are much higher nowadays in the era of the internet where a student can post on CC and ask others, financial concerns, etc. If everything was so easy to figure out, a school like Harvard that is so sure of itself and does not even require a monetary deposit and has a 75% yield, will not have a large waitlist either. Also do not forget that students accept a spot on 3-5 WL, not just one.</p>
<p>Ana1,</p>
<p>Except of late, very few top schools make extensive use of the waitlist, indicating that their algorithms for predicting yield have become quite good. This is balanced, of course, with schools taking “chances” on admitting certain students in the hopes they can indeed snag some of them. </p>
<p>I imagine most top schools have a general sense of what their yield will be, when balanced against the other factors required to make a strong class (high SAT scores, top 10% HS performers, etc.). So, UChicago knows that, if they look to maximize these factors, they can predict a yield of say, 40%. They then use the wait list sparingly after that.</p>
<p>From what the data shows (very sparse use of the waitlist, generally), schools seem to be following this model. Schools can of course keep students on wait lists for a variety of reasons (as insurance, for example), but I’m again not sure what you’re over-arching point is. Given sparse use of waitlists, these don’t really look like significant “yield-protection” mechanisms at all.</p>
<p>Cue7,</p>
<p>Even if what you said was true, Ana1’s by accepting B and waitlist A would protect the yield in a way since there is more chance for B to attend than that of A. Because B is a fit and A is an overqualified. If at the end A really wants go and a B like student may not accept his/her spot, then they can go to A. Of course colleges have a basic algorithm for calculating the yields, o.w we’d see many more students risk not to pay their deposit on May 1.</p>
<p>I agree with Cue7 that, at least in past years, I haven’t seen much evidence of Chicago exploiting its waitlist to manipulate yield. My post above was only to explain how any college MIGHT use its waitlist to boost its yield number a bit. It’s certainly legitimate for colleges to admit conservatively, and then use the waitlist to round out the class. First-year beds are basically limited, and they are expensive to keep empty, but a slight change in yield could mean that the college was dozens of students over or under target. So it makes sense to base RD admissions on a conservative (i.e., high) estimate of likely yield, and then use the waitlist if actual yield is not as good as what was presumed in March.</p>
<p>2yuexue:</p>
<p>The issue there, however, is how do we know when a student is “overqualified” for a certain school? Judging by the incoming student stats at all the top 10 schools or so, it’s pretty tough for any student to be clearly overqualified for a school. A strong student that gets waitlisted or denied may receive such a decision for myriad subjective reasons.</p>
<p>Admissions is a very subjective game. Identifying and defining “yield protection” can be really difficult in today’s admissions world.</p>
<p>Well last year in my high school 6 kids got into chicago EA and RD. None of them accepted. 3 chose Columbia, 1 chose Duke, 1 chose Wharton and 1 chose Stanford. This year Chicago accepted no one. It didn’t even put any one on the wait list. This is in spite of the fact that my school got kids into Harvard, Princeton, Williams, Duke, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, Brown and Stanford. It strikes me as very strange that Chicago found each one of these students unsuitable. Very telling indeed. Also cue7 it is rather obviously that wait listing qualified students increases yield. Its sad to see a school like chicago go the way of washu.</p>
<p>Historically, UC offer acceptance as many as 5 kids from our high school each year. All the kids went to else where. This year UC took only one and waitlist another. The one got in is not any where near the one who is waitlisted. Really not sure what this means…</p>
<p>Collegechica7, 2yuexue, and Ana1:</p>
<p>The issue here is that none of you clearly define what “yield protection” is. When schools engage in Early Decision or Single Choice EA policies, isn’t this a type of yield protection? What about schools that use essay prompts like “Why X School?” and interviews to determine true interest in a school? Doesn’t that count as yield protection?</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that admissions is a very, very subjective enterprise. Admissions isn’t hierarchical where, if a student is admitted to Harvard, he/she should/will be admitted everywhere else. Schools use all sorts of subjective criteria - not the least of which is demonstrated interest in the school - to determine who to accept. </p>
<p>Again, I’m just not sure how you define “yield protection.” I think practices such as ED programs could qualify as “yield protection” as surely as the vague assertion that X school rejected an applicant who clearly “should have” gotten in because this applicant got into other schools. </p>
<p>Depending on how you define the term yield protection, virtually all schools engage in this. Put another way, if you re-define yield protection to mean need to demonstrate a true interest in a particular school, you could argue that all schools engage in yield protection.</p>