<p>High School Middle America has the following accepted and enrolled students at Ivy X:
2008 10-8, 2009 9-8, 2010 12-9, 2011 11-7</p>
<p>Same stats and high school for UC, waitlist is the 3rd # 2008 5-0-0, 2009 4-0-0 2010 0-0-4 2011 0-0-3</p>
<p>Check any naviance for particular high schools and you will see the trend.</p>
<p>That’s from the WSJ:</p>
<p>“Schools often pad their waitlists to protect their “yield,” or the proportion of accepted students who choose to attend. They can admit fewer students on the first pass, to maintain their aura of exclusivity, then move on to the waitlist if accepted students turn them down.”</p>
<p>Out of the remarkably small sample size you present, those students could be rejected from the U of C because they do not demonstrate enough interest in the school. Admissions Committees operate to maximize their institutional interests. </p>
<p>I’m not sure how this isn’t clear. You use a term “yield protection” to symbolize some sort of vulgarity, without accurate proof that whatever you’re asserting actually exists, given the small sample size you present. Then, on top of that, the WSJ quote you present would only work if schools heavily use a waitlist. If a school waitlists a ton of students and then accepts a very small amount of them (as UChicago, other top schools now do), there is no real yield protection at work - use of the waitlist actually has minimal impact on the final yield. </p>
<p>I think what you’re trying to assert is that students who “should have” gotten into UChicago based on objective criteria (and evidence that they got into other great schools) but are rejected is evidence of yield protection at UChicago. If this is how you define yield protection, all schools engage in this, only more schools perhaps do this on the front end of the admissions cycle by using an ED or Single Choice EA program. By forcing students to decide early, a student who say, “should have” gotten into a certain school never has the chance, because he/she applies ED to another school and is locked into this decision. </p>
<p>So, overall, your argument appears to be murky and unsubstantiated, at best.</p>
<p>Move out the phrase “yield protection” from the discussion. Whatever Uchicago is doing is very strange. To be honest, I have viewed uchicago very highly and personally place UC over Princeton. There is really no need for UC to play those silly things like some other second tier schools do. UC took so many less qualified students from schools that are not IVE feeder and rejected/waitlist very qualified students from IVE feeder schools can only lower UC in the long run in my personal opinion since if UC continues to carry on this practice, it will have to lower their academic standard to suit the less qualified. I guess I love UC too much to see it takes that direction :(.</p>
<p>Admissions committees operate to maximize the institutional interests of the school, and UChicago is no different. </p>
<p>Virtually all schools engage in some sort of processes to maximize the number of admitted students that will ultimately accept the offers of acceptance. Princeton, Harvard, etc. all have restrictive early action, which is a way of essentially locking in students at a certain school.</p>
<p>Again, admissions operates to further the institutional needs of the school - not to maximize the chances of applicants based on their merits and abilities.</p>
<p>Applicants need to realize this and make decisions accordingly. It’s a bit naive to think that UChicago does not engage in such policies, be it “yield protection” toward the end of the admissions cycle, or perhaps increased use of early admits (as seems to be the case) to maximize yield toward the beginning of the admissions cycle. </p>
<p>Don’t “love UChicago too much” and be disappointed when it makes decisions to maximize its own health. To be blunt, UChicago won’t love you back, and neither will Princeton, Harvard, etc. All schools do this now.</p>
<p>My point is for its own health, UC shall have not lowered their standard by taking many from non IVE feeder schools so their yield can be protected. It is OK for schools like NW, WASHUSTL, and JHU to do that, but not for schools like UC.</p>
<p>But you have no evidence that U of C is “lowering” their standards by taking lower quality students and rejecting higher quality ones.</p>
<p>Given the excess of talent and limited seats at the very top schools, it is quite possible that UChicago is passing up one applicant (with less of an interest in UChicago) for another EQUALLY CAPABLE (or better) applicant from another school with clear interest in UChicago. </p>
<p>All you have is anecdotal evidence, and it’s insufficient to conclude that UChicago is passing up top drawer talent for lesser talent. I presume, actually, that UChicago is passing up certain top drawer students in favor of other EQUALLY (or even superior) top drawer students.</p>
<p>The UChicago class profile indicates that the Class of 2015 is one of the most accomplished in UChicago’s history. I fully expect the Class of 2016 to be as good, if not better.</p>
<p>I think “yield protection” is less about predicting the characteristics of individual students and more about tweaking the number to get the best result. Given that “selectivity” is a good thing from a rankings standpoint, not to mention general bragging rights, anything that minimizes the number of students admitted is a good thing. Since ED acceptees enroll at close to 100%, that’s one sure-fire way to hold down the number of acceptances sent out. In the RD round, if a school predicts a yield of, say, 33%, they’ll have to send out three acceptances for every enrollment.</p>
<p>Waitlists offer another opportunity to tweak the numbers. By checking with waitlisted applicants to determine if they remain strongly interested, schools can get the yield from waitlist acceptances to 100%.</p>
<p>Selectivity math suggests that schools trying to look their best should have a big ED round, go light on the lower yielding RD round, and build a deep waitlist to draw on to top off the class.</p>
<p>I am very interested in how the wait list shuffle will work out this year with so many application going to the more selective schools. I don’t think the number of students was particularly high this year, so there may be a lot of phantom applicants.</p>
<p>2yuexue - why do you think UChicago is rejecting top drawer talent for lesser talent? Why isn’t it possible the university is rejecting top drawer talent for EQUALLY top drawer talent from other schools?</p>
<p>Also again, don’t conclude so much from such a tiny sampling of data. You have absolutely no evidence that UChicago is rejecting top drawer talent from your school (perhaps because of a history of students not attending UChicago) for EQUAL top drawer talent at another school.</p>
<p>I don’t know how many times I have to repeat this - schools operate to maximize their interests. It’s unlikely UChicago would accept lesser talent now than it did before, because this would run contrary to institutional health. Instead, UChicago may just substitute top drawer talent from one school for EQUAL top drawer talent from another school.</p>
<p>Don’t underestimate how much qualified demand exists for seats at the very top schools. There’s more than enough top drawer talent to go around nowadays.</p>
<p>I think it is kind of silly for anyone (Cue7) to be arguing that use of a WL doesn’t help/could hurt yield. That would be factually inaccurate. One can make an argument quite soundly by saying that a school might not NEED a waitlist to achieve target yield, but undeniably a waitlist has the potential to only help, not hurt, the yield - that is just factual. </p>
<p>The waitlist allows schools to:</p>
<p>A.) Place “overqulaified” applicants or “top drawer talent who probably won’t attend said institution” in it so that they don’t reject the offer and lower their yield. If said applicant follows up and takes the waitlist and replies with supplements saying how he/she will for sure attend because the school was his/her first choice, that is a 100% (1/1) yield on that individual and will increase yield.</p>
<p>B.) Offer qualified applicants into the WL and wait for them to give the “if I get admitted I will 100% attend” response. Then sit and wait to see how many of those 100% yield kids they need to take in depending on how off their initial algorithm was.</p>
<p>I like the discussion here, but it is absolutely factual and not opinion that WLs help increase yield. How much/should they be used though is completely debatable.</p>
<p>I’m not arguing that wait lists don’t “help” yield. I’ve said all along that schools operate with their institutional health in mind. In terms of literal impact on yield, I’m just saying wait lists don’t do much. If a school really wanted to maximize yield, it would accept few students EA and RD, place a ton on the waitlist, and then eventually accept a ton from the waitlist that demonstrated lots of interest in the school. This would really boost yield.</p>
<p>The fact that schools accept from the waitlist sparingly indicates that the waitlists don’t change the actual yield % that much. It might cause it to increase a few points, but it doesn’t have the drastic effect it could have if the strategy I described above was used.</p>
<p>I generally dislike the term “yield protection” because it is so vague and ill-defined. I get the sense it’s spouted by folks who remain wilfully blind about one key fact: all schools operate with self-interest in mind. So, whether schools focus on ED policies (lots of “yield protection” with ED policies), restrictive EA policies, or heavy preference for students who show lots of interest in the school, schools are consistent in how they act. This has been true for years.</p>
<p>The dean at UofC once said that they could “kill off” the entire freshmen class and replace every single student with those from the WL & you couldn’t tell the difference…</p>
<p>I think what she meant is that many schools do have a need-aware policy for pulling from the WL, so those who can full pay or nearly full pay may be more likely chosen.</p>
<p>Think about it… Kids come off the WL long after the school has pkged the other frosh. There probably aren’t any Perkins loans or SEOG grants left. The school has given out tons of grants and maybe some merit. It’s harder for them to put together a great FA pkg for a WL student…so make to make it easier, choose students who either don’t have need or need can be met with a Stafford loan…done.</p>
<p>Chicago would lose a whole lot of apps if it moved to REA. Kids who apply to Columbia etc. ED use Chicago and Michigan (both good schools that have unrestricted EA) as a back up plan. They do this because they (rightly) presume that it is easier to get into a EA than RD. Therefore, people apply to Chicago early not because its their first choice but because it ensures that they can attend a good school even after being rejected from their first choice. However, if they are admitted to their top choice school, they are more than willing to reject chicago’s offer. The administration which has got a lot more savvy, is probably aware of this phenomena. They therefore choose to resort to yield protection to offset the negative effect on yield.</p>
<p>About two weeks back, one East Coast Admissions Officer from a very highly regarded top tier institution explained in excruciating detail how the wait list works at his university. He said my son is virtually assured admission if we followed his exact steps. 1. Respond by fax or snail mail to the letter stating you would like to be wait listed. You may write a letter supporting your signed reply. (My son already had. The Admissions Officer’s comment on this step: “The only thing that mattered is that you did get on the wait list. Your son’s letter of appeal is basically useless to us. What we care about is the next step.” By this point I was beginning to seethe, knowing how much time my son had taken to craft that bloody letter.) 2. If you are REALLY interested in Death of a Salesman University (hereafter DSU), you have a choice of three dates in late April to call us and to speak to an Admissions Officer. (My son participates in early morning sports and because of the time differences East to West, their office is closed by the time he gets home, so I had called. Admissions Officer’s comments: “We need to speak with HIM, not YOU. We have a series of questions we ask him to determine his enthusiasm for DSU and his willingness to commit if we take him off the wait list.”) In the business, this is known as the hard sell. I was feeling by this point in the conversation like I was talking to a time share salesman who was not going to let my son out of the room without promises of his first born. The Officer: "Our final questions is this: ‘If we offer you a slot, will you commit?’ " He made it clear that this was essential, without even having a FA package available for several more days. I said, “What if my son gives you the unequivocal ‘yes’ and then your FA package comes back less than adequate?” Long pause. It was like no parent had ever asked this, because why would we? Were were not included in this sales job scenario. I assumed it was not on the flow chart from which he was reading. He finally replied, “We have more flexibility now than previously with meeting needs.” That is sort of the gist of what he said, but it was a bit more sleazy than this, implying that closing the deal was so paramount that you could basically be assured you would get your FA package. I doubt this because this particular university is not known for generous FA. I was thinking, “They will promise anything to close this deal. Do they get commission?” 3. After May 1, they will call you. Now, you will be asked once again, “Will you come to DSU if we make the offer right now? Yes or no?” If you then say yes, you have 24-48 hours to commit in writing with your deposit and then–and only then–will the FA office run the numbers. Note the parent who is required by federal university statute to pay for his/her minor child’s education is left completely out of this Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole story. End of Story: My son came home from school, I told him the entire sordid tale, and he declared DSU’s strategy brilliant. He particularly commended DSU for their cornering of the prey apart from its mother. He then said he was disgusted and would not play this game; furthermore, if this was the way Admissions from DSU operated, their values were wholly incongruent with his own and he wanted nothing to do with the institution. Moral of Tale: As Willie Loman said, “I’ve got to get some seeds. I’ve got to get some seeds, right away. Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground.” Caveat emptor, parents and students.</p>