<p>Some schools very clearly have links to find their CDS..and with a search engine I have found most...</p>
<p>yet I wonder why some schools make it difficult to find their CDS---
For example, within the Duke site and with a search engine I still haven't found a current CDS...</p>
<p>Duke isn't alone in this--why do some Univ bury that data...it is so helpful...and isn't a public domain thing anyway?</p>
<p>I wonder that, too. I’ve had a lot of difficulty finding CDS for some schools. Because some of the schools are pretty highly ranked, I don’t think the’re trying to hide anything.</p>
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<p>It is safe to assume that a number of schools simply do not want to spend the time and effort neded to host the CDS forms. Others probably do not think their “customers” would value the added transparency. </p>
<p>However, given the annual inconsistencies in the numbers disclosed by schools that use admission numbers as marketing tools, it is obvious that a number of schools do not disclose the CDS forms to the public because the “tricks” would be easier to uncover. </p>
<p>In that later group, you can add a number of schools that rely heavily on ED admissions and have learned the benefits of obfuscating details such as wait list admits. This is especially visible when the admission rates are close to illusory yardsticks such as “below 20% overall admits” or when schools do not appear as selective as their peers. For such schools, the press releases of April are more important that the true numbers appearing on the CDS in the fall. </p>
<p>It is not hard to see why the list of schools that do not care for public disclosures is or used to include Chicago, Duke, Penn, and WUSTL, among others. And yes, highly ranked schools do have PLENTY to hide from the public at large! Fwiw, Harvard only changed its practice very recently. </p>
<p>On the other side of the spectrum, one should applaud the efforts of a school such as Williams that has attempted to post every survey it completes. There is hope that someday, every school that receives one cent in federal aid should be forced to make every survey public, including the highly questionable peer assessment survey used by US News and abused gleefully by corrupt and cynical administrators.</p>
<p>The CDS is helpful to see real test #s and all kinds of interesting information…</p>
<p>I am trying to find the real SAT and ACT numbers and also through CDS and other sources look at yield for example.</p>
<p>For many years, members of College Confidential have tried to curb the schools’ appetite for non-disclosure by listing the CDS and exposing the dinosaurs and cheaters:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/76444-links-common-data-sets-posted-colleges.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/76444-links-common-data-sets-posted-colleges.html</a></p>
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<p>That’s waaaayyyyy too charitable, IMO. Since even some of the richest of the rich don’t post thier CDS’s online, my only (cynical) conclusion is that either: 1) they have something to hide; or, 2) to paraphrase Jack Nicholson they think, we “can’t handle the truth”. :D</p>
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<p>Also props to Cornell which publishes admissions/transfer data by individual college. Of course, it would be even better if they published by instate-OOS by college!</p>
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<p>Oh, Bluebayou, having seen my posting of facts elevated by some to be frontal attacks on their beloved august academic institutions, I was trying to be … charitable. Of course, committing the CC harakiri of daring to name schools such as Chicago, Duke, Penn, and WUSTL as “transparency light” will not go unpunished … as soon as the fanboys migrate from their usual threads where they silence the dissenters with might and passion. :)</p>
<p>collegedata.com has what appears to be common data set info for more schools than I have ever seen. </p>
<p>For Duke: <a href=“https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1026[/url]”>https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1026</a></p>
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<p>Of course I have, xiggi. I was just afraid that you were getting soft in your “old” age. </p>
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<p>It’s kinda like MamaBear: even slightly challenge my kid’s school is a challenge my kid and therefore me. One of the more frustrating things on cc, IMO, since even neutral comments about school X can be regarded as a negative. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Dad’o’2 - you’re absolutely correct about the wealth of information available at the College Data site. It’s one of the sites that licenses the College Board information and seems to be happy to present the data objectively. It has been of my favorites sites for years!</p>
<p>One of the difficulties that exist is that it is not always clear if the year is presented correctly and if the numbers were updated on a timely basis. As an example, many of us are currently tracking the Fall 2009 data and it is not always clear what data is posted on College Data. </p>
<p>Last but not least, some of the numbers are hard to reconcile. An example of this would the number of applications received by Chicago under its EA cycle.</p>
<p>Check this:</p>
<p>University of Chicago
PROFILE OF FALL 2008 ADMISSION</p>
<p>Overall Admission Rate 28% of 12,376 applicants were admitted
Students Enrolled 1,351 (39%) of 3,454 admitted students enrolled </p>
<p>Early Decision Admission Rate<br>
Early Action Admission Rate 49% of 2432 applicants were admitted</p>
<p>LOL, xiggi you’ll get no flak from me on that score. I think every college should publish its CDS. I also agree with bluebayou, universities where admission is by college really ought to make an effort to break out the admissions info by college as well. Carnegie Mellon doesn’t do it on the CDS, but at least they do it on the admissions website where it is easy to find.</p>
<p>It also annoys me when schools make it difficult to find their COAs (or when their COAs seem to neglect a few costs - like books, transportation, or course fee or some other typical expense that is included in COAs)</p>
<p>xiggi</p>
<p>what do you think about the helpfulness of yield numbers and how do we find that real yield when the Univ play with their CDS etc</p>
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<p>If you use the term yield as the ratio of enrolled students over admitted students, I have never understood why APPLICANTS pay any attention to this number. IMHO, yield is a measure that is extremely important for the colleges as they need to predict their enrollment but has little to no value for parents and students. On the other hand, the admission ratio offers a lot of insight as the difficulty of being accepted.</p>
<p>Xiggi</p>
<p>Right–the ratio between admitted vs enrolled…
I hear (perhaps the urban myth) that when it comes to the potential advantage of ED/EA admits…that for schools with very high ratios there is a minimal if no advantage with those schools…</p>
<p>I guess thats why I am even trying to find that–
also OOS vs in-state etc</p>
<p>Sometimes it’s there, it’s just under a different name. I’ve sometimes found it by searching the college website for “institution relations”. The information isn’t always uniform though. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>UChicago’s EA admit rate this year was 28.4%. There was also a large increase in the absolute number of students accepted EA. The EA rate dropped even though the EA admits were way up. Looks like they were hedging against an RD application drop off. We will have to see how that plays out.</p>
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<p>[Banner</a> year for earlyapplications - The Chicago Maroon](<a href=“Rambling and flat, this family turmoil doesn’t amount to a handful of cherries – Chicago Maroon”>Rambling and flat, this family turmoil doesn’t amount to a handful of cherries – Chicago Maroon)</p>
<p>I particularly like the comment posted under the article. Typical U of C.</p>
<p>I have a suspicion that higher yield corresponds to higher absolute selectivity among similar top unis. </p>
<p>I’m not referring to 1% or 2% higher yield, but when the difference is in or close to the double digit range. There is a good correlation between yield and cross-admit ratio among the competing elite unis. Successful applicants to the top unis generally have more options, and if as a group they tend to choose a certain college over another than perhaps one can make a case that the college with that wins the cross-admit ratio is more selective in the absolute sense. If this theory is correct, then a college that wins cross-admit ratio (because of the stated correlation, tends to have higher yield), may have higher absolute selectivity even with higher admit rate. This phenomenon may be explained by a high self-selectivity of the applicant pool of the college.</p>
<p>For example, if both college A and college B have an admit rate of 10%, but college A wins the cross-admit ratio by 50%, then college A may be more selective than college B in the absolute sense, i.e., it is harder for a randomly chosen applicant to get into college A.</p>
<p>Idad, this is exactly what I was trying to underscore by pointing that the figure reported by College Data (PROFILE OF FALL 2008 ADMISSION: Early Action Admission Rate 49% of 2432 applicants were admitted) is pretty hard to reconcile with the numbers disclosed by the Maroon. Of course, one might think that the Maroon cannot speak with authority or accuracy about the numbers, but in the past the editors have seemingly received such numbers directly from the Office of Admissions. </p>
<p>This is excerpted from the quoted article. </p>
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<p>Would it not be nice to know more about the numbers? How many completed applications were there really for the Classes of 2012 and 2013? What does this really mean, “While many of those peers, including Duke, Cornell, and Columbia saw increases in the low hundreds in their binding early decision applications, the U of C received over 2,000 more early applications than last year, and almost a third more than its previous high in 2007.” </p>
<p>Did the EA applications for the Class of 2013 go down by the 14-15% or did they … increase from the 2432 disclosed by College Data? </p>
<p>Inquiring minds want to know!</p>
<p>IMO commondata is the most accurate way to gauge a student’s chance of being admitted to a school. I studied the commondata for the schools my son applied to very carefully, including boy/girl ratio and OOS admits. So far we have been correct in our predictions for the seven schools he has heard from (6 admit, one deny). Yield and ratio mean nothing because you don’t know what you’re competing with, whereas commondata gives you specific numbers to compare your personal stats to.</p>