Could someone tell me their opinion of the likelihood of acceptance?
104.09 W GPA
42 in a class of approximately 850
1790 SAT combined
27 ACT
5 AP’s senior year, 7 in total
National Honors Society
Varsity Rower for 2 years
300+ hours of community service
Good essay about 90 year old father
In state
Has anyone heard since being deferred??
I contacted admissions and they said this was the most competitive year of admissions, especially for the School of Management. The admissions counselor I spoke with said that they can only admit a portion of their class during early action because otherwise they would be admitting too many stidents early. He says Bing admissions will take another look at the deferred applications and rereview the application with the rest of the applicant pool (i.e., the regular decision applicants plus the deferrred applicants). Binghamton says it takes a holistic approach to review. It likely will be late March or perhaps the first few days of April before a final decision is made on the deferred applicants, especially for the SOM applicants.
@rgr717 may i ask the first name of the counselor you spoke too? just checking if its same counselor i spoke with…thank you and best of luck!!
@TheManster can you send me a private message. It would not be appropriate to name any admissions counselor on CC.
@lostaccount, it seems to me you are arguing against your own point, regarding “yield protection”, by pointing out that 80% decline anyway. How exactly would the mechanism work to protect yield?
Nisky1-some schools protect their yield by deferring or wait listing candidates whose credentials are stronger than those for students who tend to accept admissions offers. When credentials are so strong, there is a good chance that the student has applied to other more competitive schools, with this school serving as a safety. Waiting to admit that type of student allows time for the student to get offers from places that may be preferred, at which point the student will probably not express strong interest in Binghamton and may even withdraw the Binghamton application. Every student who ends up going some place else before an offer is extended protects the yield. Some of those strong students will have Binghamton as their first choice. They will call, inquire, show interest-distinguishes those likely to accept an offer from those who have preferred offers from other schools. So waiting makes it easier to find those student likely to accept the offer.
@lostaccount, a few questions for you then.
Do these universities you refer to select a fraction of the “strong credentials” to wait list or defer, while admitting others? How do they decide between admitting or not?
What do they do about the large group of students that have strong credentials, get into more competitive but also more expensive schools, and decide eventually to go to the state school? Give up on a fraction of that group of potential accepts? Or wait t until the late stage when that decision tends to be made, and then scramble to make an offer?
And how do they get to the 80% decline rate? And are they conciously trading away raising the average SAT or GPA of the accepting class for higher yield?
If you have some clear facts it would be good to describe them.
If you look at the mix that accept to go to Binghamton, it includes some of the very best credentials - unless you want to dispute that as well.
why ask some clueless teenager?
My comments don’t apply to all students and don’t apply only to Binghamton. When someone noted that a student with lower scores was admitted while they were deferred I suggested this is a possible reason. I am not the first to mention this phenomenon. It has been called “Tuft’s Syndrome”. A yield of 20% is very typical for state schools like this one. It is not a bad yield but many schools try to protect their yield. Some students will opt for a school like Binghamton over a more expensive one. Those intending to do that will indicate interest. They aren’t “consciously trading” anything. Students don’t accept the first offer they get. If they prefer a different school they wait and they inquire. I’m not suggesting this is true of all students deferred or with strong credentials. Schools that do this do it for students they think are unlikely to accept their offer.
Nisky1, there is nothing wrong with this strategy. All schools adopt strategies to offer admissions to the students that are most likely to attend.They need to control their yield so they don’t end up with hundreds more or less than expected. The word strategy is not synonymous with the word bad. With the exception of the most competitive schools in the country, all schools get applications from students highly unlikely to accept their offers. Most students attending Ivy + schools were advised to apply to some safeties. Schools like Binghamton probably receive more applicants like that then they have seats to fill. So what should they do? Extend offers to the top candidates regardless of whether they are likely to attend, figure they’ll all probably decline so also extend the usual number of offers to those likely to attend. What if they misjudge by hundreds? They can reject all that fall above the usual profile but some might have come. Or, they can reject those they know, from experience, will reject an offer, defer or wait list those they think are unlikely but possible, and accept those that are within their typical profile.
@lostaccount I disagree with your opinion regarding yield protection’s role in the admission process at Binghamton. Having spoken to an admissions officer and anecdotal evidence from students who got accepted or deferred via Early Action, my belief is that Binghamton accepted ALL of the best candidates for each school --SOM, Watson, Harpur-- based on a comparison of their strengths (bssed on a holistic review) relative to the other applicants they are competing against. If someone with very high stats got deferred it likely is based on strength of curriculum and a host of other factors (extracurriculars, leadership, essay, recommendations). The way I see yield protection fitting in is if the applicant shows demonstrated lack of interest by sloppy application, missing application deadlines poor essay, never visiting the school or never attending open house events or school visits when the regional admissions officer shows uo. Attendance at these events is tracked and evidences interest. The common data set fot Binghamton indicates that they consider level of interest. But in my daughters case, even with a high SAT of 1360 and visiting the school several times wasnt enough, because SOM applicants who were accepted Early Action probably had taken the most APs, honors (and done excellently in those courses) and many likely had high 1300s, 1400s ot better on SAT M & CR or 31 or higher on ACT. Another factor is availability of spots. Harpur has a much larger class than SOM, which I believe has only about 320 freshman versus over 1500 freshman.
@lostaccount, I was careful in my series of questions, hoping that you would examine what you were saying a bit more carefully. Hopefully the commentary from rgr717 has given you a bit more pause.
Repeating what others have said does not validate it. A Wikipedia writeup on “yield protection” is pasted below.
Yield protection is an alleged admissions practice where a university or academic institution rejects or wait-lists highly qualified students on the grounds that such students are bound to be accepted by more prestigious universities or programs. This is also referred to as Tufts Syndrome.[citation needed] However, alternate theories regard the yield protection as a myth propagated by college students who failed to gain admission to elite universities. Yield rate refers to the proportion of students who matriculate (i.e. accept an admissions offer and attend the college) after acceptance to a college.[citation needed]
@choleas, thanks for your comments, and I also had a really good laugh at your response to KSP, memorable stuff…
Nisky1. Thanks but actually I don’t really need to examine what I wrote “a bit more carefully”. I am cognizant of what I wrote. I applaud the care that you take with your questions, however.
None of what I wrote came from Wikipedia nor is it based on “myths”. I too take care in terms of the sources of information I use. A nice source is a “working paper” by Avery, C., Glickman, M and others of the National Bureau of Economic Research entitled “A REVEALED PREFERENCE RANKING OF U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES” (2004). While the paper deals most with college preference ranking systems, it addresses some of the strategies used by some schools to cull their applicant pool and improve yield. It’s a great read. The paper is compelling. By using Harvard, MIT and Princeton as examples, they demonstrate patterns of acceptances that are consistent with what has been describe above as “Tufts Syndrome”. I also recommend a paper by Daniel Golden (2001) published in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Glass Floor: Colleges Reject Top Applicants, Accepting Only the Students Likely to Enroll”. Neither of these papers reveals which schools adopt which strategies.
If applicants with very strong credentials are deferred while those with less strong credentials are accepted, one reason may be that the school has adopted this strategy. If strong stronger students are accepted than those deferred, it is less likely that the school is using this strategy. I would not count on the school, particularly this one among others, to be transparent in terms of their admissions strategies.