Demonstrated Interest vs. Yield Management

Applying to College
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Breathing a sigh of relief as college process is nearing an end for my kid, but …

Living through this, the role of demonstrated interest, and/or matching to the appropriate level, and/or yield management on the part of schools seems to be even larger than I had imagined beforehand.

Without getting into excruciating detail, kid was accepted at all four schools that offered some form of early action, ranging from large publics to small college. Early action was predictable, and lifted a big worry about getting in.

Kid’s target schools were primarily small liberal arts colleges. There were 10 applications here. Only one of these resulted in a rejection, while there were four acceptances, all from schools in top 20 of USNR colleges list. These schools also seem to put less weight on “interest” than others.

But kid was put on FIVE waitlists, generally from schools that were lower ranked than the acceptances. We had visited all of these places, although a couple were before official tours opened up after covid, so the school might not have “seen” that we were there. At least four of these five saw “interest” from kid in the form of signing up for online presentations, conducting interviews, and clicking through numerous e-mail links.

The other rejection was from a tech focused university that we did not visit or sign up for anything that might show demonstrated interest, so not suprised by that one.

Anyway, I am still puzzling over the patterns - given the schools that kid did get into, it makes no sense to me that he was not admitted to a few more of the schools that objectively admit more students. Is it really necessary to show rabid interest always? Or is it that the schools are aggressively practicing yield management to target students who are not likely to be admitted to more rejective schools?

I am wondering what others’ experiences in recent admission cycles might be.

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It may not be either demonstrated interest or yield protection. It may be institutional priorities. The Two Most Important Letters in College Admission – Georgia Tech Admission Blog

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Probably not either. Our CC reminded DS that at a school that enrolls 500 students each year, half will be your gender. Og those 250, if each of 10 teams gets 4 recruits, that’s 210. If they want 10% FGLI, there are another 25 spots that aren’t yours. Legacy often only gets that benefit in the early round. Many schools have half their class admitted through ED, and it’s easy to see how that happens.

So now, it’s really luck as to whether you are bringing what this community still needs as they fill the roughly 125 spots available to you. Recruited athletes may have come from your geography. URM may be interested in the same disciplines.

Much of this is beyond anyone’s control. Rejoice that she got her top choice and don’t look back.

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I hear you. D23 wound up on 9 waiting lists but will be attending a school that is more selective than some of waitlisters. Glad this is my last college rodeo.

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There is an expectation that if a student gets in at one school, (s)he should also be accepted at all colleges that are ranked lower. This is a complete misunderstanding of how admissions work.

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I get this point. I also understand it is quite a random process. But I remain surprised that kid was accepted at a few of those places where there were only 125 spots and high yield would suggest that they only need to admit 250-300 to fill them. Yet at places where class sizes were at bit larger and yields a bit lower, kid was not among the 800 or so that those schools would be admitting.

Maybe don’t look back is the best advice, and I won’t be doing any retro-analysis after May 1!

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I am not sure where one can turn to for understanding then. More than a year on this board, reading several books on college admissions, listening to several regular podcasts, and poring over countless Common Data Sets, and I still find it baffling!

One thing I can say after going through this is that it definitely is worthwhile applying to MANY schools if you’re going after the rejective ones, and that I don’t think those who encourage a shorter list fully understand the incentives from the student’s perspective.

Perhaps one can have a tiered strategy, where within each category of reach, target, and safety, one might choose one or two schools to smother with rabid, obsessive demonstrated interest to boost the chances there.

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Elf, it’s a waste of time at lots and lots of colleges to “smother” them with rabid, obsessive demonstrated interest.

Yale won’t care. U Conn won’t care. Julliard won’t care. West Point won’t care. U Mass Lowell won’t care. U Oklahoma won’t care.

Etc. Some colleges don’t care because they take who they take. Others don’t care because they’ve got a transparent rubric- if you’re in, you’re in. I think demonstrated interest applies for a relatively small group of colleges and that narrative has exploded to allegedly include ALL colleges which is false.

Applying to MANY schools can be incredibly expensive, time consuming and stressful. I understand the alleged incentives from the student’s perspective but I still think for many kids, it’s a mistake.

Kid in my neighborhood- I feel for her. Parents hired a consultant back in 10th grade to mold her into who knows what. She applied to 20 colleges, and his heading to U Albany unless one of her waitlist schools come through (which I think is highly doubtful).

Nice kid, great outcome. Except the kid feels like the biggest loser (nobody needs to hire a consultant to end up at Albany, even out of state). So instead of celebrating that she’s going to college in August, she’s moping because the “highly rejectives” have rejected her.

Her list was wrong for sure. Solid kid but not at the top of her class, nice EC’s but nothing that says anything about her except “prom organizing committee” suggests a certain level of administrative skills. So delusional parents, over-priced and over-hyped consultant, kid who goes with the flow and has pretty much wasted her senior year agonizing over which highly rejective university to attend (answer- none of them).

So no, don’t encourage MANY schools if you’re going after the rejective ones. Encourage getting a realistic handle on who you are, what you want in a college education, what your parents can afford. And don’t bother smothering Stanford with rabid, obsessive demonstrated interest because trust me- they don’t care.

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Every student goes to one college. Having a few acceptances is useful but I don’t see the point of collecting acceptances. For the highly selective/rejective schools, the applications take time, limiting the total number that can be submitted and submitted well.

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If Williams needed a male, an oboe player, and someone from Indiana and you are the best applicant who fits that description, you’re in.

Skidmore may already have that person or simply may not care about oboe players or representation from Indiana. And they may be prioritizing full pay in that “doesn’t fill any bucket” category and you may need some FA.

That’s how you get into Williams and not Skidmore. They aren’t creating an Olympic relay team where there is one criteria - speed - and you’re in the top 4 or you’re not.

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Admissions is not a lottery and a student that is a weak candidate at a very selective school will be a weak candidate if they apply to twenty of them

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Weak, yes. But if you’re strong without any special hooks, might be worth it. My daughter’s experience this cycle backs that up. Two competitive acceptances, nine wait lists. Still can’t figure out the differences.

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I find this topic extraordinarily difficult. How does a student show a school that may be slightly less competitive that they are serious and that they want to attend, esp when you are chasing merit.

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My son went to lots of online activities. It worked for one (acceptance) and not for another (waitlist).

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What was your financial aid situation like? Did you need substantial aid?

I see a lot of successes here as well as failures. Trying to dissect each outcome will drive one up the wall. Institutional priority, revenue target and yield are all so important to small schools.

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Not if the college does not consider level of applicant’s interest. (See section C7 of its common data set.)

That is one of the typical reasons for using level of applicant’s interest. Another possible reason is if the college is somewhat unusual and wants to avoid enrolling students who find it to be a bad fit and will drop out of transfer away.

However, as others note, yield protection is often blamed in cases where some other explanation is more likely.

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Yes, I think financial need is another potential factor. Even for schools that are need blind, it has always been unclear to me whether they can see if you applied for aid or not. I think it depends on the school. It is also really interesting to me how the parent occupation and education are required on applications, and would be interesting to know what judgments are made based on that. We did “check the box” that we were applying for aid, so that may explain some things.

Just to be clear, I am talking primarily about LACs like the NESCACs and similar (Vassar, Oberlin, Grinnell, Reed), in the tier just below the top group who can be fully need blind and ignore demonstrated interest. The schools that are need aware may have a complicated calculus of trade offs - desirability of the student vs. how much they cost for the school to acquire. Also very small class sizes which only emphasize the random effects.

I did hear a Georgetown admissions officer on a podcast during this process. Georgetown, according to policy, does not consider interest, but the AO was telling stories that students will send in all kinds of things to the admissions office - flowers, little gifts - and the AO kind of chuckled and said “we notice”. I was disappointed, but not surprised to hear that.

This is a very human process, so I think little things matter, even when they might not. Even when there are rules, these AOs are all working together in one little building, so it is hard to imagine that there are not little leakages of information, or just picking up on body language.

Just to throw something else into the mix, I think the “pipeline” or track record of a high school with admissions to specific colleges matters too. My kid’s NJ public school has relatively few kids who target LACs (for example 80 applications to Columbia vs. 8 to Williams and even fewer for other colleges).

Anyone who has visited Colgate might have noticed the binders in the admissions visitor center that list the current students and the high schools they came from (a weird practice that I didn’t see on any other visits). I went through them and was a bit surprised at the predominance of prep schools vs. public schools coming from New Jersey. Colgate feel like it needs to pull a representative group of New York public students, and might be taking lots of public school students from other areas of the country, but they seem to have other goals when looking at NJ students.

I would imagine that each small LAC has its own patterns of tradition and obligation with respect to its feeder and community schools. I am just saying that when the results are so variable, it makes more and more sense to keep your options open by applying multiple strategies (high application numbers + selective smothering).

Apologies for the rambling. Just trying to release all my speculation before not looking back after Decision Day.

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there’s another thing that is even harder to parse, and that is ‘fit’. You mentioned Vassar and Colgate: peer schools in some ways, but they will suit different students. When we were at a Vassar admitted students day most of the other parents that I ran into were also going to at least one of the other schools that we were visiting.

I think that AOs don’t get enough credit for how well they recognized their own.

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The waitlist activity at several “popular” schools this week makes me wonder if many of these schools were more conservative with admissions due to miscalculated yield and over-enrollment the past few years. (Edit: I believe both UGA’s David Graves and GTech’s Rick Clark indicated that would be their approach this year.) As May 1 approaches, some schools are moving to waitlists early to grab institutionally desirable students before they deposit elsewhere.

Just another data point to consider if one endeavors to “explain the unexplainable”. :wink:

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WL are the perfect way for schools to “right size” at the end of the process.

While WL is such a source of consternation on these boards (understandable!), it’s also interesting to note what percentage of kids offered a WL position choose to take it. Usually, it’s far fewer than half. – others have offers they prefer. This really helps the schools manage enrollment.

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