<p>deos a college accept more than people whom they need?
for example, a college need 70 students for class of 2011, but accepts about 80 students (10students accpeted more than that..).</p>
<p>Because.... all students who were accepted will not enrolled the school finally....so for filling that amount of students, the college accept more students.......</p>
<p>(80students were accpeted, but 20 students don't enroll... then... the school needs 10more students ....so the school accepts 10 students from waitlisted students...</p>
<p>Adcoms spend a great deal of time in predicting yield (the percentage of students offered admission who actually accept). Yields vary greatly between schools. The very desirable, elite Ivies have high yields as in your example. Since most college applicants apply to numerous schools and receive numerous acceptances, yields on average are low. Even top 50 schools often have yields of 30% or lower. Adverse publicity, as happened to Duke, can affect applications and yields. Again, the adcoms try to predict as accurately as possible the yield. Ideally, the acceptances will match the desired class size. Overbooking can be a serious problem, but schools also want to avoid the necessity of taking many students from the waitlists. Students who are placed on a waitlist are likely to commit to other schools. The yield from the waitlist offers is often very low. In order to achieve the best possible class, it is best that the adcoms predict yield and make the appropriate number of initial offers of acceptance. Last year, as an average, the adcoms did a good job. Many well known schools took no or very few students from the waitlists and several newspaper articles noted this phenomenon. If you have been placed on a waitlist, you might want to use this information when considering your options. </p>
<p>A more typical scenario would be that a college wants 70 students and makes 240 offers in the hopes of filling all 70 spots or coming close and only needing to take a couple of WL students.</p>
<p>they'll usually offer more spots than needed based on the previous year's yield rate...say the previous year's yield rate is 50%, then to fill 100 spots, they'll give offers to 200 spots, hoping that the yield rate is the same...often, it wont vary by more than 10% either way, so they may have extra enrollees (so the next year they'll most likely make a bit less offers, but not drastically) or they'll have extra open spots, in which they'll take WL applicants (and make a bit more offers the next year)</p>