For Princeton in particular, Princeton’s CDS says they do not consider demonstrated interest, and I see no indication of conflicting information on the website. While the CDS isn’t gospel, I wouldn’t expect whether you attend a tour or not to directly impact admission at colleges that say they do not consider demonstrated interest.
However, this doesn’t mean such colleges do not favor SCEA/ED applicants over similarly qualified RD, do not care whether essay/interview/… indicates that they are interested in and have researched the school, do not care if the student lists the wrong name of the school on the application/essay/…, etc.
Note that it is possible for a college to track level of interest for the purpose of yield prediction if that student applies and is admitted, even if it does not use level of interest for the purpose of yield protection by rejecting the student who applies but does not show sufficient level of interest (beyond applying).
@parentologist did the URM, 1600, NMF apply during RD. Competitive major? Waitlisted or denied?
Some anecdotes: Last year, people commented that Baylor denied or waitlisted kids with ~1500 SATs and high grades. Parents on CC were stunned. How could Baylor do such a thing? They admitted that they weren’t going to Baylor but sent out a lot of late apps to cover themselves after an ED denial. I note that Baylor is a fine school and great option but these applicants were at the tippy top of their stat range.
A couple years ago, a TCU admissions rep presented at our HS. I asked if they track demonstrated interest. She said they do and track if emails are opened and how quickly. That’s certainly not unique to TCU. Many private universities track interest. It helps determine a particular applicant’s level of interest and convertability. Tracking things like visits (virtual or in person), website page views, apps, calls into the office, etc. can give you an early read about how the class is shaping up.
Tulane sent out many notices of free applications to my D20 who didn’t do very well on the PSAT. With the common app, it’s tempting to just roll the dice. However, it’s a tactic to generate applications. Yes, our daughter could have been at the top of the class, built a nuclear reactor in the garage, done peer reviewed research or won a national debate competition, but they knew that the chances that our ORM didn’t have a super spike. If she applied and had such a spike, did she show much inclination to enroll? Now you work the yield angle.
I attended a high school in NY where 98% of students went to college and 15% went to Ivy League schools in the 1970s/80s. So many kids who applied to Harvard, Yale or Princeton as their dream schools also applied to Amherst or Williams as their safeties. It got so bad that Williams started rejecting highly qualified applicants from my high school because yield rates were so low. Counselors started advising students who truly wanted to attend Amherst or Williams to go above and beyond to demonstrate interest through interviews, campus visits, essays, etc. (I don’t know if they had ED applications then).
Fast forward to 2021, when Thing #1 was applying to schools. He only applied to seven, EA to six (he did not have a clear favorite, or he would have applied ED). He visited every campus where tours were available, and attended virtual tours/info sessions when they were not. We made sure he registered and attended information sessions about his intended major, when available, even if our son did not see the value of it. In his “why do you want to attend XXX university essays” he did his research, including talking to recent alumni, so he could demonstrate that he was interested enough to put work into it. In short, he went out of his way to demonstrate interest and indicate that he was seriously considering the school.
We’ll know in a couple months if the strategy paid off.
I read through the entire thread. It seems like we need to look at the college as a business they are. As with any business, an accurate forecast is important for overall operation.
If Tufts/Northeastern gets a candidate that’s middle of the pool (GPA, SAT, EC) in ED and this candidate doesn’t need financial aid, what reason do they have not to admit the candidate? It’s free money on the table, isn’t it? It would be stupid not to give admission.
It might sound unfair, but life is unfair, I have learned.
Ok, it is a few months later, and I am happy to report the strategy did pay off. Here are the results so far:
MSU (safety) - accepted, likely invitation to Honors Program according to AO
Pitt (safety) - accepted
RHIT (target) - accepted with $26K in merit aid
CWRU (target) - accepted with $26K in merit aid
Purdue (target) - accepted
UofM (slight reach) - postponed, writing LOCI essay and sending fall grades
CMU (far reach) - notice in April
Of those CWRU is most noteworthy for considering demonstrated interest. Publics practice yield management, like Purdue and Wisconsin, but I’m not sure that demonstrated interest is what matters vs fearing over enrollment.
When you’re deferred by a top 100 private with a 1500 SAT, you know you’ve been yield managed.
trista, We visited CWRU for an information meeting and campus tour, then attended engineering zoom calls. We visited all the schools that were not close to home during the summer between junior and senior year. My son also attended a summer Catapult program at RHIT. We then visited UofM and MSU this past fall. If my son was interested enough to apply, he was interested enough to visit and do some homework.
Or wrote an essay which was clearly meant for a different college (i.e. about your love of engineering when applying to a college which doesn’t have an engineering program); wrote about how happy it will make grandpa on his deathbed to know you’ve been accepted to this college even though you plan to attend culinary school, etc.
This isn’t yield management- this is doing your job as an adcom- accepting kids with a reasonable (not 100%, but reasonable) interest in your institution.
All colleges want to be able to predict yield accurately in order to avoid over or under enrollment (overall, and sometimes by division or major). But only some colleges want to raise yield as high as possible and resort to looking at level of applicant’s interest or other indicators.
Predicting yield is probably done on an individual admitted student basis. At a first pass, yield is likely to be lower for stronger applicants, since stronger applicants are likely to have more other admission and scholarship offers. Offering a merit scholarship can be a way to try to influence the likelihood of yielding by any admitted student the college is particularly interested in having attend.
A more practical reason that some highly qualified kids are waitlisted / denied at “lower tier” colleges has to do with parent wealth profile. Schools with plush endowments and multi-generational alum giving programs can afford to seed their classes with middle-class students & families with average assets. Schools that are still in the process of strategically building a foundation of philanthropic support – in anticipation of the next capital campaign – simply don’t have that luxury. Prospective families like to tour attractive, updated dorms; well-curated dining facilities; modern athletic complexes, etc. It is the cost of doing business in higher ed.
I’d have said Top 10 to clarify any practices by Ivy+. Top 100 refers to schools such as Baylor which routinely defer or deny people with top scores and academics because they don’t show enough demonstrated interest.
Please list dozens of reasons why Baylor, Fordham, Northeastern and others who track demonstrated interest would defer or deny applicants with test scores far above their top 75%. MIT doesn’t track interest.
I wonder reading this thread if "yield protection " means the same thing to everyone.
I associate it with "i need to show my boss/administrative/trustees that we are attractive to students and it is important to have as high a yield as possible ". In other words, it’s about managing to that stat. I can imagine that the insanely rejective schools like Harvard and Stanford might care about this as it may be a measure of the strength of brand. It’s possible that when they see an amazing student that screams “perfect for the other” that they pass.
But I sincerely doubt that the vast majority of schools manage to this metric. (This doesn’t mean that they don’t look at it or model it, but that they don’t make decisions to meet a goal.) They want to create a class that meets their institutional goals. They are managing enrollment-- making sure they don’t give more FA than they have, ensuring a broad enough range of interests than classes are subscribed but not in need of additional sections, etc. This, to me, isn’t “yield protection” but enrollment management.
Yes, it definitely exists. It’s kind of baffling some people think it doesn’t. Does it exist at every school? No. But there are definitely schools where being a very high stat candidate who doesn’t apply early decision is much riskier than being a pretty good stat candidate, equalized for both having comparable EC’s and other factors.
Kid has a suspension or two from HS, with a vague “I sure learned my lesson about starting fires in the locker room” essay. Teacher’s recommendation states “Joey is so gifted that he basically slept through my class and still managed to get an A on the final” (this is a quote- I know the teacher and the student). Guidance Counselor vaguely references an allegation of sexual assault without specifics. Kid got a 1500 and has a C- average (even the stats-obsessed schools understand that GPA is a more powerful statistical predictor of college performance than a standardized test score). Kid wrote in his Fordham essay “my parents want me at a Catholic college but I want to attend culinary school”.
Etc. I could get to a few dozen but you catch my drift. In the year’s that I interviewed for Brown many kids brought their essays to the interview or forward to me ahead of time (not required btw, and not a great idea). Just when you think you’ve seen it all (some variant of “I’m applying to make my grandpa happy. He’s paying for college for me and I love him, but I don’t want to go to Brown and work my tail off, I want to go to XYZ college and have fun”) you see something new and different. “Brown has been my dream since I was 8 years old. My therapist thinks my obsession with one particular college is problematic but I’m sure you’ll agree with me that it just shows how awesome a place it is- and what a great addition to campus I will be”.
You really doubt there are dozens of reasons why a high SAT score doesn’t get a kid magically admitted to a particular college?
@citivas , I am saying that the term yield protection implies that a high stats kid is turned down because they are high stats and perceived as unlikely to enroll and hence to harm the yield metric. It suggests that the motive is to have a high yield.
I think that in addition to the kids who have other reasons to be turned down in spite of stats (see above), there are just too many kids to fill certain buckets. If a high stats kid wants to major in CS and the school gets piles of kids who want CS, that kid may get turned down while a kid who is interested in journalism may not – even if that kid has lower stats. That to me is NOT yield protection but enrollment management.