I’d lump that into crazy essays, lack of work ethic/curiosity and mental health.
I meant people who are deferred in early action by private schools in the 50-100 range because the university believes there is a very low likelihood of the kid attending. Same could happen with waitlist or denial in RD.
I like the anecdotes and agree that course rigor and performance matter most.
My point is that nobody knows why a particular kid gets deferred or rejected. Parents can have their theories; kids can speculate, GC’s can moan and groan. But you don’t know.
I know one particular case going back a few years- not in my town, but a neighboring one. Star athlete, allegations were that he and a few other teammates sodomized a younger kid with a piece of athletic equipment in the locker room. Thanks to red-shirting, one kid was 18 (the others all minors, so no names used in the newspaper, even the showboating prosecutor was careful not to mention any identifying information for the minors) but the 18 year old was charged as an adult (and reported on by the news). No surprise, he drew a blank in college admissions. Rejected by his safeties outright along with everything else. Things would have died down eventually BUT NO, parents starting suing everyone left and right- the newspaper, the cops, the HS, the colleges which rejected him-- which of course kept this kids name front and center and the top of every google search for a long time. All the suits were baseless of course; you can’t sue a college for not accepting your kid whether it’s for “yield protection” or because you don’t want to take on the responsibility of having the perpetrator of a possible sex crime living in your dormitory and eating in your dining hall, or for some other entirely unrelated reason. (as if).
But my comments on the essays, disciplinary actions, etc. were meant to point out that what looks like “yield protection” on the outside, may in fact be a simple case of an adcom saying “let’s pass on this one. Yes, 1500 SAT is great. But let’s pass”.
The person in the street believes that a high SAT score clearly trumps everything else, and the move towards test optional certainly suggests that those people are wrong.
I doubt that all schools practice yield protection, but a good subset of colleges do. Think of good schools that are often used as a safety for higher ranked or more prestigious colleges. For example, Case Western is a reputable engineering school with an acceptance rate of ~ 30% and an enrollment, or yield, rate of just 15%. Case is likely used as a safety by prospective engineering students who are applying to a more prestigious - and far more selective - private school of similar size in Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon. This was covered in more detail in the 2022 CWRU thread, but Case appeared to be deferring students with high stats that would be a fit for CMU (and other more selective schools) and inviting them to apply ED II if they were still interested. This accomplished two things: 1. it protected Case’s yield rate, and 2. it gave students who were truly interested in attending Case the opportunity to commit. If these high stat students did commit to Case, my guess is that they would have been instantly accepted.
The crazy thing about this example, is that while CMU is very selective (their acceptance rate is 17% overall and in the single digits for top programs like CompSci, Drama and Design), their yield rate is a relatively modest 36%. Just as students are using CWRU as a safety for CMU, extremely high stat applicants are using CMU as a safety for Stanford, MIT and CalTech (except for CompSci).
I HAD a High Stats MIT kid- and this was years ago before the admit rates went crazy- and even then… NOBODY considered CMU a safety. Nobody. I doubt in today’s environment it has changed.
That’s why I push back on so many of these “oh my kid didn’t get in, it was yield protection”. There is so much sketchy information, half truths, sorta truths. In my son’s class alone, there were kids admitted to Cornell engineering who weren’t admitted to CMU; a kid admitted to Princeton denied from Brandeis, and a few other “anomalies” except that if they happen every year are they anomalies?
I’d love to know which high stat applicants are using CMU as a safety and how that’s working out for them. In my neck of the woods- the 4.0 1600 kid could consider Vanderbilt a safe/match school, because Vandy LOVES high stats kids from around here (and they give some of the “I have no EC’s because I study all the time” kids a pass). But that same kid is NOT a walkon at CMU, which seems to like intense involvement with EC’s (they don’t seem to care about “leadership” but if you want to study robotics and weren’t on one of the regional robotics teams- that’s a red flag. You did nothing but study in HS? Look at Rutgers, look at Vandy, look at U Conn (a fine engineering program which doesn’t seem to care much about EC’s). But don’t bet on CMU.
Ok, CMU is nobody’s “safety.” But it is demonstrably a “Plan B” for 64% of the applicants who get in. The theme of this thread is “Does yield-protection exist?” You argue it doesn’t exist because you know of rejections due to sodomy charges or plans for culinary school. I think we can all agree that sexual assault and plans for culinary school are good reasons for rejections! But this still doesn’t answer the question of whether yield protection exists.
I’m going to hazard a guess that for a meaningful percentage of the kids who get accepted and don’t enroll at CMU it’s money- not because it was their plan B. Kid wants engineering- CMU is a good, solid match school and may in fact be their first or second choice. Rubber hits the road and parents have to decide “UIUC instate (the safety for a high stats Illinois kid), or CMU full freight”. What would you pick? Or again- CMU a good solid match or first choice- kid gets accepted, is looking at Drexel with merit, or CMU. That’s a tossup…parents do a HELOC? Put off retirement for another decade? What to do with two younger siblings?
Etc.
Some of the posters are very committed to yield protection, to the exclusion of any other reason why high stat kids get rejected, or why high stat kids get accepted and THEN don’t matriculate. I have no idea if yield protection exists- but I am pointing out that there are lots of reasons having nothing to do with yield protection (or Plan B for the kids who DO get accepted) which are a lot more realistic and nuanced then “College A thought my kid was WAY too good for them so she got deferred” which when you say it out loud sounds a tad crazy.
How about all the public Us, like Wisconsin, FSU, Purdue, Michigan, Auburn, Georgia, etc., that are deferring applicants this year? Isn’t that a form of yield management? Maybe not trying to boost yield (I.e., protection) but definitely managing yield, or class size.
Tracking interest is definitely yield management.
If your kid ever lived in a double converted to a triple, or took a hotel shuttle bus to get to campus every morning because the U was housing kids in a Holiday Inn, you wouldn’t be wondering “how about Wisconsin, FSU, Purdue, Michigan… et al”. How can a college over-enroll (i.e. NOT manage yield) and still operate efficiently? At some point, the neighboring community can’t absorb so many “over-enrolled” bodies. And parents go nuts when it’s THEIR kid who is double and tripled up, or living in the dorm lounge for a semester (I’ve seen one of those set ups and it is ugly). Can Michigan afford to be off by 10% in its Freshman class? Where are those kids supposed to sleep, shower, eat???
LOL that was S19’s case at CMU. Full pay CMU (no merit) or generous merit at Pitt.
CMU wrote such an insulting letter saying you can more than afford full-pay, while explaining the HELOC type options. What a terrible idea!
S19 will graduate debt free from Pitt and hopefully land a 100% fully funded MD/PhD.
I agree. Enrollment management vs yield management.
Aren’t the private Us different? At least the ones that defer a lot every year and make students write LOCI?
Is early decision a form of yield protection/management or enrollment management?
You can find a lot of this information on the every schools Common Data Set.
You’d be surprised how few students enroll at some schools that are accepted.
CMU being one of them.
Lots of admitted students’ parents can afford to fully pay for a selective private U but choose not to. The key is finding the formula that determines which kids are most likely to fully pay. Certain high schools? Business owner parents? Siblings at private Us?
Yes some are under 20%. Most with early decision seem to be enrolling a greater percentage of their classes with ED to lock down the class and boost yield.
Yup that is us! We chose not to.
I fired off a nice response to that letter at CMU, as well.
Taking out a HELOC and other ways they suggested are just terrible, terrible financial mistakes.
Blossom, In the string on CWRU admissions I discussed, multiple parents of kids with near perfect SATs, 4.0UW GPAs, 10 AP classes with fours and fives, strong ECs, etc. were shocked that their students were deferred by Case and invited to apply ED II. Meanwhile, kids with stats more in-line with the typical profile for Case students were accepted… and offered generous merit scholarships. My son was accepted with a 1520 SAT and 3.9+ GPA. The logical conclusion here is that the super high stats students were deferred because Case assumed they were the second choice.
You have a point that - given how selective CMU has become - it is not appropriate to think of it as a “safety” under the old definition, ie a school that is almost guaranteed to accept a student with a given record. But then, is anything a “safety” these days? I read stories every day on CC about students getting rejected from schools that just a few years ago would have accepted them. Maybe it would have been better to refer to CMU as the second choice for the student applying to MIT or Stanford.
On a side note, I just pulled up the USNWR rankings for engineering schools, and things have changed a bit. CMU and Purdue both moved up and are tied for fourth. UIUC dropped to 10th, UofM dropped to seventh (I think they were sixth before), and GA Tech fell to eighth.
I always wondered (in the common app) they ask the question of where the sibling is going to school. I assumed it’s another way of asking if we can afford a private school coupled with the “are you applying for financial aid” question.
The CSS profile you have to fill out at these schools exposes everything so I am not sure why they even ask.
I believe you’re looking at the USNews engineering graduate school rankings rather than undergraduate 
Search, you are right. I stand corrected.
There’s certainly many reasons an individual is or is not accepted at a college, and there will be high stat kids that aren’t’ accepted because of a plethora of valid reasons other than yield protection. But there’s definitely colleges that reject some kids primarily because of their high stats too, and that’s the kind of yield protection I think people are talking about (the classic “Tufts Syndrome”).
I had an opportunity some years back to have lunch 1:1 with a former admissions director for a well known college. My oldest had started in college and my middle one was years away and our lunch was for a totally unrelated reason, but I asked him a few off-the-record questions. Yield protection as classically understood – reject someone because you think they won’t attend in the end – is real. He also confirmed that when colleges claim there is no advantage to applying ED, it’s usually not true.
That said, to you original point, he also said Admissions is “filling out an orchestra” – i.e. they only need so many tuba players.
When my oldest did RD applications he applied to a school as a borderline safety/match. Didn’t tour, didn’t attend any events even when they visited his school, didn’t reply to any emails or show any interest. He was accepted and offered a large merit scholarship. A couple other kids from his same school who had very similar resumes in terms of EC’s, who were the same ethnicity and gender, but who had very high stats, were rejected. Meanwhile they all got into and went to Ivy’s. There was nothing unique that made my son more interesting to this school except his very decent but not incredible stats made him more likely to attend. My youngest is 9 months from applications and has higher stats than his siblings and I’ve warned him that he’ll have to put more focus on his safeties and low matches because of yield protection. His higher scores and harder classes make him less likely to be accepted to the same school that offered his sibling merit aid.