<p>JHS: Interesting point made…</p>
<p>I’m confused by Xiggi’s post a ways back. Do acceptance and yield rates not reflect wait list activity?</p>
<p>As I understand it, colleges get to claim a 100% yield for waitlisted acceptees, although waitlisted acceptees do raise the acceptance rate. So in the case of H, its acceptance rate goes up (to 7.8%, I think I read recently) as a result of admitting 200 off the waitlist, but so does its yield.</p>
<p>Actually, since Harvard appears not to have conditioned acceptances off the waitlist on a prior indication that the student will enroll if accepted, and since the numbers don’t work if all 200 people enroll, and since there is evidence on CC of people offered admission who then decline it (if one believes them), I think Harvard is NOT planning on 100% yield from its waitlist. (And, repeat after me: “Harvard does NOT manage its numbers to look good in U.S. News.”)</p>
<p>By accepting 200 off the waitlist, it will have accepted just about exactly the same number of applicants it did last year. The Harvard people have said repeatedly that they don’t want to be over-enrolled to the same extent, so overall their yield will still be a little below last year’s (same number of acceptances, 30-40 fewer kids enrolled).</p>
<p>I am not singling H out here. I believe that EVERY school spins its admissions numbers so as to look good. They are, in this respect, all promoting the institutional interest. </p>
<p>FWIW, a student from S’s HS who was on the H waitlist received a phone call from H admissions asking if he would enroll if accepted. He equivocated. He did not receive a second phone call.</p>
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<p>I’m sorry if one of my posts confused you. </p>
<p>Allow me to illustrate the difference between a school that uses its waiting list more extensively than its competition. The example will more drastic to show the point, but will not be a real one. </p>
<p>** School A receives 5,000 applications. In the past they admitted 40% of students and have a yield of 30%. This means that 2,000 are admitted and about 600 end up enrolling. </p>
<p>** School B receives 5,000 applications. In the past they admitted 20% of students and have a yield of 60%. This means that 1,000 are admitted and about 600 end up enrolling. </p>
<p>School A sees his competition lowering the admit rates and getting “good press.” As a tool to “join the club.” School A lowers its admit rate to 20% and only admits 1,000 students in April and places 2,000 students on its waiting list. The school announces a MUCH lower admission rates and is mentioned in the same articles than School B. Of course, since the historical patters cannot support a 60% yield, there are a lot fewer than 600 deposits flowing to the school. Accordingly, School A does take 200 students from the waitlist or increases the number of transfers. In the end, they accept 250 students from the WL and 50 transfers. </p>
<p>Conclusion: </p>
<p>In April, the school announced a 20% admission rate at the time when all the attention was directed at the “slaughter” among highly competitive schools. School gets a LOT of press because the surprising changes in … selectivity. The OFFICIAL numbers, however, that will show a MUCH higher admission rate will only become available 9 to 18 months later as the CDS forms become public and USNews reports the numbers.</p>
<p>As a bonus, one can safely assume that the school will “poll” its wailisted students and pick its 250 students from anywhere from 250 to 400 applications. This would mean that their total acceptance rate will be the original 1000 + 400 WL (1400) and that the reported admit rate will be 1400/5000 or 28%. Using the 250 applications that became an enrollment gives an admit rate of 25%</p>
<p>School B, however, meets its yield projection of 60% and reports the same admit rates in April and months later. The PERCEIVED difference between School A and School B becomes trivial. </p>
<p>Fwiw, this is one of the bookend tools. School that use a BINDING admission such as ED play the “game” on the other side. In so many words, schools can use binding admissions in December and an extensive waitlist to decrease the publicized rates … substantially. </p>
<p>I hope this helps!</p>
<p>It should be noted that Harvard use of its waitlist was absolutely … legitimate. The combination of dropping their early admissions, the need to manage the possible overcrowding, and not knowing the true impact of its new financial aid policies all lead to the wise decision to under-admit. </p>
<p>Gaming its admission statistics must have been the last thing on their mind because the TOTAL and CORRECTED admission number will still be the LOWEST in the country, and would have been had they accepted more students in April. </p>
<p>This is not the same at schools that rely on not only ED admissions but also an extensive wait list enrollment. </p>
<p>In so many words, the situation at Penn and Duke has very little commonality with Harvard, Princeton, or even Stanford. The issue here is to ascertain how credible a claim could be that the extensive use of a waitlist enrollment at Duke (or Penn) was prompted by a domino effect from HP that is DIFFERENT from prior years. </p>
<p>In my opinion, pretending that Duke’s entire 200 waitlisted/enrolled is a direct result of the wait list movements at Harvard or Princeton is pure fiction. I think that 20-25% (or 40-50) of such students would be quite a generous estimate. The rest can be tracked to overly optmistic admit and yield rates.</p>
<p>wjb: That seems to have varied within the admission office. Some admissions officers seem to have called candidates in advance to get a read, but lots of people on CC reported getting a call or e-mail saying that they were being offered admission without any advance check, and that happened to someone I know in the real world, too.</p>
<p>As for xiggi’s illustration, it is right on, but has absolutely nothing to do with the practices of the Harvard admissions office. And given the uncertainties everyone anywhere near the top of the food chain faced this year, because of the changes at Harvard, Princeton, and UVa, and the changes in financial aid, I don’t blink at all at a substantial number of waitlist acceptances. People would really have had trouble predicting their yield this year, and the only way to avoid possibly crippling over-enrollment was to be very conservative and to plan on using the waitlist. That’s what it’s for.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that no one every does what xiggi suggests. Far from it – it’s inherent in the whole ED structure. But I don’t think Harvard or Duke were doing that this year at all. And look at Chicago: it accepted 200 fewer students than last year, offered many more students waitlist places, said publicly that it thought it would probably wind up taking a significant number of students from the waitlist, and so far they have made single-digit spot-need offers, because basically they are overenrolled again.</p>
<p>Edit: Cross-posted with xiggi. I note that Penn did not use its wait list at all last year.</p>
<p>The fact is, none of us knows with certainty what motivates the college admissions folks at Harvard or Penn or Duke or anywhere else. Whatever the motivation of these colleges at the top of the food chain, this business of admitting huge numbers from the waitlist creates enormous stress for the kids who are waiting. Far more stressful to be in limbo in July than it was to be in limbo back in December!</p>
<p>I take back my note at the end of #28, by the way. On reflection, I am not sure that I know one way or the other whether Penn used its waitlist last year.</p>
<p>Excellent explanation in post #26, xig.</p>
<p>Amusing that HYP are characterized as “big boys.” Which among the colleges are the small boys? big and small girls?</p>