Escalated Selectivity

<p>Is Princeton becoming more selective, or is the drop in acceptance rates (ED and RD) simply a result of the "population boom"?</p>

<p>The cynical take: it's a function of accepting the Common Application, which inflates the # of applicants and decreases the acceptance rate.</p>

<p>Though Princeton has slightly increased the entering class size,
and will continue to do so for several more years,
with the opening of the new Residential College (Whitman) in 2007.</p>

<p>The yield rate (a better measure of "selectivity) has actually dropped in the last few years, from second only to Harvard to behind Yale and Stanford. The SAT median for admits is still lower than Yale's (and of course Harvard's, as well as MIT's and Caltech's - though just ahead of Stanford's.)</p>

<p>The reason for the yield rate drop, apparently, is that under Rapelye, Princeton is competing more heavily for top academic students which it previously left to Harvard and Yale, focussing instead on what former admissions dean Fred called the "Princeton type" - ie, applicants more likely to enroll if accepted. This phenomenon is discussed in "The Early Admissions Game" and also the "Revealed Preference" study.</p>

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<p>princeton's yield should be very close to, if not higher than, yale and stanford's this year. unlike harvard, all three had the benefit of an increase in applicants from which to choose for 2010.</p>

<p>The number of applications, of course, has little to do with their quality, and virtually nothing to do with the yield rate. </p>

<p>The yield rate can be manipulated, to some degree, only by (1) increasing the fraction filled from the early pool, and (2) taking applicants for which other schools are not competing as fiercely, and thus limiting the effects of the cross-admit battles.</p>

<p>Harvard, Yale and Stanford, of course, have SCEA, where those admitted are not forced to matriculate - unlike Princeton, Penn, Brown, etc., which have mandatory ED. At HYS, the SCEA yield is between 91-88%, despite the fact that matriculation is not mandatory. At Princeton, the binding ED yield is between 98-100%. This gives Princeton a slight overall yield rate advantage. Princeton's RD yield rate is only about 52% - well below the RD yield rate at HYS or MIT.</p>

<p>~54% for 2010, while yale's has apparently slipped.</p>

<p>Citation please? And it can't really be known until we see who shows up in September, what with summer melt, etc. </p>

<p>The Yale RD rate may, oddly, gain a boost from the number they have had to admit from the waitlist to make up for their overly optimistic initial yield rate projection. </p>

<p>The way Yale works it, waitlistees aren't admitted until they commit, so that they come in at a nice, juicy 100% yield rate - boosting the overall yield rate!</p>

<p>According to this early report ....</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2316316&postcount=23%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2316316&postcount=23&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Princeton admitted 1,193 from the RD pool to fill an estimated 625 slots. (Bear in mind that the 1,193 included an undetermined niumber of ED deferreds, who might be anticipated to enroll at a higher rate.) If ALL the 1,193 were "regular" RD applicants, that would make for about a 52.3% RD yield. Since an undetermined fraction of the 1,193 were ED-deferreds, then it is likely the "true" RD yield rate was in fact projected at around 52% - the same as last year.</p>

<p>640/1193 = 53.6% </p>

<p>and that's assuming 100% ED yield, which is unlikely.</p>

<p>Exactly. I assumed 595 ED matriculants - 99% as last year. This leaves 625 seats to be filled for the projected class of 1220. 625 from 1193 admits = a 52.3% or so yield. </p>

<p>BUT.... if, say, 50 of the 1193 admits were high-yield ED deferreds (and there were probably more) then the yield on "true" RD admits was no more than 52%</p>

<p>but at least 640 RD admits decided to enroll. 646, if your 99% projection on ED admits was accurate this year. 646/1193 = 54.1%.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/05/12/news/15614.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/05/12/news/15614.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Read closely:</p>

<p>"Of the 1,792 students accepted into the Class of 2010, 69.2 percent have so far decided to enroll, Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said Thursday. That number translates to 1,239 students, slightly above the target class size of 1,220.</p>

<pre><code>"We expect about 19 students to defer admission over the summer due to unexpected changes of plans," Rapelye said...."
</code></pre>

<p>So unless Rapelye was wrong in her projection, the eventual class size will be 1220, and the net from the RD pool (including - don't forget - the ED-deferreds) will be about 625. in consequence, the RD yield rate will be a little over 52%, and the overall yield will be about 68%.</p>

<p>these 19 deferrees "decided to enroll," didn't they? thus, they are 2010 admits. they can't be very well be characterized and counted as 2011 admits if they applied for 2010 (otherwise, there would admits who didn't apply). these deferrees (who, remember, are only "expected") are in fact counted in the calculation of a 69.2% preliminary yield for 2010, as a quick crunching of numbers will show.</p>

<p>also, "read closely":</p>

<p>"This year's yield [69.2%] — the percentage of admitted students who choose to enroll — is slightly up from last year's figure of 67.8 percent AT THIS TIME" (emphasis added).</p>

<p>this is an apples to apples comparison, indicating the appreciable increase in yield from 2009 to 2010, in spite of your denial.</p>

<p>You misread the weasel words, I'm afraid. The "at this time" referred to this year's "pre-melt" number vs. last year's final number! There is a difference between signalling an intention to enroll and <em>actually</em> showing up in September.</p>

<p>Early yield projections should always be taken with a grain of salt - whether its Princeton, Yale, Harvard or anyplace else. The REAL yield numbers can't be known until September/October.</p>

<p>Frequently, the schools fail to acknowledge the fact that hopeful early projections fall short.</p>

<p>i suppose it's ambiguous as to what exactly "at this time" means. but princeton reportedly did not resort to its waitlist this year, despite a projected class size that exactly met its target number. if it had lost an appreciable number to other schools in the musical-chairs period, it likely would have done so. and am i to take it that you concede at last that at least 640 RD admits enrolled?</p>

<p>I concede no such thing. Nobody "enrolls" until they pay their tuition and show up for classes! </p>

<p>This is why the yield rates won't be the trumpeted "80%" at Harvard, "71%" at Yale, or "69.2%" at Princeton.</p>

<p>The "musical chair losses" are not huge, actually, since they consist primarily of defections to other elites by people take off the waiting list elsewhere. Harvard made minimal use of its WL, as did a number of other schools this year (including Princeton.) Yale may have taken 50 or more (they haven't told us yet) but surely all didn't come out of Princeton'd hide.</p>

<p>fine, then your 52% projection is garbage.</p>

<p>my final word: last year, on may 13, 2005, princeton reported a 67.6% initial yield for the class of 2009. this year, on may 12, 2006, it reported a 69.2% initial yield for the class of 2010. because there's no reason to think the musical chairs/summer melt experience will be any different this year from years past, there's reason to believe that the yield increase of ~2% will hold for the final yield, wherever that happens to settle (and i think it will settle very, very little). i don't quite understand why you dispute this.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/05/13/news/12921.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/05/13/news/12921.shtml&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/05/12/news/15614.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/05/12/news/15614.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Note that: (1) there was no resort to the waitlist last year, either; (2) there were, in the end, 1229 matriculants last year vs a projected 1220 this year, and (3) the fraction of the class filled from the early pool rose to a record high for the Class of 2010.</p>

<p>All these factors, in a small way, help to explain why the yield rate - and the RD yield rate in particular - will not change much from last year. </p>

<p>We are talking about small numbers, to be sure, but the fact that Yale went more heavily to its WL this year probably resulted in 5-15 defections that Princeton didn't suffer last year.</p>

<p>(1) there was no resort to the waitlist last year, either</p>

<p>all the more reason to put stock in a comparison of initial reported yield rates. this year's initial reported rate is up 1.6% over last year.</p>

<p>(2) there were, in the end, 1229 matriculants last year vs a projected 1220 this year</p>

<p>assuming the "extra" nine were regular and not waitlist admits, that's evidence only of a slight underestimation of RD yield last year.</p>

<p>(3) the fraction of the class filled from the early pool rose to a record high for the Class of 2010.</p>

<p>the fraction of the class filled by ED applicants admitted in the ED round is actually down from previous years, as it has not increased to the same extent as the overall class size has. and there's no reason to think that the number of ED applicants deferred and then admitted in the RD round is any higher, unless you have some evidence to offer on this point, and i highly doubt that you do.</p>

<p>Your last point does not square with the facts. </p>

<p>Admitting 599 ED for a Class targetted at 1,220 is skating about as close to the Mendoza line as you can get! (And remember: they are coy about the number of ED deferreds later admitted swith the "regular" applicants.) One way schools increase their yield while appearing to keep the fraction filled via binding ED under the "magic" 50% line is to admit a number of these eager beavers later, after initial deferral. Most of these schools go to great length to disguise the *true" fraction of the class filled from the early pool. Yale in particular (and, to a lesser extent, Harvard and MIT and Stanford) are not much better.</p>