<p>With Harvard having dropped its early program, and having gained wide acclaim for doinf so, and now Princeton following suit this afternoon, isn't the heat on President Levin to announce a similar change ... and soon?</p>
<p>Ironically, he was widely quoted as saying, a couple of years ago, that he's love to drop Yale's early program if others would do so as well.</p>
<p>If Harvard and Princeton are willing to risk the yield hit, shouldn't Yale be willing to do so as well?</p>
<p>Yes, and ditto for Stanford.</p>
<p>I think its a no-brainer for Stanford, which would run less risk of a yield rate hit for various reasons. </p>
<p>SCEA has been a bonanza for Yale, and it looks like Levin - despite his pious words of three years ago about the evils of early programs - may be reluctant to give it up.</p>
<p>I think he'll wait at least a year to see what pans out at Harvard and Princeton. Yale will probably underadmit ALOT this year and use the waitlist heavily to fill out the class. I am EXTREMELY interested to see what happens at Princeton without ED. Let's see what princeton's numbers will be like without a capture clause.</p>
<p>Did you see Rapelye's hint that she might have to do precisely that to keep the yield rate up at Princeton? </p>
<p>"....Rapelye also said that the University's admissions strategy is likely to change, with her office employing a waitlist for the first time in years. "One strategy we might use is to be quite conservative with admits and then admit several hundred students from the waitlist."</p>
<p>it's not about keeping the yield rate up, which princeton has made clear is a merely secondary concern; it's about assembling a class with the desired characteristics, which with the uncertainties caused by a single admissions round, virtually requires the heavy use of a waitlist.</p>
<p>Well, of course maintaining a high yield rate is key to achieving diversity goals; in "designing" the class, it is important to target those you want and to come as close to a bullseye as possible.</p>
<p>If you have to admit two people for every one who matriculates (ie, achieve a 50% yield) then you never can be sure <em>which</em> 50% you will end up with.</p>
<p>That's why yield rate is so important - particularly if economic, geographic, ethnic, gender etc. diversity is important to you.</p>
<p>If the initial yield rate is less than optimum, then the best way to achieve your design goals (without a binding ED program) is to go "light" (ie, "conservative") with your initial admits, and rely heavily on the waitlist. </p>
<p>Via the waitlist, you can cherry-pick to fill holes, since the yield rate is a satisfying 100%.</p>
<p>quotes like the following may force yale to follow suit, for reputation's sake:</p>
<p>"On Tuesday, Princeton University, Harvard's legendary rival, announced that it would also ban early admissions. What have long been thought of as the top two universities in the country are finally in agreement about one thing: they believe that early admissions give an unfair advantage to wealthy students."</p>
<p>If only Newsweek agreed with Time. Newsweek's "Top 100 Global Universities" ranks Harvard 1st, Yale 3rd, and Princeton 15th (below Duke).</p>
<p>ah, yes, the influential <em>newsweek</em> rankings - eagerly awaited each fall by administrators and prospective students all the world over. oh wait, this was their debut year. and their methodology? a full sixty percent from absolute rather than relative numbers (like, e.g., total number of library volumes!), twenty percent from percentages of international students and faculty (schools don't exactly compete to maximize these numbers), and only the last 20% from reasonable measures like citations per faculty and student/faculty ratio. by this methodology, graduate-only UCSF is a better comprehensive university than three-fourths of the ivies, and the university of washington (not washington u., or even george washington u.) is one of the top 25 universities in the entire world.</p>
<p>as you know, of course, the only magazine that matters for college rankings is u.s. news and world report. perhaps tellingly, they agree with both of their competitors, time and newsweek, that yale is #3.</p>
<p>Byerly, Yale can be pressued, but does Yale have to do it? So far, other colleges (though not as renowned, but they are still colleges) aren't that moved by the notion. Yale can try to be unique in its stance in terms of those higher-upper ivies.</p>
<p>They've done you all one better!</p>
<p>Yale ends biased admissions process
New Haven Register</p>
<p>NEW HAVEN (09/19/2006)- Yale University, in a surprise move that stunned the college admissions community and even its Ivy League peer institutions, announced on Tuesday that it was ending its controversial "admissions procedure".</p>
<p>"We felt it was the best way to end the persistent structural bias against poor, disadvantaged minority students," said a spokesperson for the university. "The entire idea of 'admissions' is by nature inherently exclusivist and therefore contrary to basic principles of social justice. We're forced to turn down many underprivileged potential Yalies every year because of our commitment to this arrogant, elitist process."</p>
<p>Yale officials noted that beginning next year, students could simply enroll at the university as they would be able to do at any public high school, thus ending the high-stress and competitive process that formerly consumed students hoping to attend the vaunted institution. Spokespeople brushed off concerns of crowding in dorms and classrooms as "borderline racist" and noted that it "would end the chronic separation between Yale and our community" by dismantling "segregationist" security cameras and swipe access doors. "We will have ended the homeless problem in New Haven once and for all," added the master of Branford College, who issued an email request for help setting up tents in the residence's neo-gothic courtyard.</p>
<p>Even the leadership of the Yale College Republicans seemed pleased. In a statement, they espoused their firm conviction that the move "would forever force Harvard and Princeton to choke on our dust."</p>
<p>How is that going to work? I dont get it. There is going to be more demand than supply so are they going to do it on a first-come-first-served basis?</p>
<p>Haha, nice columbia2007!</p>
<p>P.S. Jai, that's a joke.</p>
<p>Ha ha. If I was still in highschool and that kind of announcement came up, I'll just camp at Yale admissions office all year and finish my senior year with distance learning. Too bad it's only a joke.</p>
<p>lol.. thank god!</p>
<p>there's an on-point editorial in today's YDN:</p>
<p>Just when we finally convince ourselves that the T-shirts are right and Princeton doesn't matter, they make the kind of leap our own administration has been talking about for five years.</p>
<hr>
<p>But in the wake of Harvard's and Princeton's announcements, the second question - whether Yale can afford not to stand with its two top competitors - is just as important. This might seem counter-intuitive: Certainly, Yale's early admissions numbers will benefit without competition from its fiercest perennial rivals. Its yield will almost certainly improve. The pool of students to which Yale already caters will grow deeper earlier. But when it comes to low-income recruiting, Yale has just been left sitting in the shallow end. </p>
<p>Merits and flaws aside, Yale's early admissions program has just been rendered largely obsolete. The nonbinding, single-choice early action deadline has just become virtually meaningless to students applying to the nation's top three schools. Early admissions only worked for Yale while its prime competition played by roughly the same rules. Now, Yale just has an earlier deadline, and stands by a system its competitors call corrupt. The system is down. </p>
<p>Yale has lost the power to set the agenda. The anticipated meritocratic value of Harvard's and Princeton's moves alone has cast a shadow over our own program. Yale may well have been planning a similar move for years - Levin was certainly thinking about it in 2002, when he asked the Justice Department if such a simultaneous action would be legal - but one thing is certain: Yale can no longer afford to spend a year deliberating on early admissions, as Levin said he expected to after Harvard's announcement. </p>
<p>As we said Monday, damage control and leadership need not be mutually exclusive. There remains plenty of room for Yale to make good on its stated commitments to education and financial aid. But the University now has little choice but to join its peers before it can lead the charge to truly extend the promise of the Ivy League to the less advantaged. Only if we take that lead can we convince them, and not just ourselves, that no other school really matters.</p>
<p>Yale doesn't need to end early admissions, seeing that its currently policy already results in the most selective and most diverse class of any university in the United States. </p>
<p>Also, spreading out its applicants over two phases (early and regular, which each have the lowest admit rate in the Ivy League) allows Yale to spend more time considering each applicants' individual case, furthering the admissions office's ability to distinguish among and rank applicants who are highly qualified but may not have the same background as someone from an elite NYC prep school, and giving them more time to interview and recruit candidates. </p>
<p>But, hopefully ending early admissions will help Harvard and Princeton start to catch up, although it's hard to see any reason why it would. They could start by making their outreach programs in disadvantaged school districts as good as Yale's.</p>
<p>lol. yale is not the most selective university in the country, and it is <em>far</em> from the most diverse one, either racially/ethnically or socioeconomically. in fact, as i just read the other day, duke and yale have the lowest percentages of financial aid students among u.s. news's top ten unis.</p>
<p>Hmmm... doesn't Yale have a far higher preppie percentage than any other Ivy?</p>
<p>And doesn't Yale have a lower fraction of the student body receiving financial aid than Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth and Stanford?</p>