Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT Cross-Admits for Class of 2014

<p>Harvard, also admitted to Yale.</p>

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<p>However, that doesn’t reflect the actual scenarios.</p>

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<p>Correct, but proportionally the allocated funds still slant quite clearly in Harvard’s favor.</p>

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<p>I would be inclined to recognize that, but the College Board’s annual financial aid updates consistently demonstrate that Harvard’s offers are, on average and in relative proportion to the total cost of attendance, more generous than those of YPSM. Does Harvard simply attract a greater proportion of lower-income students or admit them at a more sizable rate? I don’t believe so. It’s apparently a function of policy rather than demographics. One point that is visibly apparent is that Harvard allots more funds to undergraduate financial aid than any other university in the country and continues to expand its budget at a rate far disproportional to any subsequent tuition increases, even when proportionally equating for cost of attendance and the size of the student body.</p>

<p>[Harvard</a> College Price Tag and Financial Aid Both Edge Up | Harvard Magazine](<a href=“http://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/college-tuition-increases]Harvard”>http://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/college-tuition-increases)</p>

<p>Moreover, US News and World Report, the foremost authority on college rankings, recognizes Harvard as having the nation’s most prominent financial aid program, with Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT following, in that order: </p>

<p>[Best</a> Colleges - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-best-values]Best”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-best-values)</p>

<p>I wonder why Yale has so many more matriculating cross-admits on cc than the others.</p>

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<p>Perhaps it would be the case if Harvard was in New Haven and Yale in Cambridge.</p>

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<p>Although the accuracy is highly questionable, others have speculated some sort of personality-based reason regarding CC use and preference for Yale.</p>

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<p>110,000,000/5200 = 21,100</p>

<p>143,000,000/6800 = 21,030</p>

<p>Not a major difference, really.</p>

<p>I would imagine that CCers tend to think of themselves as “more sensible” than the public about this college admissions stuff, and Harvard is the public’s darling. Thus, they gravitate toward Yale.</p>

<p>Yale students tend to be more enthused about their school choice and are thus more likely to report it in a meaningless voluntary survey.</p>

<p>Actually, Harvard’s allotment for this year is $158M. (I assume that Yale’s $110M corresponds to this year’s budget?)</p>

<p>One thing that should be taken notice of is that not all the top students apply to HYPSM. I didn’t apply to Stanford because of location and I didn’t apply to Yale because I didn’t like it, but, had I gotten in, which seems more than possible since I got in Princeton, I would have definitely chosen Princeton.</p>

<p>Yes, as the common conversation attempts to account for any unexpected findings, there are many potential sources of bias.</p>

<p>Also, of course, the majority of student’s accepted to H, Y, P, S, or M are not cross-admitted to another in that cluster.</p>

<p>Sorry, misread the number earlier. I’m moving Yale’s budget up to 115, too, because the relevant article stated they were looking at an increase of over 10% on the previous budget.</p>

<p>158000000/6800 = 23200
115000000/5200 = 22100
104000000/4900 = 21200</p>

<p>That isn’t slanted substantively in Harvard’s favor.</p>

<p>Also, this analysis is ignoring the fact that Yale’s direct term bill is cheaper than Harvard’s and Princeton’s. With that considered, the disparity looks even less significant.</p>

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<p>Probably because the cross-admits on CC do not accurately reflect the entire population of cross-admits.</p>

<p>If Harvard were losing a lot of cross admit battles on a large scale it would be impossible for it to win the yield war the way it does year after year. The overall yield for each school is the sum of all of its various cross admit battles. And for Harvard the bottom line it wins nearly 80% of those students it accepts. So if Yale is really beating Harvard big time on cross admits then it (Yale) must turn around and lose a bunch more cross admits to several other schools in order for it to keep coming out behind Harvard on yield.</p>

<p>So the more interesting question is if not Harvard then WHO in the world is beating the crap out of Yale on the cross admits and driving its yield lower than Harvard’s? </p>

<p>The simpler and more likely explanation is not that Yale is getting walloped by somone else, but that Harvard is actually beating Yale on cross admits as they have tradtionally done, and thus the cross admits are aligned with the yields instead of contrary to them.</p>

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<p>Since the H-Y cross-admits are a small percentage of the total H or Y admits, the cross-admit race may not be the main driving force of the overall yields for these schools.</p>

<p>It doesn’t have to be that ONE school is beating the crap out of Yale. Harvard may just have a much higher yield than Yale among the non-cross-admitted students. Suppose Harvard has a 90% yield vs Duke+Vandy+Rice+Columbia+Penn. And suppose Yale has an 80% yield vs that group of schools. That might more than make up for any effect the Yale vs Harvard match-up might have.</p>

<p>I’m not saying this survey tells us that Yale is winning the cross-admit race vs Harvard (or any other school). But the publicly available numbers simply don’t tell us whether Yale or Harvard is winning the H-Y cross-admit race.</p>

<p>Not that any of this matters to an individual student trying to choose between the two schools.</p>

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<p>Yeah, this would make sense</p>

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<p>That is certainly true, otherwise the average yield of HYPSM would not hover around 70%.</p>

<p>It is actually surprising how few students are admitted to more than one of HYPSM. Each year, only about 60 cross-admits are reported on CC out of several hundred total admits reported on individual college boards. Even accounting for the fact not everybody is motivated to participate in the survey, the ratio is still low. This would tend to confirm admission to HYPSM is increasingly a crapshoot.</p>

<p>^^ I suspect all these colleges try pretty hard to keep the number of cross-admits to a minimum.</p>

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<p>Yes. Yale can be doing poorly relative to Harvard in a bunch of cross-admit battles to offset the effect of beating Harvard. But that just simply re-asks the same question. Who are those schools against which Harvard dominates but Yale isn’t doing so hot? </p>

<p>It’s like the baseball standings. The Red Sox can lose all their games to the Yankees and still win the division provided the Yankees lose to a bunch of other teams that the Red Sox dominate. So the same question in this hypothetical example: if not the Red Sox, then which team(s) lower in the standings beats the mighty Yankees but then turns around and loses big time to the Red Sox?</p>

<p>Also the exact numbers of cross admits are very hard to know, but given their similarities both in both prestige and excellence, logic and tradition suggest that Harvard and Yale probably each share more cross admits with each other than either does with any other single school. Thus the cross admit battle between the two of them probably looms relatively large in the yield calculation for both schools. </p>

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<p>Not unless you postulate that HYPSM schools actually suffer from the Tufts Syndrome and will reject high-end students they would actually love to land in order to avoid losing to their peer schools. Because absent some sort of Tufts effect, there are going to be plenty of cross admits among the very high-end kids.</p>

<p>so Tufts is known for doing this?</p>

<p>can you tell us a little more about it or redirect me to a thread?</p>

<p>thanks</p>

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