http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/05/84-of-admitted-applicants-will-attend-harvard-college/
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/5/10/class-2021-yield/
What’s really interesting to me about that is that the 1969 admission season – Harvard had no early admissions then – coincided with the high point of radicalism on the Harvard campus – a takeover of the administration building by students in April 1969. If yield peaked in 1969, it was something of a vote of solidarity with the protesting students – a big contrast with what seems to be happening at Missouri today.
Or perhaps yield was boosted somewhat in 1969 by the desire for student draft deferments during the Vietnam War? I wonder if sometimes students would turn down a Harvard offer and just take a job - it was certainly easier to do back then, in the era before a college degree was a prerequisite for a middle class lifestyle.
I have to think it’s going to be crowded in the Yard, though - per the Crimson, they admitted 2,056 (http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/5/10/class-2021-yield/). With an 84% yield, there will be 1,727 kids in the class of '21, before any summer melt. They admitted 2,037 students to the class of '20 and announced an 80% yield, so at this point last year they were looking at a freshman class with almost 100 fewer students (1,629).
Bingo - another (but smaller) Tet Offensive happened in February '69 and newly inaugurated Nixon’s initial stance was to increase military pressure on North Vietnam.
Sorry, but I would assume that for just about 100% of Harvard acceptees, the alternative was another college, not a job. There probably were some who considered voluntary military service as an alternative, but then (as now) most of the incentives would have been to go to college and join the ROTC first, then do military service post-college.
That was certainly true of my mid-70s Yale class, when getting shot at in Vietnam was no longer a factor. I don’t think there were any veterans in my class, but there were several people who joined the Army or Navy immediately after graduation. Yale no longer had an ROTC program at the time, but one way or another they all joined as prospective officers.
What’s the point of publishing yield for any school? I don’t see its usefulness other than letting students on the WL know how much of a chance they have and in computing college rankings. Since it does affect rankings, schools benefit from having the lowest yield. This brings up the question of how it’s calculated. Do students getting off WL impact yield? Or is it for everyone who responded by May 1?
Yield is the percent of admitted students who have decided to accept a college offer and matriculate. Waitlisted students do not factor into a college’s reported yield, but are reported separately. For example, this from Harvard last year: https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics
Heres a good 3-part article about why colleges care about yield and what it means to them
Part 1: http://ivyclimbing.com/admissions-newsletters/understanding-admissions-yield-part-1-of-3
Part 2: http://ivyclimbing.com/admissions-newsletters/understanding-admissions-yield-part-2-of-3
Part 3: http://ivyclimbing.com/admissions-newsletters/understanding-admissions-yield-part-3-of-3
How?
Assume
Admitted EA = 50
Admitted RD = 50
So, total admitted = 100
Students accepting to enroll (by May 1st) = 84
Yield = 84 / 100 = 84%
The fact that Harvard reports separately the number of students accepted off the “waiting list” (how precious!) does not mean that they are not also included in the yield numbers. I believe that when colleges report their yield, the numerator is the number of enrolled freshmen, and the denominator is the number of acceptance offers made, including offers made to students on the waitlist. If Harvard does it differently, it’s an outlier.
Both Yale and Princeton went coed in 1969. I wonder if on the margin that had an impact on Harvard back then for those looking for a more “traditional” college experience at the time. We all know how many don’t like change.
@JHS: As the below article suggests, yields are calculated slightly after May 1st, which means waitlisted students have no effect on a college’s reported yield – unless, of course, you can provide evidence to the contrary: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sara-shapiro-harberson/college-admissions-and-the-game-of-yield_b_9612290.html
FWIW: A college like HYPSM has very little incentive to include waitlisted students in their yield calculation, as they would also have to include the actual number of waitlisted students, as well.
@bicoastalusa, which rankings do yield percentages affect? Yield is not considered in the USNews national U/LAC rankings, for instance.
Pardon my mistake above. Yield doesn’t affect rankings. Acceptance rate does. I do think publishing yield makes the entire college application process worse. Safety schools aren’t safety schools because they want to protect their yield. This in turn, forces applicants to apply to a greater number of schools.
Acceptance rate and yield are very closely linked. Yield is one of two independent variables in acceptance rate for residential colleges (which are the ones we care about for these purposes). The other independent variable is number of applications received. Since the number of available spaces is a constant for any particular college, acceptance rate is essentially a function of how many applications it receives and how many offers it has to make in order to fill its slots:
Acceptance Rate = Acceptance Offers / Applications
Acceptance Offers = Slots / Yield
So . . .
Acceptance Rate = Slots / (Yield x Applications)
@gibby : You are seriously over-reading that blog post. Yes, May 1 is the most important date for determining yield. But colleges generally don’t report yield until late summer or the fall (if they report it separately at all). Most yields are calculated from the CDS, and it will be Enrolled Students / Acceptance Offers. I have never heard of anyone backing out waitlist acceptances from that calculation. And it would be difficult to do that accurately, since not all colleges follow the somewhat nefarious practice of only making waitlist offers to applicants who have indicated in advance they will enroll. (Harvard, for instance, at least in the past, would offer admission to waitlisted students without extracting a commitment to enroll.)
It has been common for years to criticize one college or another for trying to manipulate its acceptance rate and yield by admitting an artificially low number of applicants in March, then filling the rest of the class with waitlisted students who are pre-qualified so that their yield is similar to the yield of ED applicants. It’s like Late Decision – a chance to fill slots at a 100% yield, thereby reducing the acceptance rate necessary to fill the college’s class. That wouldn’t work if the statistics were locked in the first week in May. But they aren’t.
Maybe colleges did once-upon-a-time, but in 2017 colleges that do provide yields do so in mid-May, before students are admitted from the waitlist. For example, this from Yale dated May 16, 2017: http://news.yale.edu/2017/05/16/class-2021-one-record-books.
Is Yale going to redo their yield numbers after they take those “pre-qualified” students off the waitlist, and then announce they have a much higher yield? No, as then there would be confusion over calculations and numbers, and Yale would be accused of inflating their yield by admitting too few students and taking those “pre-qualified” ones off the waitlist.
I don’t think every school publishes mid May. What is Stanford’s yield? Princeton’s yield?
^^ You’re correct. Princeton and Stanford have not reported yield as of mid-May. However other colleges have
MIT, May 10, 2017: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/class-of-2021-wait-list
Dartmouth, May 11, 2017: http://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2017/05/class-of-2021-has-record-high-number-of-students
Yale, May 16, 2017: http://news.yale.edu/2017/05/16/class-2021-one-record-books.
Harvard, May 5, 2017: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/05/84-of-admitted-applicants-will-attend-harvard-college/
The new normal, at least for the above colleges, is NOT to include waitlisted students in their yield numbers. Or, maybe those colleges are following Harvard’s lead.
Waitlisted students probably won’t affect the yield numbers much this year - probably 1-2% at most.
Anyway I’m curious. If all these schools have record high yields, then which schools have lower yields than normal? The ones who haven’t reported yet? Or has the overall total number of applicants really increased so drastically from last year?
^^^ The total number of students applying to college has plateaued and even decreased for 2016-2017 (see chart: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/06/high-school-graduates-drop-number-and-be-increasingly-diverse), so it must be the latter.