<p>Colleges always admit more students than they can fit in their dorms. How do colleges know how many students to admit? I'm not just talking about predictions based on "last year's yield." What about other factors, like the economic recession?</p>
<p>What causes them to admit more students one year than another? And will how do top tier schools like Harvard predict how many students will turn down their offer?</p>
<p>I mean, what if all admitted students enrolled?!!! It's a possibility, isn't it?</p>
<p>This is what most college admissions officers refer to as yield management. That means managing how many students they need to admit to have a certain number walk through the door (with checks in hand) come the fall. The calculation for yield is number of students enrolling divided by the number of students accepted. As a colleges you strive for a high yield as it demonstrates desireability. Harvard and other ivies have high yields.</p>
<p>I'm going to try and explain how the manage this, but this situation is one of the chief reasons that college admissions is so unpredictible for BOTH colleges and applicants.</p>
<p>It's done with a lot of predictive modeling based on many data points and historical trends. Its part art, part science, and how many Enrollment VPs make their living. The stakes of the game are high and when it goes wrong it often hits the news. A number of colleges (including Brown this past summer) had too many students accept their offer of admission and had to scramble to put in housing. GW had it happen a few times in the 1990s before they added lots of new dorms.</p>
<p>The solution to this for the colleges is ED. Here the colleges know that if you're accepted, you will show up. Beyond that, for the remainder of the pool they look at your scores, geography, other colleges you are applying to (if you told them and/or they asked), and your level of interest (visits to the campus, legacies, contacts with admissions reps) to try to figure out how likely you will to come. Sometimes this is used just in their predictive modeling to determine how many students will enroll, but at some schools who are aggressively trying to increase their yield, its also used in admissions decisions.</p>
<p>I tell my students to use this to their advantage by being sure that they show interest to the colleges they really want to go to. ED if they (a) have decided on a top choice, and (b) can afford it since you can't compare aid packages. Otherwise (or I should say additionally) visit the colleges, meet with the reps when they come to the HS, stay overnight at the college if you can and even write and essay the explains why you want to go to that college. I've also been sending some of my students to CAPS (CAPS</a> - Demonstrate Interest to the Colleges of Your Choice), which is another good way to demonstrate interest.</p>
<p>This is an excellent question.<br>
I have no inside information but I would guess they look at a range of characteristics of past applicants and come up with some kind of probability model of likely enrollees. They must be pretty good at it this otherwise their would be a shortage or excess crisis every year.
What happens when the model fails? It happened at Cal poly SLO for 2007 fall admits. They did not anticipate the wave of applicants who actually wanted to go their and lots more of those accepted for enrollment actually showed up at the door-so to speak. They simply made room for them- meaning larger class sizes. They made a correction in 2008.</p>
<p>I'm sure admissions yield doesn't change SIGNIFICANTLY for a college from year to year. They can always waitlist a bunch of people in case of a decrease in yield.</p>