How do yields compare at the top colleges?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>In gathering information recently on 100+ colleges (USNWR Top 75 National Unis and USNWR Top 35 LACs), it was interesting to me to see how they compared in their enrollment yields. I thought that others might like to see this comparison. </p>

<p>I divided the schools into three groups-- National Universities (state universities), National Universities (private universities), and LACs--to better reflect their unique natures and institutional missions and also to reflect their relationships with their primary markets. </p>

<p>Below is the data for the classes that entered in Fall, 2008. </p>

<p>Yield , National Universities (State Us)</p>

<p>59% , U Florida
55% , Texas A&M
53% , U North Carolina
52% , U Texas
50% , U Georgia
48% , U Virginia
47% , Ohio State
46% , U Washington
46% , U Michigan
45% , U Illinois
43% , U Wisconsin
42% , Georgia Tech
42% , Michigan State
41% , UC Berkeley
40% , Virginia Tech
37% , UCLA
36% , Penn State
36% , U Maryland
35% , Rutgers
35% , Clemson
35% , W&M
34% , Indiana U
33% , U Minnesota
33% , U Iowa
32% , Purdue
31% , U Conn
31% , U Pittsburgh
30% , Miami U (OH)
27% , U Delaware
24% , UCSD
23% , UC Davis
22% , UC Irvine
19% , UC Santa Barbara</p>

<p>Yield , National Universities (Private)</p>

<p>77% , Harvard
71% , Stanford
68% , Yale
66% , MIT
62% , U Penn
59% , Princeton
56% , Columbia
55% , Brown
55% , Yeshiva
54% , Notre Dame
50% , U Miami
49% , Dartmouth
46% , Cornell
45% , Georgetown
40% , Duke
38% , U Chicago
38% , NYU
37% , Vanderbilt
35% , USC
35% , Wake Forest
34% , Caltech
34% , SMU
34% , George Washington
33% , Lehigh
33% , Rice
33% , Pepperdine
33% , Tufts
32% , Northwestern
30% , Johns Hopkins
30% , Brandeis
30% , Wash U
29% , Carnegie Mellon
28% , Emory
27% , Syracuse
27% , Rensselaer
27% , Boston Coll
26% , U Rochester
24% , Worcester
21% , Boston University
19% , Fordham
19% , Case Western
17% , Tulane</p>

<p>Yield , LAC</p>

<p>98% , US Naval Acad
79% , US Military Acad
47% , Barnard
44% , Middlebury
44% , Bowdoin
42% , Davidson
42% , W&L
42% , Williams
41% , Wellesley
40% , Claremont McK
40% , Bucknell
40% , Colorado College
39% , Pomona
39% , Swarthmore
38% , Amherst
38% , Smith
37% , Haverford
36% , Carleton
35% , Bates
35% , Bryn Mawr
35% , Vassar
34% , Grinnell
33% , Oberlin
33% , Colgate
32% , Hamilton
32% , Colby
32% , Kenyon
32% , Wesleyan
31% , Mt. Holyoke
30% , Holy Cross
30% , Scripps
29% , U Richmond
28% , Trinity (CT)
26% , Harvey Mudd
25% , Lafayette
23% , Macalester</p>

2

<p>Thank goodness you posted this, for those unable to find your previous thread on almost the exact same subject, <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/607428-usnwr-2009-looking-data-xxv-yield.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/607428-usnwr-2009-looking-data-xxv-yield.html&lt;/a&gt; or your master list of all your threads created from USNWR data, <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/614064-data-points-usnwr-2009-full-set-threads.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/614064-data-points-usnwr-2009-full-set-threads.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

3

<p>MAtlMom,
Thanks again for another opportunity for a constructive interaction. :rolleyes:</p>

<p>The data above and the data from those other threads are from different years. The data above is for students entering in Fall, 2008. The USNWR data is for students entering in Fall, 2007. Also, the list of schools in this thread is much larger (100+ vs 50) and includes LACs which many have often asked to be included in the comparisons.</p>

4

<p>Nice work Hawkette. Very interesting data and I , for one, appreciate it.</p>

5

<p>Why is Duke’s yield so low?</p>

<p>Is it even a top 30 school?</p>

<p>It’s yield is better than Harvey Mudd’s though…so although the test scores of an average student are higher at Harvey Mudd, which means the student body is much stronger at Harvey Mudd, which means I should choose Harvey Mudd over Duke…maybe I should consider Duke?</p>

<p>Nah… too many schools with higher yields than Duke.</p>

6

<p>The yield itself does not indicate the quality of education you will receive at a university. One of the reasons (although not the only one) Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have higher yields than Duke is that they are more prestigious and have better financial aid, but since when does prestige = academic excellence? However, I bet the academic education one will receive at Duke is just as good, if not better than that offered by the Ivies. Anyway, if Harvard is such a good institution, why isn’t the yield close to 90%? 78% seems quite low for the most prestigious university in America. So the yield really has no association with the academic caliber of the institutions.</p>

7

<p>By the way, dstark, since when do test scores tell everything about the caliber of the student body? Test scores cannot tell the entire picture of the strength of the student body; student bodies are also defined by GPA, extracurriculars, the “interesting” factor/personalities of the students (just because you have high test scores does not mean you are necessarily a fun person to hang around), and work ethic. Test scores say very little about work ethic; i know many students who have poor work ethic and high test scores.</p>

<p>There’s more to students than test scores… that is a very short sighted view that just because Harvey Mudd students have better test scores than Duke students, then Harvey Mudd has a much higher caliber student body than Duke.</p>

8

<p>slik nik</p>

<p>I think that dstark was being sarcastic :)</p>

9

<p>That is what I suspected… I can never tell sarcasm online… the pitfalls of the Internet.</p>

10

<p>Dstark,
In another thread on CC, Duke’s yield was discussed and an article was referenced. </p>

<p><a href=“http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/m...9/04/News/Duke[/url]”>http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/m...9/04/News/Duke&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Duke’s “low”yield is probably best explained by understanding the schools against which they compete most heavily for students. There is a large application overlap for Duke with HYP and, in each case, HYP cleans Duke’s clock by 85-15. More than anything else, this hurts Duke’s yield. </p>

<p>Vs the other Ivies, the preferences are not nearly so lopsided. According to the article, Duke wins about 60-40 over Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, and U Penn. Duke wins decisively by 85-15 over Cornell. </p>

<p>Finally, Duke will lose candidates coming from states with strong State Us, including North Carolina. By going to Chapel Hill over Duke, many NC students will get many of the benefits that they would’ve gotten in Durham at much lower cost. In addition, I would guess that there are many applicants from Virginia, but the IS cost of U Virginia and W&M are pretty darn low compared to Duke and so Duke’s yield with this group is likely to be comparatively low.</p>

11

<p>I think the cross-admit data does a much better job of finding the “better” schools. There are just too many factors going into yield, such as ED or lack thereof, protective admissions, fin. aid or merit scholarships, etc. The cross-admit eliminates many of the detrimental factors for just a standard yield calculation.</p>

12

<p>Hawkette, your arguments are subjective.</p>

<p>The yield numbers are objective. </p>

<p>Duke’s yield numbers don’t measure up compared to other top schools.</p>

<p>Therefore, Duke is a top 30 school at best. And it’s a regional school.</p>

<p>Oh…and Duke has to use early decision to get a yield of 40%. </p>

<p>Your link doesn’t work.</p>

13

<p>Hawkette, your link didn’t work. Here is a link to the article that should work. [Duke</a> still step below top schools - News](<a href=“http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2006/09/04/News/Duke-Still.Step.Below.Top.Schools-2255803.shtml]Duke”>http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2006/09/04/News/Duke-Still.Step.Below.Top.Schools-2255803.shtml)</p>

<p>The article however, frankly, doesn’t prove what it and you are arguing. The only data in the article comes from the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Duke (certainly an objective source). Rather than saying that “Duke wins about 60-40 over Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, and U Penn” as you have stated, the Dean of Admissions says the following:

</p>

<p>Not the same thing as you are saying at all.</p>

<p>In addition, he then goes on to say that “Duke enrolls between 75 and 90 percent of cross-admitted students from the third group of top competitors, which includes Cornell, Northwestern and Georgetown.” </p>

<p>There is simply no way that Guttentag would have this info. The only info he gets is from students who voluntarily return their surveys, indicating the schools they have chosen over Duke and vice-versa. Relying on voluntary surveys is not going to yield an accurate picture of the cross-admit data.</p>

14

<p>Oh and by the way, for those of you who searched in vain for “another thread on CC” about Duke, it is Hawkette’s own thread about Duke. Here’s the link <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/535471-case-d-u-k-e.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/535471-case-d-u-k-e.html&lt;/a&gt;. The discussion in question can be found on page 23 of the riveting 35 page thread.</p>

15

<p>Did Hawkette mention in that other thread that prospective students should choose Harvey Mudd over Duke?</p>

16

<p>midatlmom- if you don’t mind me asking, what’s your deal with Hawkette? Is she your disowned daughter or something?</p>

17

<p>“Duke enrolls between 75 and 90 percent of cross-admitted students from the third group of top competitors, which includes Cornell, Northwestern and Georgetown.” I’m sorry, but this is very false. The Wall Street Journal did an objective analyis of cross admission and Cornell enrolled more students than Duke</p>

18

<p>well dstark, I must admit that I didn’t quite make it through all 35 pages, although many of them were spellbinding. I simply don’t remember whether Harvey Mudd was mentioned.</p>

<p>Senior, no, we are not related, although the other day, hawkette did mention that she thought I resembled her mother as well. Oh my goodness, maybe you guys know something I don’t.:eek:</p>

19

<p>midatlmom, maybe it’s there on page 17 or 29, or one of the other pages. ;)</p>

20

<p>Dstark,
Am I missing something here in your argument? For the measurement of yield, Duke is not in the top 30 colleges. Not sure why you feel that this is something that I care that much about. Plenty of good schools have yields of 40% or below. In Duke’s case, they get a lot of good applicants. And even with a 40% yield, they enroll a lot of good students. After all, it’s who you end up enrolling that matters. </p>

<p>Senior,
Midatlmom does not like it that I don’t worship at the Ivy altar. </p>

<p>Plus she resents it whenever I point out that the best colleges for the most balanced undergraduate experiences of great academics, great social life and great athletic life are not in the Ivy League. In case you’re not familiar with my posting history, I favor schools that can offer this combination and IMO the best colleges in the USA for great academics/great social life/great athletic life are Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame. </p>

<p>Anyway, I am used to her frequent harassment (which goes back over two years), but I do wonder how the CC community is served by her pestering. Bullies like her need to find somebody smaller to pick on.</p>