How many available spots in a boarding school are you really chasing?

<p>Freakish yield rates may force schools to radically adjust their admit numbers for each cohort. Last year over-enrolled new sophomores = fewer spaces for new juniors. Similarly, last year under-enrolled freshmen may trigger a much higher admit number for new sophomores. And so on.
Data on class sizes are readily available. New applicants and their parents may want to overlay the discussed formulas over these data. You may find a very different picture.</p>

<p>I wish I had seen these stats at this time last year! Months and months of stress and the agony of waiting for March 10th would have been easier with more realistic expectations of how many spots there really were available. My kid is amazing - bright, articulate, motivated - but so are THOUSANDS of other kids. If nothing else, the process is humbling :)</p>

<p>bump for other CCers </p>

<p>but it only takes one school to offer you one spot and you’re in!! Sure, the #'s are long but it only takes one…</p>

<p>^^ you could make the same argument for power ball :D</p>

<p>^ +1</p>

<p>Oh, those are some scary statistics!!! I can’t find any current admissions yield info on the school Moosieboy applied to, but I do know that they try to keep an even boy/girl ratio, so basically, he’s only competing for however many BOY spots are available this year and against however many boys vs. girls applied. SO my original number of 300 - 400 applicants for 30 spots is actually much more dim, when you consider that they may only have 10 as opposed to 15 spots for boys! Add to that the fact that Moosieboy will need full or near-full FA, and what we have here is the proverbial long-shot chance… SIGH! Well, <em>that</em> is depressing… He still has in his corner that he’s from a severely URM, and that the SSAT average for the school is well below his test scores (even at his “lowest” score, he was still considered to be among the “high” end of scores, and he went up 7 percentiles the second time he took it). We went in knowing that it was a long-shot, and since our end goal is not to have him admitted into any prep school but that one in particular, it’s a risk we took knowingly and willingly. But it’s particularly depressing when you see the MONUMENTAL uphill battle most of our kids have to endure to gain admittance :(</p>