<p>mnm619,</p>
<p>Thanks very much for your post. I appreciate all thoughts and suggestions. And you bring up some interesting things to think about.</p>
<p>But, in regard to your examples, Yeshiva, BYU and Memphis … they do not apply to the question.
Please go back and read what I posted (Post # 19).</p>
<p>whatever xiggi says is golden (or should it be cardinal?) :D</p>
<p>Cardinal rule or cardinal sin!</p>
<p>GolfFather “My D (and I) visited a private college some months ago and had a very good time. Everything was a plus.”</p>
<p>Why are you second guessing your own opinion? If there was something objectively wrong with this college they wouldn’t receive many applications. By all means ask Admissions why the yield is comparatively low. I don’t think yield should factor into your D’s decision at all. You don’t know anything about the decision process for the other accepted students. The applicants could have 4-5 acceptances to choose from and this particular college could come up #2 rather than #5.</p>
<p>I think yield is a factor. That is indisputable. How much weight you give it in your decision? is the only variable.</p>
<p>Yield is a measure of “desirableness” And its not a 1 year anomaly. It is measured over time such that it gets built into acceptance rate and pursuit of applications. The Common App has definitely impacted this. And I would bet the yield is directly reflective of the schools endowment, and how much it offers in merit aid and grants/scholarships.</p>
<p>I don’t know the school - but with yield that low? I will suppose its acceptance rate is very high. We also considered retention %'age and 4 year grad rates. Again, the weight you give each of these metrics? is up to you.</p>
<p>Great discussion. One point not yet made is geography. </p>
<p>Schools which are isolated tend to have higher yields because it would be less likely to be a safety. </p>
<p>The combination of many schools of somewhat similar quality and culture in a small area tends to bring down yields dramatically. One good example is</p>
<p>-UCLA, USC, UCSD, UCI, UCSB, Claremont McKenna in southern California. All those schools are similar in size, lifestyle, and selectivity. All have deflated yields.</p>
<p>-Norcal, on the other hand, has schools with dramatically different sizes, environments, and selectivity. The two elite schools, UC Berkeley and Stanford have a bigger difference in selectivity (%/%) than UCLA and UCI. The schools in Norcal thus have a much higher yield.</p>
<p>UC-irvine and CMC similar in size and selectivity? </p>
<p>UCI admits well over 20,000 students. The schools could not be more different.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wrong, wrong, and wrong., at least for CMC which is a small LAC.</p>
<p>CMC certainly is smaller, but the similarity in selectivity with UCLA and USC brings down its yield.</p>
<p>“Similarity” in my statement needs to be put into context. I should have qualified my statement.</p>
<p>For example, CMC and UCLA are probably more similar than Stanford and UCSC. Or, in my mind (controversially), between Berkeley and Stanford.</p>
<p>And to reply to xiggi’s criticism, each school doesn’t necessarily compete with every other.</p>
<p>There is a competition for students among
CMC vs USC and UCLA
USC vs UCLA
UCLA vs UCSD
UCSD vs UCI vs UCSB</p>
<p>Transitively, they lower each other’s yield.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ok, let’s:</p>
<p>CMC’s lowest 25th SAT score is 1300.</p>
<p>UCI is 1070, significantly less selective.</p>
<p>Ditto UCSB @ 1090.</p>
<p>UCLA is better, at 1180.</p>
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</p>
<p>Huh? In what ways are CMC and UCLA similar? (The fact that they both offer econ and poli sci?)</p>
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</p>
<p>I’m not buying it. Harvard and MIT are in the same town, probably less than 2 miles apart; Harvard’s yield is stratospheric (75.5%) and MIT’s is also very high (63.7%). Brown is about an hour’s drive away (depending on traffic); its yield is a strong 53.3%.</p>
<p>Grinnell College is pretty isolated, in a small town in the Iowa cornfields many hours from any major metropolitan area, but its yield is fairly low (33.8%).</p>
<p>And I have a simpler explanation for the yields of California schools: they’re all about what you’d expect them to be, similar to their closest peers. Stanford, at 71.5%, is similar to Harvard (75.5%), Yale (66.8%), and MIT (63.7%); it comes with the territory of being a top 5-ish school with enough resoures to meet full need for all its students.</p>
<p>UC Berkeley (41.4%) and UCLA (36.7%) are both in the range of other top public flagships: UVA 45.0%, Michigan 40.5%, Wisconsin 39.9%, UIUC 37.8%, Georgia Tech 37.8%. The outlier here is UNC Chapel Hill at 53.9%.</p>
<p>The other UCs descend in yield pretty much in lockstep with their perceived desirability within the context of the UC system: UCSD 22.0%, UCD 22.0%, UCSB 21.3%, UCI 20.7%, UCSC 18.6%, UCR 16.1%, UCM 5.9%.</p>
<p>CMC at 43.1% is very much in line with other top LACs including Williams 44.4%, Bowdoin 43.1%, Middlebury 42.0%, Pomona 40.2%, Swarthmore 39.8%, and Amherst 39.5%.</p>
<p>USC at 34.1% seems a bit low until you compare it to other non-HYPSM, non-Ivy, top 25-ish urban private research universities: Georgetown 42.2%, Chicago 38.1%, Rice 36.0%, Johns Hopkins 31.8%, Northwestern 30.9%, WUSTL 30,9%, Emory 28.4%. In some ways the private university most similar to USC in size is NYU, at 34.9%.</p>
<p>Bottom line, in this context geography is not destiny.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not necessarily. What about the University of Nebraska-Lincoln? Yield 66.9% (very high), acceptance rate 62.3% (also quite high).</p>
<p>Compare that to Carnegie Mellon: yield 28.8% (quite low), acceptance rate 33.3% (also fairly low).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yield is a measure of “desirableness” (if that’s a word) only with respect to a particular school’s pool of accepted students, and in the context of other choices available to them. I think xiggi’s absolutely right that you can’t say Nebraska is more desirable than Carnegie Mellon, much less that it’s more than twice as desirable, based on the fact that Nebraska’s yield is 66.9% and Carnegie Mellon’s is only 28.8%. All Nebraska’s high yield tells us is that it’s the most desirable alternative available to a strong majority of those who applied to and were accepted at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, after they had received all the other acceptances and financial aid packages they were going to get. Similarly, all Carnegie Mellon’s relatively low yield tells us is that most who applied to and were accepted at Carnegie Mellon had other options that they deemed more attractive. </p>
<p>But these are completely different pools of applicants and accepted students. Nebraska draws over 80% of its freshmen from in-state, and over 90% from Nebraska + immediately adjacent states. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is, to many Nebraskans, a highly attractive alternative to the University of Nebraska-Omaha, the University of Nebraska-Kearney, and Wayne State College, the next most commonly-attended schools in the state. The only private college of note in the state is Creighton, a mid-sized Jesuit school in Omaha that actively works to recruit a national student body and therefore limits how many Nebraskans are admitted (about 27% of freshmen in 2010), and also charges tuition roughly 4 times the UNL in-state rate, but meets full need for only 37% of its students (which may have something to do with Creighton’s own rather low 25.5% yield). FA isn’t great at UNL, either, but even if UNL doesn’t come up with a penny in FA, UNL’s lower sticker price is worth at least $25K per year relative to Creighton. Besides, in football-crazy Nebraska, being a Cornhusker is more than a tradition, it’s something deeply branded into the state’s identity, making the school uniquely desirable to many, perhaps most Nebraska residents; that element of “desirability” just doesn’t translate outside of that very specialized applicant pool.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon, on the other hand, gets lots of highly qualified applicants who are looking at it as an alternative or back-up to schools like MIT, the Ivies, or Johns Hopkins. US News tells us that applicants to Carnegie Mellon also most commonly applied to MIT, Cornell, and Princeton. Many of Carnegie Mellon’s admits will be cross-admits to these schools. One major disadvantage CMU has, however, is that unlike many of its competitors, it can’t afford to meet 100% of need for 100% of its students. So two factors drive CMU’s yield down: it gets applications from and accepts many of the mostly highly qualified applicants in the country who end up being cross-admits at schools even higher in the elite pecking order, and it loses some additional admits because its need-based FA is not as strong as many of its competitors. These factors make CMU less desirable to many in its admit pool relative to their other (generally very attractive) options—but these are probably almost 100% different people than UNL’s admit pool, and their options are extremely different as well. Nebraska’s admits are choosing UNL over University of Nebraska-Omaha and University of Nebraska-Kearney; Carnegie Mellon’s admits are choosing MIT, Cornell, and Johns Hopkins over CMU.</p>
<p>Yield tells you little about the academics and fit of a school. It mainly is a measure of prestigiousity among the T30 and top LACs.</p>
<p>desirableness - noun</p>
<p>suitability for bringing about a desired result under the circumstances <began to="" question="" the="" desirableness="" of="" a="" life="" indolence="" on="" tropical="" isle=""></began></p>
<p>It’s a word 
and it passes the “spell check” test. And my post assumed that desirableness can only be measured (and is relevant) in people who expressed an interest in the first place. Only if you are interested in Nebraska? and interested enough to apply? then you become a denominator in that schools yield equation.</p>
<p>]quote]UCLA, USC, UCSD, UCI, UCSB, Claremont McKenna in southern California. All those schools are similar in size, lifestyle, and selectivity.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>My “criticism” was nothing more than an expression of surprise that anyone would think that Claremont McKenna is similar in size, lifestyle, and selectivity to the other listed. </p>
<p>Had you made a point about the obvious overlap in applicants, especially when looking at SoCal, I might have nodded in agreement. Unfortunately you used other elements.</p>
<p>^^perhaps bubbles is suggesting that CMC is UCLA’s safety? Or that Stanford is Cal’s safety? :D</p>
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</p>
<p>Comparing 25th%-ile scores between publics and privates is like comparing apples and oranges, which you should well know. For instance, UCLA double-counts – at least up until a couple admissions cycles ago – a good portion of SAT’s and ACT’s, and possibly within one or the other of these tests. (I’ve had a harder time counting and verifying totals of those who report both tests at UCLA’s website, which could be because of the large influx of Int’ls.) The CDS disguises the top-score-reported-per-one-student aspect to which most most u’s will admit students because it only asks for %'s. And you know privates will only report at the 25th and 75th %-iles with this in mind, along with probably just about all u’s. Because UCLA shows pure nos. instead of %'s, we know they double-count scores. This 2x’s counting will have the most effect on lower scores that should be disregarded because higher scores are what helps the student gain admission, which will eventually touch and affect the 50th %-ile but lesser so the 75th. But add, too, that UCLA also reports means in a lot of its scores, which are understated because a mean SAT will indeed be much lower than a 50% median. Add to all this, CMC obviously superscores and UCLA, SB, I, do not. So to report best-foot-forward scores, do as privates do: superscore; report only medians, which disguises a lot of lower scoring students; and report strictly %'s not pure nos so as to report 1-score per student (because I don’t know what the true intent of the CDS is when it asks for both ACT and SAT scores – report all or report only one of either per student).</p>
<p>And wrt the importance of yields … obviously they are. If USN suddenly placed an importance of them in its rankings, you’d see a lot of u’s artificially trying to raise them, by admitting lower-ranked students etc. We all know that financial aid, quality of students, etc, all have a bearing on yield, these are obvious, and it is no less important than acceptance rate (AR). Because AR is manipulable by a u, and yield (YR) is controlled more or less by students, I feel the latter is more important. Again, if you think AR is important, YR is also.</p>
<p>sorry you missed the point (in your defense of UCLA), drax. </p>
<p>The point was on ‘selectivity’ (as per bubbles), and no matter how you slice and dice the bottom quartile numbers, the top UCs are less selective (overall) than CMC. (And nothing wrong with that.)</p>
<p>btw: if UCLA wants double report test scores, and lower their stats as you suggest, that is their (weird) call. But let’s not make excuses for moronic administrators.</p>
<p>This is a really interesting thread. I personally take those yield rates with a grain of salt. Students have a lot of choices of where they can go (hopefully they applied to several schools and got accepted to several of them!). Looking at the retention rate of that “low yielding school” would be a good idea. Retention rate: percentage of freshman who return to campus after their first year. If it’s something like 80% or higher, then that means that the kids that did decide to go there are very happy and are not transferring out. Even 70% is not shabby. I think this is a far better number to look at…</p>
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</p>
<p>From henceforth in this thread I will abbreviate Xth Percentile as Xth%.</p>
<p>My point, which holds true now, was that comparing private-school scores with public-schools’ is like comparing apples and oranges. I stated this at the very beginning. This idea is true wrt CMU v UCLA/UCSB/UCI. My purpose was to show that “normalizing” scores in comparison between, specificially, CMU and UCLA shows a much closer 25th% than what you stated. It wouldn’t be the 100-point + difference. The three factors I listed as to how UCLA reports scores will indeed converge the two schools’ 25th%. The 50th% scores which UCLA reports extremely low at a 1910 mean or so on its website will convert to the following:</p>
<p>I. 1910 mean becomes 1970 or so 50% median.</p>
<p>II. 1970 with superscoring becomes 2010 or so with three part adjustment, conservatively.</p>
<p>III. 2010 with double counting removed will have, say, a 2030-2040 median, conservatively. (UCLA for the last two admission cycles hass excluded Int’ls in score totals – I thought some schools got in trouble for this.) About 135-140% of UCLA’s domestic students, in-staters + oos, less Int’ls, report both SAT and ACT. UCLA proceeds to report both sets of scores on its admissions website as well as on its IPEDS and CDS. </p>
<p>This last point, III, will indeed raise the 25th% materially if not significantly as will superscoring, II.</p>
<p>If you’re into two part, the 2030-2040, with assumption of symmetry wrt scoring, will convert to 1353-1360, 50% median.</p>
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</p>
<p>We know that UC discounts the SAT for diversity purposes, but counts grades much more important, more of an evening factor of stats because higher scores run commensurate with wealth. </p>
<p>If you wanted to be fair, you would have done the same wrt grades. CMU reports a CDS, but conveniently avoids the part of gpa mean calculation. Let me guestimate what CMU’s 25th% gpa is:</p>
<p>About 70% of CMU students are top decile. I will guess that the mean gpa of a CMU student will be ~ uwgpa of 3.6. For UCLA, the mean is 3.8+ (again, domestic students)</p>
<p>UCLA’s 25th% looks to be ~ 3.72
CMU’s would be ~ 3.5 or so maybe even less</p>
<p>So if I may mix and match (because calculation of SAT’s and gpa’s are separate and can’t really be combined … but I will anyway…)</p>
<p>The 25th% student at UCLA is:</p>
<p>3.72 uwgpa/1180 unadjusted SAT</p>
<p>T 25th% student at CMU is: </p>
<p>3.50 uwgpa/1300 superadjusted-superscored SAT.</p>
<p>That 120 SAT point diff. between UCLA and CMU will lessen somewhat-materially becasue of my point II, and a lot because of point III.</p>
<p>The UCLA student at the 25th% might be a top-tier, Hispanic Bell Gardens HS grad who didn’t have the funds to do extreme prep for the SAT and may have taken it only once, and the CMU student might be a Webb School grad closer to the middle of his graduating class with loads of prep for the SAT. Surely a Web School grad with a 3.5 would be much higher at BGHS. But that isn’t the point: Diversity for a public school like UCLA is extremely important. </p>
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</p>
<p>As I said in the past, they do this so as not to scare off those of poorer background in applying, and later let holistics take its effect. They know what they are doing when they discount scores in the admissions and reporting process.</p>