<p>This is in response to a deleted post (sorry, I’m a mod and I’m incurably nosy) – I’ll post the question, but the author can choose to identify him/herself or not. :)</p>
<p>
The predictability of the yield changed in a significant way – several of the schools that compete most highly with MIT changed their early admission policies to do away with early action (Harvard), or with early decision (several schools). So it’s tougher to predict whether a certain number of admitted students will come to MIT or attend another top school, where previously many of those admitted to other top schools would not even have applied to MIT given their early applications elsewhere.</p>
<p>Also, for many years, no one was taken off the waitlist at all. Recently the waitlist has gotten larger, but the number of students admitted from the waitlist has also risen.</p>
<p>If you want to see the number of applicants accepted from the waitlist in the last few years, you can usually find that information in a blog post from mid-May in Matt’s blog. The information is also in the Common Data Set, but is a few years out of date.</p>