Inside Peek at UM Admissions Data from Last Year

[Michael_Hoak]

UM just released their Common Data Set for the 2022-2023 freshman class (i.e., current UM freshman). It’s an inside look at last year’s admissions cycle. A few interesting trends to share based on the data…

UM admission rate is dropping rapidly - Last admissions cycle, they had 49,167 applicants apply. They offered admission to 9,311 students and 2,370 incoming freshman students ultimately elected to enroll. That’s an admit rate of 18.9%. I bet that drops another 2% this year.

UM’s yield rate is climbing - UM has always trailed its peers in yield (i.e., the number of accepted students that decide to enroll). I suspect that has much to do with the cost of UM. But this past cycle, UM increased their yield to over 25%. If the yield continues to tick upwards (despite increasing numbers of applications), UM’s admit rate will keep going even lower.

Early Decision is a huge advantage at UM - The admission rate for ED was 56.7%. UM received 1,716 ED applications (roughly 200 more than last year), but admitted roughly the same number of ED applicants as last year (973). If UM is your top choice, ED is a massive boost, even after accounting for scholarship athletes and other guaranteed admits that tend to come in through ED door. But UM does not appear to be aggressively trying to increase its yield by capturing more students via ED. This is an area to watch if the number of ED apps start to climb rapidly. Most of UM’s peer institutions lean much heavier on ED.

Big difference between male and female admission rates - Because UM gets roughly 8,000 more applications from women than men, the admit rate for women (16.7%) is notably lower than the admit rate for men (22.1%).

UM is starting to accept more students off the wait list - UM has traditionally admitted only a tiny number of students from their waitlist. But last year, they admitted 115 versus only 13 the prior year. But the odds of getting in off the list are still very long. Last cycle, UM gave 20,206 students the option of being on the wait list and only 115 were admitted.

[Mashinations]

Interesting stuff - thanks for posting! A couple of additional points -

Waitlist - All schools post how many went to the WL and how many accepted admissions from it but don’t give how many were offered admittance. The 115 above - if consistent with how other schools have reported - enrolled from the WL. Given other numbers it could well be anywhere from 500-1,500 kids were offered a spot.

ED/EA/RD - You’re absolutely right that for the kids that can reasonably expect to afford UM and for who this is their #1 choice, the path is ED. Excluding ED from the data set they have a 17.5% admit rate and a yield of 17%. Still a very competitive admit rate but a mediocre yield. My GUESS is this has mostly to do with cost. Non-ED they admitted 8,300 kids to fill 1,400 spots. When aid offers did sufficiently cover the kids it drives the yield down.

Housing - DS is an EA applicant that got deferred to RD. We’ve been following some of the narrative about their housing issues. Coming from WAY OOS it’s enough to give us pause.