Maybe they don’t. But they should.
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Public school Gcs are swamped and prob don’t know. Our Gcs even try to dissuade kids from taking too many APs and tell kids to apply to just 6 or 7 schools. Our Gcs even joked if kids apply to a lot of schools they will look at you as being paranoid.
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Our guidance counselors are pretty engaged and lead information sessions for parents and students on the whole application process, but I don’t remember anything about schools caring about demonstrated interest. I could have missed it. They did encourage students to research schools and come up with a reasonable list by visiting if possible, etc…
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Our school recommends the interest game, mentions it more than once, with D21 and D23, starting in 11th grade, and lets them know which schools on their list really care about interest, but not a step by step plan. It is up to the kids to figure that out and how to be genuine about it. Additionally, schools that have “hidden” interview request forms that run out in Nov or December(for RD),schools with “priority” ivw deadlines, and schools with “optional” live sessions with heads of programs for specific applicants–were not mentioned by counseling staff. My kids found most of them ( I found one) by researching the schools and combing the websites. Part of it is definitely a game, but if the kid is really interested in the program, they will find some of these things on the websites.
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My kids had a GC who also served 400 kids in all 4 grades. About 1/4 of the class weren’t headed to college (military or just off to work). About half of the class was going to a state school, either 4 year or CC. So about 1/4 were looking at other colleges, in state private or OOS public or private. Of course they knew about Alabama and Ga Tech, but unlikely they knew much about admissions. They were very busy trying to get the seniors OUT of hs and trying to keep the fr-so-jr classes IN hs. HS was their focus.
If you were in that 1/4 of the class looking outside the in-state public schools, you were on your own. Honestly, about half of that 1/4 were athletes and the schools were helping them with the applications. I had one who went to an instate private and one to an OOS public. We were on our own. We figured it out. Could it have been easier? Sure. Did we miss some fabulous hidden gems? Probably.
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How can you tell which schools “yield protect” and which don’t?
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Also, I wanted to thank everyone who replied. There are too many to mention individually since I don’t want to clog the forum further. Answers to a few questions:
No, she did not do ED2.
She mentioned McGill, but we were planning to give her our GI Bill and I don’t think it goes over the border, so we said no.
Think of it more like Yield management than Yield protect. If you look at the current yield if it’s under 30% then you can assume they are doing some more detailed stratification / data analytics to try and manage creating a class. Imagine you have 3 tiers of applicants
Tier 1 - are top 25% profile but yield rate is 10%
Tier 2 - are middle 50% with a yield of 25%
Tier 3 - are bottom 25% with a yield of 60%
Now factor in Merit. If I give Tier 1 40K I can up their yield to 25%, If I give Tier 2 25K I can up their yield to 50%.
Now how to you create a class that maximizes the profile of the school, while maintaining a limited budget while keeping the admission rate under a certain %.
Thankfully I do believe that the focus on caring about admission rates is starting to fade a little.
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Well, it’s a bit anecdotal, and a bit based on stats.
I would start with a school’s CDS.
If they indicate that demonstrated interest matters to them, that’s the first clue that they might protect/manage yield aggressively.
Then, look at their ED acceptance rate vs. RD acceptance rate. The higher the difference, the more they are pumping up their overall yield through ED – as ED is essentially 100% yield. It may mean they worry about losing cross-admit battles vs. other schools in the RD round.
To calculate RD yield, using the CDS, it’s a little complicated:
- Subtract the number of ED admits from the number of total admits. Label this variable A. This is the number of kids they admitted in the RD round.
- Subtract the number of ED admits from the number of total freshmen enrolled. This is the number who are enrolled from the RD round. Label this variable B.
- RD yield = B/A – the number enrolled from RD, divided by the number admitted in RD
That formula assumes 100% yield in ED – it might not be that high exactly, but it’s good enough for a strong estimate.
So if they admitted 6000 students in the RD round, but only 1500 enrolled, the RD yield was 25%.
I suspect that the lower the RD yield, the more protective of overall yield they might become… and either continue admitting a lot of ED applicants, or really drill into the RD applicants to find the ones who are most likely to enroll… or both.
There is also anecdotal supporting evidence we see here in schools’ admissions threads: Student A is accepted with 3.6/1300, while Student B with 3.9/1500 is rejected, both in the RD round. The school would rather admit the kid more likely to attend (boosting yield) than the kid with better numbers whom they presume will have other, more prestigious, offers. That’s why we say it is important to show such schools the love – they don’t trust you to choose them unless you demonstrate your esteem for the school.
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The other factor that’s part of enrollment management is merit.
Many schools have a rubric they use for merit so that all students with a certain profile receive the same merit. This is fair. So every high stats kid who’s admitted gets the same package. The school can’t run the risk of having too many of those kids matriculate because it may not have the budget for it. So many of these merit-qualifying kids who apply in any non-binding round are deferred or WL.
Kids who don’t qualify for merit may be admitted, especially if they are FP, because they won’t challenge the merit budget. At this point, cries of “yield protection!” are common.
Case especially comes to mind in this group. Denison tells students who are deferred or WL what their merit will be so they can decide whether they are interested in hanging around. You can look at past threads for these if they’re on your list.
Because many families will not qualify for FA but can’t afford FP, applying for merit and weighing the results are a critical part of the process. BUT managing merit is also a complicating part of admissions - on both sides - and part of what makes it hard to compare results from one applicant to another.
The other consideration is whether the school admits by major or has majors that are strained. A student interested in Latin or Archeology or German might find less competition than one interested in Computer Science. And a kid who might knock it out of the park in German might not have top Math scores so might appear to be a “lesser” student who is admitted instead of the top stats one who wants to do CS.
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Our large public HS GCs are pretty clueless when it comes to top tier admissions. And way too busy anyway (about 100+ seniors per GC). The only thing they have ever bothered to reach out to us on was to try to get us to complete the FAFSA (we didn’t-- no FA coming our way ever!)
They do run workshops to help kids figure out the Common App and have some pretty basic info on how to write an essay. Nothing helpful for competitive admissions.
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Google says that up to 26k per year can be used for private or foreign schools. Just in case McGill is still of interest.
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Because HS GCs each have 300 students in their portfolio. And as in all professions, some GCs are better than others.
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Most counselors have hundreds of students, with counseling needs all over the place (not just college admissions).
Part of what one pays for at elite prep schools is a dedicated college counseling staff that is well connected and knowledgeable about a large set of (mostly private) more selective colleges.
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If the college’s common data set is truthful and up to date, look at section C7 and see how “level of interest” is considered or not.
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You could easily replace “tracking interest” with estimated yield. Think of all the erroneous data a college has on you. Yes they have algorithms that are tracking visits to the site, likes on their insta page and engagement with their AOs, on campus tours, etc. But they also have a full profile built based on your HS, what town you live in, where your siblings went to college, where your parents went to college, what your parents do for a living, what’s your income bracket, what’s your religion, sexual preference, where do you do your grocery shopping, what type of pizza toppings do you prefer. All that META goes into estimating how likely you are to commit if you are offered
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Nearly all colleges practice yield “management” to some degree. The question is to what degree the practice becomes yield “protection”. To me, where the line should be drawn depends on whether the practice is “additive” or “subtractive”. Merit awards, for example, are themselves yield “management” tools. They’re offered by a school to applicants whom the school wants but who would, in the school’s view, likely choose to go elsewhere otherwise. But this practice is “additive” so it doesn’t reach the level of yield “protection”, IMO. On the other hand, if a school rejects (or defers, or waitlists) an applicant (a “subtractive” action), purely because it suspects the student may have more attractive options and is unlikely to commit (regardless what the school does), then it crosses the line into yield “protection”.
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If you’re a VA resident and want a true safety, apply to any public university not-named UVA/VATech/W&M. Better yet, choose two. Those should be almost guaranteed acceptances for National Merit applicants.
I would not limit my in-state “safeties” to those big 3. Every year there are people reporting their high-stats applicant was not admitted to one of those schools. Especially if the chosen major was in Engineering or CS.
If your child filled out the Common App, it should take only minutes to pop off a few more applications.
Best of luck
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This is similar to our kid’ school. Which I’m now wondering if my son should have been showing more interest to his colleges. But this past fall he was overwhelmed with classes, clubs, part time job and college apps. Any time I mentioned that he should be looking at the emails his favorite colleges sent or that he should sit in another virtual event, he would get all stressed out and my husband would tell me to let it go.
But now that he’s gotten deferred from 3 top schools so far despite his high stats and having a hook… it makes me wonder if it really is coming down to demonstrated interest when there are soooo many candidates vying for spots. And most applicants are identical to him, despite his hook. Btw, we did official tours of 2 of those, he attended a summer program at one, and he’s a (weak) legacy at the third and been on their campus a few times so didn’t do an official tour.
Anyway, my point is back to the original poster… wondering if applying EA was worth it for him even with a hook (URM). And whether demonstrated interest should be stressed more by the schools, not just this nagging mom.
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Applying EA whenever possible means that any results or deferrals provide information that is not too late to inform other application decisions.
Not all colleges consider URM, and the amount of consideration if they do varies (be careful of overestimating it). Also, in terms of colleges that do yield protection, they may assume that if an applicant is URM, the applicant may have more competing offers and be less likely to matriculate.
You may want to check what each college says it considers in its common data set section C7.
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