Is there a special reason for such a low yield? Harvard had 82% yield this year compared to Amherst’s 37%.
Seems around their typical yield number. I did a quick search and found these numbers on a 2016 thread:
Bowdoin 50%
Pomona 48%
Williams 45%
Claremont McKenna, Wellesley 43%
Colorado College, Davidson, Swarthmore 42%
Hamilton 41%
Harvey Mudd, Scripps 40%
Amherst 39%
Middlebury 38%
Carleton, Washington and Lee, Wesleyan 35%
Colby*, Vassar 34%
Colgate, Oberlin, Smith 32%
Grinnell 28%
Macalester 25%
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1921799-yield-ranking.html
Harvard is not a good benchmark.
With kids applying to more and more schools, yields keep going down.
Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Wesleyan (CT), Williams et al are very small, very high quality LA Colleges in the NE who tend to attract students looking for a tutorial education modeled very much along the lines of the well established private NE secondary school system. The student/faculty ratios and the quality of the faculty are outstanding. They compete with other like colleges such as Hamilton (NY) for students. Although there are application crossovers with the larger Ivies, they are a very different pool of schools not modeled after the large research Universities which make up Harvard and the larger Ivy League. These small colleges are not world-wide household names.
Currently, I believe Bowdoin is on top on this distinguished pile with a yield of 51% among accepted applicants. Their toughest admissions competition are each other, not the major universities as they really are a different tack on higher education. Within the private secondary school system, admissions to these colleges are highly prized. They are often refereed to as the “little Ivies.”
A college’s yield is largely influenced by your cross application pool. I don’t believe there is a bad apple is this bunch. Personally, I prefer Amherst as its attitude is a little less “preppy.” Who knows what drives fashion?
I was a “preppy” who graduated from a blue collar STEM university where engineering was available. This crossover broadened my educational experience in many respects, but I would never question the depth or quality of the “little Ivy” education.
My son turned down Amherst for UT-Austin because he decided he wanted to study engineering.
I just find it surprising as unlike top ivies where masses apply randomly, LAC applicants know them and feel genuinely interested. As financial aid is very generous for ones with demonstrated need and there is no shortage of wealthy applicants who can afford sticker price, its a very low yield.
Yield is an interesting statistic. Numbers from USNews show:
BYU higher yield than Harvard
Univ of Texas - Rio Grande Valley higher than Princeton
Univ of Alaska - Fairbanks higher than Univ of Chicago
Kennesaw State higher than Univ of Notre Dame
Georgia Southern higher than Brown
Seem to be a lot of factors that play into whether or not a student enrolls.
Yields are a good measurement for enrollment number predictions, but it’s not really useful for much of anything else. It only gives a percentage but doesn’t explain why. A lower yield could be cost, competition with nearby schools, desired major, etc. The list goes on and on.
Claremont McKenna College has not released its yield yet, but they accepted 560 applicants for an entering class size of about 340. They’ve already closed the wait list, so that puts their yield around 60%.
I think yield is more about fit, and adcoms figuring out the students they want who also want them.
If each applicant applied to 5 schools like Amherst, Williams, etc, and was accepted to 3, the yield would be 33%. Since most of the RD applicants are applying to many more than 5, I think the 32% rate is pretty good. Many for whom Amherst is the first choice applied ED.
Claremont McKenna is an outlier because it pretty much has no competitors for its niche, especially on the West Coast. The same students are not applying to CMC that apply to Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore - even Pomona.
@CupCakeMuffins Ummm… your obsession with ripping down Amherst in every strange way you can think of is becoming kind of weird, IMO. I’m sorry your child didn’t get the financial aid you wanted, but that would have been true at any private college with strictly need-based aid. Maybe it is time to let it go.
CMC is not a “niche” school. I’m not quite sure how anyone can say that. I know plenty who applied to Pomona and CMC; or HMC and CMC; or CMC and Amherst, Bowdoin, Williams, Swarthmore, and/or Colorado College.
Berea’s yield has been higher than every college in the country but Harvard and Stanford some years. It’s a LAC in Kentucky where every student works in exchange for tuition. Does that make it the 3rd best college in the US?
It may be that a number families, like yours, applied without considering whether it was affordable, and thus have to say no when admitted, lowering the yield.
@ThankYouforHelp You may be right. Its very possible that subconsciously i’m trying to notice faults to justify my inability to afford Amherst to myself.
However, as colleges often post their yields and people at this forum are always telling one thing or the other about how colleges go to extreme length to protect their yield, i felt its something important to all colleges.
One of the reason my kid loves Amherst is them using a different set of rules than other colleges as that’s how he handles life as well by walking his own path.
@retiredfarmer wrote:
We see this time and time again, especially in threads where the OP is an international: you can explain until you are blue in the face that an Amherst or a Wesleyan is the qualitative equivalent of a Dartmouth or a Brown, and it will be like taking to a wall. In fact, I will go out on a limb and say that, in my experience, the more a LAC overlaps with an Ivy, the lower its yield will be.
Top LACs in general tend to have lower yields than their top university counterparts. It’s not an Amherst thing.
There are only 4 top LACs with 50%+ yields as of now- CMC, Bowdoin, Pomona, and Barnard. None are above 55%. On the university side, all the Ivies presently have 55%+ yields, as do Stanford, Northwestern, MIT, and UChicago. Duke is close as well at 55%.
The other top private universities- Rice, Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, USC, Johns Hopkins, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon, Washu, etc- have yields rivaling the top SLACs.
Things to consider:
- Students who get into a top 10 university are unlikely to get into multiple, and they’ll usually pick the top 10 over the top SLAC if they have the choice (though a not insignificant number at Amherst turn down top 10 universities as well)
- Top SLACs are more similar in character to one another and not as selective as top 10 universities, so it is more possible to have a scenario where a student is accepted to Bowdoin, Middlebury, Williams, and Amherst (who look for similar students) whereas getting into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia would be exceedingly rare. Given that the student will only pick one school, that pushes the yield down for the other SLACs they didn't choose.
- Yield is driven by a lot of different things, which may not have to do with quality. For instance, CMC is highly reliant on ED and fills 67% of their class that way, and ED is guaranteed yield. Amherst only fills 38% of its class with ED. If you separate out the regular decision yield, both have the same- 29%. Schools that are within a niche and schools which are in/near urban areas tend to have higher yields.
My view is:
Why does it matter? So what if the majority of admitted students decide not to pick Amherst? One look at Amherst’s CDS shows entering student stats exceeding many of the Ivies. The enrolled students who will shape your experience there are every bit as smart and determined as they would be anywhere, and a lower yield does not take anything away from Amherst’s brilliant professors, research, fantastic outcomes, beautiful campus, etc.
@nostalgicwisdom wrote:
Without actual data, I’d be very cautious about making that assumption. In fact, I’d say the opposite assumption (that there is a great deal of overlap between all the eastern elite colleges) is the simpler explanation for lower yield rates among the smaller colleges.
Does the low yields of the very selective LACs indicate high stat/competitive kids are applying these schools as “Safeties”?
Is yield rate factored in the “rankings” of colleges?
Using a LAC with a 12-15ish% accept rate as a safety strikes me as pretty unlikely, @makemesmart