But that could be the only two logical conclusions I could draw, the other been the selective LACs are admitting the same pool of kids who are also admitted by the other selective LACs. @OHMomof2
Well, there are safeties and then there are safeties. Are Dartmouth and Brown safeties for HYP? Probably. In the technical sense. But, the reason you seldom hear of them referred to that way is, 1) You can’t make predictions based on such a label and, 2) the term, “Harvard safety school” just isn’t meaningful to enough people to make it into popular usage, and 3) it’s not a very stinging pejorative, is it?
I don’t think most applicants perceive Amherst etc to be safety schools, even the ones who get in at multiple schools among the Ivies/MIT/Stanford. The data from Amherst itself is that they reject 75%+ of students at the highest end for testing (750+ per section on the SAT, 34+ on the ACT). A safety would be a school that could reliably be counted upon for acceptance, and with almost all top LACs seeing <20% acceptance rates nowadays, I don’t think any of them could be safeties.
What I do think is happening is that a lot of applicants whose dream choice is an Ivy League are applying to LACs more and more- not necessarily as a backup, but as an added college choice. Amherst for instance sees a ton of top international overlap as a consequence for being the only need-blind LAC: a reputation it shares only with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and MIT. QuestBridge applicants have top LACs and top universities which they can rank and forward apps to. I do think there’s a good chunk of the admitted pool who doesn’t especially consider the LACs they get into once they have a top university acceptance (I’ve seen it happen time after time with many QB students). Unfortunately, most LACs have streamlined their writing requirements, so it may not be easy for an admissions officer at Amherst to know who genuinely wants to attend within the RD pool (there are no interviews either, they don’t seem to care about demonstrated interest, and the writing supplement can be bypassed with a graded assignment). If Amherst’s goal is- we will take the strongest applicants within our pool to reach our desired diversity/institutional priority goals- one would expect a lower yield. Contrast to hypothetical school X with a high yield, which carefully tracks interactions/interest and has a required Why essay. They see Samantha with a 1600 SAT didn’t do any communication, and think- is she really interested in attending? She gets rejected.
@84stag I don’t mean “niche” in a negative sense. Great schools like CalTech and Harvey Mudd and Babson are also niche, just different niches. CMC is a very specific college focused on “leadership,” and appeals to certain students. A huge percentage of the class majors in either econ, government, international relations or psychology.
Why schools try to protect yield? Just for rankings?
Schools don’t try to “protect yield”. They try to build a class that fits their institutional needs. When all the dust has settled, they hope to have a class that is roughly half men and half women, and diverse in many respects, including their academic and EC interests. So that kid whose application clearly reads that xyz school is exactly what he’s looking for and who fits a profile of what the school wants is way more likely to be accepted.
The kid who writes about putting all her energies into ski racing, her love of the mountains, and wanting to spend every minute pushing her limits outdoors, etc., may not strike the Columbia AO as a fit. Colby or Middlebury? Yes.
AOS have commented that it is much more common than you’d think for kids to write about interests that the school cannot address.
Also remember that schools, even those that don’t admit by major or program, need a student body that is going to avail itself of all the schools offer. So a school may not admit a pile of high stats students who profess a love of cs and robotics in favor of the kid who is fascinated by immigration issues or child development.
This is where the focus on stats is really misleading.
Kids need to apply to a number of schools because they can’t count on being admitted everywhere. If they do this wisely, they will probably have a number of options that are good for them. They can only attend one…
Bottom line, schools accept the students they want if they think that student will seriously consider the offer. And many terrific students, using a single common app essay, signal that a school to which they have applied is NOT really going to be under consideration unless everything else goes wrong for that student. Why would that be appealing to an AO?
Why worry about yield? Too few students enroll, too little money. Too many? Have to try to house and educate them all.
Colleges count on having a certain # enroll each year, with little room for error either way.
@CupCakeMuffins Yield is not a part of any ranking system I know of. It certainly is not part of the US News ranking formula.
Historically, USNews did use yield in their ranking system, but they dropped it in 2004.
Today, USNews doesn't use "yield" in the rankings -- but they do use "acceptance rate". All else being equal, higher yield is associated with lower acceptance rate, so it's not really much of a change. The same strategies that can be used to increase the yield (i.e. increased reliance on ED) will simultaneously act to decrease the acceptance rate.And while acceptance rate currently counts for only 1.25 percent of the overall ranking, it tends to get a lot of attention (particularly right here on collegeconfidential). Plenty of prospective students and parents assume (consciously or unconsciously) that a school with a lower acceptance rate must be “better” than one with a higher rate. Given the public interest in acceptance rates, schools want to keep the yield as high as possible, so that the acceptance rate can be as low as possible.
I have heard that Amherst’s yield this year has turned out to be unexpectedly high (even though the acceptance rate of under 13% was lower than prior years). In other words, more people accepted the offer than they expected so that the first year class will be a bit bigger than usual. Has anyone else heard that? Has anyone gotten in off of the wait list?
@MagisLudi I also heard that, but not necessarily from a super reliable source.
On the acceptance thread here there haven’t been any wait-list acceptances reported though, which is a bit odd for July.
I doubt we’ll find out before they release the “class of 2022” stats around orientation time in September, unless first years report weird housing assignments next month.
Just saw on another thread (about wait lists) that over 500 admits committed to come, which is a yield over 40%.
Interesting. Link? Can’t find it. @MagisLudi
Are you going to Amherst this fall or getting ready to apply?
The thread is called “Waitlist 2022” and here is the post I was referring to: "
Spatula2
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Posts: 13
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05-11-2018 at 6:53 pm
My friend in the admissions office said they had a higher yield than expected and that over 500 people committed. They had to take a lot fewer transfer students this year too."
This is very good, however still less than half of Harvard’s yield.
@CupCakeMuffins Harvard can only dream of having West Point or the Naval Academy’s yield rate. Or Brigham Young’s. Or Stanford’s. Or Louisiana State at Alexandria’s. All higher than Harvard.
Do you think Harvard is worried? Do you think Amherst is worried?
Well, military academies and religious schools are a different story altogether. Its like comparing apples and quail eggs.
Highly selective colleges only compare themselves against their peers/competitors.
I doubt yield isn’t a cause of concern for any private school.
I’ll be surprised if Harvard and Stanford’s yields are more than a few points apart.
Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but here’s an idea:
Among top private LACs and universities, acceptance rate and yield are negatively correlated, with some exceptions (of course): as acceptance rate decreases, yield increases.
Observe:
The top LACs have admit rates of about 12-20%, roughly the same as schools like Georgetown, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Rice, Washington U. Compare the top LACs’ yields to those top private universities… and then compare them to the yields (and acceptance rates) of the Ivies, Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Caltech, Duke, Northwestern. Note that, generally, the LACs are pretty close, in acceptance rate and yield, to the first group, but the “Expanded Ivies” group is both markedly more selective overall and has higher yield.
Why?
Mainly, popularity and prestige: The Ivies et al receive tons and tons of apps, so they can afford to admit fewer than 10%. An admission among one of these schools is pretty rare, and if a kid achieves it, he or she is most likely to accept such a cherished honor. Since acception rates are so low at these schools, if a kid applies to several, most are only getting into one, and that school is likely to be the one chosen in May.
The top LACs simply lag the top universities in prestige (which isn’t right, imo, but it’s a fact), which leads to fewer apps, higher admit rates, and lower yields.
LA state is hardly either one, it’s public, but yes, yield is hardly the only measure of quality.
And sometimes yield is negatively affected not for “I got into a better school” reasons as @prezbucky suggests, but as you affected it at Amherst yourself this year by turning it down for financial reasons.
Yield is important, but more important than the number is accurately predicting yield. I’m more worried about where Amherst will put its unexpectedly large class this year - there are only so many first year dorm spaces.
@prezbucky Imho your diagnosis is spot on, acceptance rate and yield are very much about marketing and name recognition. For everything else, there aren’t enough differences, one would get a solid education at any of highly selective schools, just go by affordability, not by acceptance rate or popularity.