I would imagine a good candidate for Amherst would be a good candidate for Williams (and also several other highly desirable LACs) If accepted at both that student can only attend one.
I wouldn’t look at a low yield as an important factor in assessing the quality of an institution.
Correct. Kids simply have (probably) more options among 15% admit-rate schools than they do among 5-10% admit-rate schools. So you get into 2-3 of the former and only one wins that yield competition; while you get into maybe one of the latter, and it usually wins.
But yeah, yield neither determines nor reflects differences in quality, per se; only popularity and fit… and the talent of the adcoms in picking an applicant who will, in turn, pick their school… and relying heavily on ED (and REA/SCEA to a lesser degree) can obviously improve yield too.
These schools have decades of experience in working with their yield rates and waitlists and athletic recruits and legacies. The smaller the school, the better they have to be at hitting that right number to yield the class size they want. If Harvard is 10 or even 50 students over the ideal number because too many students accept the RD offer, they wiggle around and make it work. If a very small school like Williams is off by 50, that is a huge problem. Likewise, it is a problem if they are down by 50 and have to fill those spots from a waitlist.
@OHMomof2 Amherst’s class of 2022 is its largest ever at 497 but is only 17 over target (plus they may lose 1-2 to summer melt over the next month). There should be JUST enough capacity without having to move any 1st yrs off the quad or tripling up former doubles.
cupcakemuffins Amherst and Rice are extremely comparable in terms of both selectivity and yield.
Rice class 2021 2,864 accepted of 18,063 applicants. 16% acceptance rate.
Of 2,864 accepted 1,048 enrolled or 36%.
Lots of ways to look at those numbers and or Amherst and Rice. (Sorry but I know that was a comparison you had made previously). In my experience both are amazing schools that attract extremely nuanced and smart kids. Truly the best of the best. I know numerous adults that graduated from both. Universally successful and interesting people.
Comparing any school to Harvard or other ivies that benefit from mystique is unfair. The finished products (the kids are all of the same quality). As a dad I was completely indifferent as to which type of these special schools my kid apply to or attend.
No, its fair game. We were comparing those two before waitlist options opened up. In my opinion Rice is no better than Amherst, even less known outside the state which reflects in their yield as well.
Harvard and Stanford are in a totally different league when it comes to acceptance rate or yield rate. To be fair, even though we said no to Amherst, Rice and two others from top 20 list, probably we would’ve sucked it up and cashed 401K if Harvard or Stanford accepted him. I know, pathetic but sadly true.
Not pathetic at all. A testament to both what a great candidate your son is and your sensibility as parents!! Sounds like he did and will do amazing.
Thank you @Nocreativity1
Amherst certainly holds its own in terms of external recognition in this regard, topping this Forbes list of “expensive colleges worth every penny”: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliesportelli/2017/04/26/10-expensive-colleges-worth-every-penny-2017/amp/.
Well, these articles don’t cover “upper” middle class literally spending every single penny in their bank on paying full sticker price.
Well, the fact that you turned down Amherst shows that they need to accept more applicants to get the yield they need. The fact that you would have accepted Harvard no matter what the cost shows they don’t need to cushion the acceptances because there will be very little melt.
Its very black and white for you but in reality its not. Every student and family has their own problems, circumstances and priorities. Anyone who is this good enough to get in on merit, does well regardless of which path they take, as long as they work hard.
In fact, this year they could have used about 20 more declines or accepted 20 fewer - they have too many “yeses” this year - too many first years, no one getting in from the wait list, fewer transfer acceptances too.
Harvard had that problem last year, not this year. They say this year’s yield was 82% so almost 1 out of 5 accepted students are saying no, for whatever reason.
Apparently H will be going (or did go) to the waitlist to fill empty spots.
That’s surprising, school with <40% not going to waitlist, school with >80% going to waitlist.
As adcoms play this game every year, one would assume they would have a good idea and its not like they have to admit exact numbers, they ED or EA a big number, admit way more RD than they have seats for, transfers probably have separate list, legacy/donors/full financial aid cases probably accept gladly, most applicants fight tooth and nail to get in, somehow schools still end up dipping into waitlists.
On other hand, they reject amazing applicants right and left. I’m never going to understand this puzzle.
US news still uses "The third component is the acceptance rate or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent). " There are some good metrics (retention rate, graduation rate) in US News and some very stupid ones (acceptance rate and faculty salaries). Faculty can make a legit argument pay me more, make education more expensive cause US News uses that.
The other stupid one is acceptance rate, which is why U. Chicago shot up so high. They are very aggressive in mass emails and paper mailings to get more applications. I personally consider it highly unethical to randomly ask high school students to apply to these types of schools who have no chance of getting in.
Also, U. Chicago dropped the testing requirement. Historically applications go up ~10% when schools drop testing requirements. My guess is 95% of white and asian kids accepted will still need test scores to get admitted. So gaming the system is not particularly hard to reject more.
Amherst is a tiny school with a large proportion of athletes, they could simply increase their ED acceptances and get under 10% acceptance if they wanted. They could also add ED2 like U. chicago did and probably get under 8%. That’s what I’d do if I were in charge just add an ED2 cycle. When all the kids who don’t get into Ivies ED/EA saw an ED2 option for Amherst they would probably want to apply there rather than going RD.
Chicago wrote the original manual on manipulation of college admission process. They use every tactic known to adcom kind.
Yep. an education journal wrote a snarky piece about US news rankings that included one of my complaints, resources to students are important but faculty salaries are not:
“Without The Rankings, one might have been misled by all the talk about the high cost of college into believing that colleges’ spending less is desirable, rather than realizing that spending more, regardless of necessity, is a very good thing that results, through the wisdom of the special U.S. News formula, in a better position in The Rankings.”
https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-US-News-College/244325
but seriously, most elite schools fill half their class with ED (Duke, Penn, etc…) Amherst which has a huge number of recruited athletes doesn’t even fill half it’s class with ED, which is strange. Amherst could get to 60-70% acceptance just by adding ED2 and filling 50% of the class ED1.
I think ED probably conflicts with Amherst’s push for diversity, especially SEO.