The number of prospective students applying to Middlebury College reached a new record high of 11,908 this year–for an increase of 30 percent over last year’s total of 9,173.
Applicants for the Class of 2025 include 10,867 regular decision candidates and 1,041 who applied under the first and second rounds of the Early Decision program. The class will include 357 students accepted through Early Decision I. Expected enrollment for the entering class is 620 students in September and 100 in February.
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Well, there you have it - 34.2% ED acceptance rate: class of 2026, if you want to maximise your chance of getting in, you know what to do.
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There is a lot to like about Middlebury College and apparently many agree.
Excellent size–between 2,500 & 2,600 undergraduate students–for a rural LAC.
Beautiful campus & lots of outdoor activities.
Emphasis on diversity.
Reasonable drive to Burlington, Vermont which is a great college town/small city.
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And passenger rail service debuting this year, connecting Middlebury to New York City and Burlington (and all stops in between).
https://addisonindependent.com/news/midd-vergennes-prepare-passenger-rail
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That 34.2% percentage is not quite right. The 357 applicants noted were all accepted in EDI, while the 1041 figure was for both rounds (ED1 and ED2). So, your numerator and denominator don’t match. Likely the ED acceptance rate, at least for ED1, will end up being even higher than 34.2%.
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And since they don’t have any supplemental essays and are test optional, it’s easy to throw in an application.
Well spotted - yes. I think EDII numbers were quite low, but yes.
The tunnel is complete and the Middlebury station interchange thingy is being built this year.
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I wish schools would release their ED2 numbers. Based on CC posts and what friends tell me, it seems like ED2 is more popular this year.
Sigh.
Woohoo! My daughter has been waiting for this since she started!
I wonder whether the huge increase in applications is because of the increase in acceptance rates that happened last year because of COVID. I also wonder whether they are expecting the yield to be like last year, or like it normally is.
I expect that, with that number of applicants, both to Midd and to all of the most competitive colleges, they can expect the yield to be a lot better than last year.
I highly recommend it, and I am not at all biased.
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From The Campus:
The college’s acceptance rate grew by eight percentage points during last year’s admissions cycle, with 2,228 students admitted to the class of 2024 — 24% of the total applicant pool. Despite this higher acceptance rate, enrollment only increased by 47 students compared to the previous year.
Curvin said that last year’s uptick in acceptance rate was due to uncertainties about the enrollment decisions that admitted students might make given the pandemic. She does not anticipate the same increase this year.
“Our process will be highly selective and in line with our acceptance rates in regular decision prior to the pandemic,” she said in an email to The Campus.
I think a lot of these schools will be running scared on yield. It seems clear that with time on their hands, stuck at home kids applied to more schools (the common app released some data supporting this) and as another poster noted, Middlebury doesn’t require a supplemental essay. Middlebury will use ED as much as they reasonably can to manage yield, but they will be confronted with potentially letting the most qualified candidates slip through their fingers if they cannot judge true interest. Not sure how this plays out, but being a small school offers some advantage.
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The more I think about it, the more I think that if I’m a college like Middlebury or Colgate, now I’ve locked up ED, I’d be tempted to take the hit on yield and try to pick up strong candidates in the RD scrum maybe with shiny credentials like NMSF or whatever. It’s clearly a hot mess and an inefficient market so I think a school willing to take that risk of rejection could do well.
I don’t think most will do that. I think they will go for yield protection.
@Publisher: The Campus got it together.
Not sure, but I don’t think that’s counting students who took a gap year.
Because of the huge uptick in applications to what I am calling “first choice school”, i.e., schools which the majority of the kids who are accepted will attend, there will be many more highly competitive applicants who will not be accepted to these and will instead attend other selective colleges. These aren’t always a second choice, but are also colleges which are one of a group, and applicants are very often accepted to a number of them.
When “first choice” schools are accepting an even smaller proportion of the most competitive applicants, these kids will be more likely to accept offers from other selective colleges. This increases the yield to NESCACs, places like CMU or Duke, etc. This will be both because there will be many more competitive applicants who were not accepted by the first choice, but also because competitive applicants will be accepted to fewer of these. So fewer applicants will be choosing between 4 or 5 selective LACs, but rather will have 1 or 2 admissions, and fewer will be choosing among Duke, UPenn, Vanderbilt, etc. So students who are accepted to one of these colleges will be more likely to attend that college.
It will like trickle down. In fact, I expect that even many colleges which have suffered a drop in their enrollment will see an increase in yield, since students are more likely to be attending their matches and safeties as their reaches become even more reach-y). So for some colleges, fewer may be applying, but those applying may be more likely to attend these colleges.
On the other hand, there will likely be colleges who are suffering from low applications level who will also suffer from low enrollment. There is little that can help small poor rural colleges in areas which are seeing a drop in population levels.
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The math might suggest that yields this year will settle at below 30% at some highly selective colleges. Those schools that surpass this will have understood their applicants well.
It appears that Middlebury’s ED applications were up 62%.
I don’t think so. The huge increase in applications says that interest in these colleges is extremely high. This also means that there will be an increase in the number of highly accomplished students, and, as a result, most highly accomplished students will have fewer choices. This translates into higher yield, not lower yield.
Last year applications dropped at highly selective colleges, acceptance rates rose, and yield dropped. This year applications to highly selective colleges have increased by a lot.