If she were admitted to Northeastern and Cornell, would she have attended Northeastern? That is the whole point of yield protection.
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I read the original book and I found that chapter interesting. Basically, admissions office would debate and create a list of students they would want to admit. Consulting firm got data on applicants and ca,e back with list TO ADMIT. Often, there were students the university wanted to admit but consultant said no - odds are the student will reject the offer. So student was denied admission.
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Thank you for your very thoughtful and thorough response.
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Yea but what about when they get it wrong and a great kid is left with no options. It happens. I’ve worked with consulting firms before and…and that is probably all I should say about that….
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That’s quite possible and that’s unfortunate. The general consensus around here is to start with safeties, love your safeties, and then build your school list from there.
It’s also possible that the student did their best but didn’t showcase that in the college app the best way possible. If AOs have seen too many resumes similar to that, they’re looking at other criteria to round out the class, which the student has no control over, unfortunately (geography, $$ etc etc…).
BUT they’ll end up where they belong and everything will fall in place. Like the title of that book, ‘ Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be’. It’s what you do once you get there!
Easy to say all that in hindsight, but not easy while going through it 
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Congrats to all the admitted students! Awesome. Honestly, and while I fully get what/why NEU AO is doing from the perspective of NEU, I find that their data-driven extreme approach is not helpful (to the applicants) or sustainable in the long-term. In fact, I think it may lead to lower number of total applicants and they may also miss out on a large number of great candidates, too. We shall see but from a rational perspective, and pseudo-scientifically spoken: “for every action, there is a reaction”.
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Not exactly sure what you are referring to, but I’m assuming you are referring to their approach of cautious yield management this year. NEU had such such a high unsustainable yield last year that they have to drastically under-enroll this year to balance things out…. Not only to manage their programming but also to meet a Boston’s permit requirements. Will it affect their application numbers next year? Perhaps, but I doubt it. Every school seems to have had such high applications this year inc UCs. Really unpredictable and hard year to be applying.
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I believe that it is a continuation of a trend that began before COVID. Large urban universities that offer respected professional training have been seeing large increases in applications. This is especially true for colleges that are in "hot’ cities. And Boston is certainly in that category. Not mentioned in this thread is that Boston University was 900 students overenrolled in 2021. Apparently, they had excess housing capacity, so it did not create as big a problem in that area.
Boston University has officially reported 81,000 applications this year. There are unofficial reports that Northeastern had 90,000 applications. BU does not do EA and their RD decisions will come out next Saturday. It will be interesting if that decision thread will have the same type of comments as this one about yield protection.
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What @midwestmum said summed up a lot of what I would say, but here’s some things that definitely helped me get in.
I applied for class of 2025 last year and I had pretty average stats (4.1W, 3.7UW, 9 total AP’s, applied with 2 5’s and a 4) and very good EC’s (Eagle Scout, 2 years of work experience, multiple president/vice president positions in clubs/organizations - one with 600+ members - etc.) but what really made me stand out was additional work.
I submitted 3 total essays: my common application essay, an additional information essay about one of my organization positions (what the organization is, what I did, the difference I made, what I learned) and an essay on Why NU? NU doesn’t require a supplement, but you CAN AND SHOULD submit one. You can ask your AO how to submit it, but if they don’t respond, you can submit it through the Additional Documents page of your application portal.
Speaking of AO’s, you can talk with them and work out so many ways to improve your application. I emailed with my AO over the course of about a month, introducing myself, asked questions, and set up a zoom QnA (which effectively worked as an interview). He suggested I submit my Eagle Scout project report to show my volunteer work in the community.
Those are just the things I did to improve my application, but I promise you there are so many other methods you can try. Demonstrated interest can make or break your application, and since NU is becoming the competitive school it deserves to be, you should try as many methods as you can.
Ask me anything else, id be happy to help!
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I agree that its difficult to come up with a Why NU? type of essay, but its fairly easy to find this information. I just looked up some classes/professors that interested me as well as some clubs/organizations that I wanted to join. Even just a 400-500 word essay about that is significantly better for your application.
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It is indeed helpful to go the extra mile for the student to impress the AO. Your tenacity and attitude to go the extra mile is commendable.
For most students, it’s an exercise in crafting a persuasive essay by cobbling together internet information. And that’s what I mean when I say that from the school’s point of view it’s not worth making 90K students do it. Even without the essay, they already know who meets their admissions criteria, who’s willing to pay, who needs a bit of nudging with extra $$ scholarships, who’ll likely join, and who won’t.
Like others mentioned, the common app combined with data-driven decisions are what’s helping NU select their students and it’s working.
It may not be perfect, and some kids will lose out (but still have other fantastic options), but that’s the nature of holistic admissions.
According to kickstart 7% acceptance this year
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91,000 applications
I imagine that RD much lower
I think that 7% is overall acceptance rate. It was 6% for the EA round. This article kickstart posted regarding BUs acceptance rates I think is telling of the experience NU faced. More test optional apps, people saw how well NU did with covid, along with its already popular coop program etc. made it a very popular choice. The TO situation I am sure through these schools for a loop last year and now they are reeling it in. It will be interesting to see if these schools can better predict yield this time around! After record-breaking number of applications, BU plans to avoid third semester of overenrollment – The Daily Free Press
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I will definitely be looking at the BU RD Decision thread here on CC next Saturday!
I think that Northeastern and BU will both have increases in ED applications next year.
With regard to the great decrease in acceptance rate, they also accepted less than half the number of applicants they did last year. Per College Kickstart, they only accepted 6,100 applicants this year out of 91,000; last year, they accepted 13,542 applicants out of 75,233. Since Northeastern has an undergrad enrollment of 15,000 (meaning almost 4,000 people in each class), unless they are expecting a huge yield increase this year, they must be planning to accept tons of people off the waitlist (which I suppose makes sense, since I heard they got burned by overenrollment last year).
Sources: Class of 2026 Admission Results - College Kickstart
Class of 2025 Admission Results - College Kickstart
Are there any statistics on acceptance rates for the alternative programs like NU Bound and NUin?
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They accepted about 1000 students through ED this year. So, with a 30% yield rate in EA that would allow for 1800 enrolled students. The target class size is 2500 this year.
They accepted 880 through ED1. Does this mean thar they only accepted 120 through ED2?