I was wondering, how do colleges determine the amount of kids to accept each year? For instance, CAL has about 9k freshmen admits while UC Davis has about 19k; both have approximately the same undergrad. body as well.
<p>because the matriculation rate at cal is higher, while many of the UC Davis admits will choose to attend other institutions such as cal, ucla, maybe ucsd. therefore, uc davis has to admit more students because they know a chunk of their admits will go elsewhere. it's been all calculated... they have an estimate of how many students they should admit to make sure the freshman class is appropriately filled.</p>
<p>I'd assume that they look at yield from year to year and go according to that. If a school has had 40-50% of their admits attend for the past 10 years, say, then they'll accept about twice as many as they need. But if it's been between 20-25%, then they'll accept four to five times as many as they need.</p>
<p>yea what if 85 percent say they want to go to davis. what happens then?</p>
<p>Then they have a huge problem.</p>
<p>It happens occasionally, and the school is overenrolled. They just have to deal.</p>