Those are all highly-ranked colleges in major cities. The lowest ranked one is Tufts, which is in Boston, probably the most popular single college market, and literally has an alternative term for yield protection named after it (“Tufts Syndrome”).
So yes, if these are the only sorts of colleges your high numbers kids are willing to consider, and all of them are applying to a bunch of them plus some other colleges they actually prefer, then these colleges logically are going to yield protect.
Meanwhile, a college like Rochester is offering merit aid to try to get high numbers kids to brave Upstate New York. But if a kid is only willing to consider Tufts, and not Rochester, and again a whole bunch of other kids just like them think the same way . . . that is why it is called Tufts Syndrome, not Rochester Syndrome.
That is one thing I have picked up here on College Confidential. Lots of kids at least start with a sentiment of, “Hey, give me a bunch of likely and target private colleges that are famous (read: highly-ranked) and are in the Northeast, or maybe California.”
Uh–that’s not going to be such an easy thing to do.
Here at my feederish HS, all those colleges are permissible reaches (if potentially affordable), but we are strongly encouraged to figure out other colleges that would be great fits and do not have really low admit rates, because they do not get a crazy amount of applications (or they are in-state publics that do not care about low but very predictable yield rates). And those are the main “targets” and “likelies”. Because absent being a recruited athlete or such, we’re typically not going to treat any college meeting the description above as anything but a “reach”.
Why should a college accept a student that they feel has virtually no likelihood of actually attending, unless they are rejected by all their preferred choices. Yield protection works well for many colleges.
That’s true, but that assumes a student doesn’t want to attend which is a big assumption. Not every student has a clear first choice, and, moreover, even if NEU/BU is only one of a number of desirable choices, why should that count against a student? Some kids need to compare financial aid/merit offers - they don’t have the luxury of ED. This isn’t a knock on either school - both are fine schools - just an observation about their admissions practices (and I’m sure many other schools do the same).
From my years of reading CC, what I have noticed about a lot of posters who are upset about yield protection is that it seems they thought the school that “yield protects” them out of admission was a target/match - not a reach. Often the attitude seems to be “I can’t believe I got WL or rejected from College X! I have better stats than the student from my school who applied ED and got in!”
Often times (based on admission rate) the school was a reach for both students, having stats in the top 75th of applicants doesn’t change that. Certainty is desired by all parties. The applicant who applied and was accepted ED was willing to trade optionality for certainty.
I do feel for students who, for whatever reason, would love to ED to their #1 school but can’t based on finances. This is a problem for donut hole families (income/assets high enough to possibly be considered full pay or close to it by some schools), not exactly families I would call ‘middle class’ economically. It is a real issue for sure, and one of the trade offs inherent in this process. The students in those families do still have all the schools offering strong merit aid to apply to that don’t seem to yield protect the way other schools do - though those schools are usually further down the prestige scale and often not in the locations lots of students are vying to attend.
The problem is the strong use of ED by colleges means the 1580 SAT, 4.0 UW kid who has a shot at Dartmouth and rolls the dice risks being shut out of many of the colleges they should have been able to go to if that shot didn’t work out. That’s why likelys have become high reaches. Many of these colleges are filling a large majority of their total class from smaller ED applicant polls then leaving a small group of slots for most of the applicants in RD. Its reached the point, for the well informed, that it’s not worth wasting time on the RD pool of many of these schools.
On its face, ED looks like it’ll increase your chances - and at some schools it does.
However, at most T20 schools, it’s not clear if ED helps or not for unhooked kids. The percentages are higher but how many are recruited athletes, targeted low income, legacies? What’s the acceptance rate if you dont fall into any of those categories?
The biggest frustration with the college application process at highly selective schools is the complete lack of transparency, which is why kids apply to so many T20 which now bleed into T50 schools.
For UK admissions, it’s all about the AP scores. They are a national standard seen as equivalent to an A-level exam over there. Grades and ECs do not matter. My son did not even have to submit his grades until after he was accepted; it was a formality. It’s sort of refreshing. If you have the required AP scores, you will likely be accepted. If not, you simply do not qualify.
Just consider that this could also be the SAME kid, who once got a 1560 another time a 1520. Did the test prep, different set of questions, and other incidental factors, that evtl. lead to the difference (either up and down), really mean that one-and-the-same kid has magically grown more/less academically strong/prepared between the two test dates?
I mean, you are sort of answering your own question.
It is always important to understand selective college admissions are not awards for merit given to the most deserving kids. They are offers to enter into a contract with a provider of services. And those providers offer those contracts to those potential contractual partners they believe will give them the most back in return, in various ways.
One of those considerations might well be net tuition (unless the college promises to be need blind, and even then there is an active lawsuit suggesting colleges found ways around that). And just having to compete for students with more generous need or merit aid has a cost, and the college resources used that way can’t be used on other institutional priorities.
Again, none of this means the system is ideal. But kids really need to understand that none of this is about giving them what they deserve. It is about colleges getting what they want. And if they see an applicant as not being a sufficiently good bet to give them what they want, then they will not offer one of those contracts to that applicant.
But not because the kid was a bad kid, and kids should not think that way.
College admission is (imo) at best a “friendly and adversarial” process. Both parties putting their best foot forward; both parties primarily interested in what the other can do for them. It’s not about worthiness, it is a transactional exchange with both parties trying to come out on top.
Yes, the families whose kids did not get into a desired college due to yield protection typically still have great alternatives, because yield protection only applies to high number kids.
Compare that to a family whose kid does not have those kind of numbers, and cannot afford their in-state 4-year cost of attendance, and does not live within commuting distance of a decent community college.
That’s the kind of situation that keeps kids from going to college at all. As opposed to having to “settle” for a “safety” school that may well have been one of the top 150 (or 100, or 50) out of roughly 2800 4-year colleges in the United States.
Understanding “these schools” means a quite small slice of the greater universe of US colleges. A few colleges win too many yield battles naturally to worry about yield protection. Many, many others could not yield protect successfully if they tried, or have such predictable yield they don’t need to (this applies to most in-state public admissions).
So there is a very narrow slice of schools where everything lines up to make yield protection a plausible strategy.
But in not at all a coincidence, that narrow slice of schools are the ones flooded by applicants from upper middle class coastal families (or aspiring coastal kids) who want to use them as backups to their actual preferred schools. And so that particular audience might see yield protection as a large problem, but in the greater scheme it is really a quite limited problem.
I’ve seen it analogized to dating apps, which makes a lot of sense.
I get why kids want a lot of colleges to swipe right on them, while they can wait to decide which college to actually date as they continue to review profiles and such. Indeed, might be nice if those colleges were competing on exactly how much the college would offer to pay for that date . . . .
But that’s not such a great situation for the colleges.
Again, ED goes too far the other way, because that means the applicant has swiped right, and now the college can wait, including by deferring.
But again, somewhere in the middle there is a compromise where both kids and colleges get a fair chance to make the best matches. If it is too one-sided in either direction, it is not a stable situation.
I agree - I have encouraged my kiddo to apply to possibly more likely and target schools than necessary (1 safety, 5 likely, and 3 target). But I think in the end, it will be a more positive experience if there’s schools to down-select from rather than feeling like you have to go with a default due to lots of rejections. Lots of acceptances can help balance the blow to ego from lots of rejections too. There are several reaches as well, but a lot of the safety/likely schools kid was considering didn’t have extra essays. So it’s a matter of spending a bit more money to have that extra cushion which in the grand scheme of college costs, seems worth it to me.
Moreover, if there are likely schools coming in with merit, that may make a kid look twice at the school, even if it wasn’t at the top of the list initially.
I know more than one kid this year who strictly by the numbers is a T10 match and didn’t get in to any of their reaches (fine) but then got shut out of all targets as well - WL at all of them. So yeah… when you are the top student at your prestigious prep school and that happens, I think you get to be upset. This is the kind of school where CCs will advocate to get a kid off the waitlist and more than on AO admitted to not believing the student would go there. Kind of stinks when you don’t get in to the tippy top schools because thats life, but then you get in nowhere else because everyone assumes with your stats you will go to a tippy top school.
This was one of the first threads I ever read on CC - it was posted 17 years ago. I don’t really buy into the “by the numbers, a T10 match” when this has been happening for almost 2 decades. The “who could have known” idea is a little long in the tooth for me.
The issue that is now in play is that what schools are targets/matches have changed but people’s perceptions haven’t. It’s the same story, with more ‘newly rejective’ schools in the mix.