<p>What are you expecting to see? Do you anticipate a change, or a trend of some kind?</p>
<p>Well yes, I'm expecting an overall acceptance rate of about 17% or 18%. I'm tired of hearing about how easy it is to get into penn, or people putting down its rankings. Penn has broken a lot of previous application records this year, so I assume more are coming.</p>
<p>And I wasnt going to say anything directly to you, but I cant help myself. You're dense if you cant see that the stats are there to show simply one thing.</p>
<p>Harvard and Yale arent binding, so, they should have the highest ED rates. Penn clearly has a higher percentage of ED applicants, which shows that students wouldnt mind being binded to go to Penn instead of other Ivies.</p>
<p>Where the problem lies is...</p>
<p>Penn did have a very high ED acceptance rate prior to 2006. In my forecast, I think less people will apply ED, since Penn's ED acceptance dropped significantly to 28% in 2006. This is probably a one-shot thing.</p>
<p>You might consider looking at the numbers in another way (not putting Penn down, so don't panic or start twitching!):</p>
<p>Penn, actually, has about the same number of early applicants as Harvard and Yale - each of which has a much smaller class with fewer seats to fill. </p>
<p>But in relying so heavily on its early pool to fill those seats, Penn runs the risk of discouraging regular applicants. The Regular action pool remains necessary because the early pool - particularly at Penn - is far less diverse that the school would like the overall class to be. You need a large RD pool to get sufficient (hopefully) qualified, URM's, people of the opposite sex, people majoring in some of the more obscure subject areas, people from all 50 states, etc etc etc.</p>
<p>Further, cramming virtually all the legacies into the early pool - as Penn does - also runs the risk that the RD yield rate (48.4% at Penn last year) will make it difficult to obtain quite the mix you want - unless you plan to rely heavily on the waitlist.</p>
<p>Penn admitted a record number from the early pool this year, to fill just a hair under 50% of the available seats. By pushing it this far they will help the overall admit to be sure. I'd see it dropping to a bit over 19%.</p>
<p>Byerly, I always enjoy your well-thyought out posts even though I am a Columbia alum and have a D at Penn! I think that Penn reported a higher # of URM applicants in the early round as did many other schools this year. I guess the advantage for Penn is that they can lock these admits up because of ED, then perhaps they won't have to admit as many in the RD round to get the diversity they are seeking. I think Stetson said that the RD admit rate will be about 12-14 % and that Penn will rely heavily on the waitlist if they have to fill out their class. They had a problem last year when yield was higher than expected and they wound up with too many students. What do you think?</p>
<p>I have long predicted (and am still waiting to see a huge swing justifing my prediction) that schools will be making heavier use of the waitlist. It has a number of advantages, assuming you can keep enough quality kids on the hook: </p>
<p>(1) admits from the waitlist come in with a nice, juicy "ED-like" 100% yield rate - better than twice the RD yield rate for most schools; and </p>
<p>(2) In these days of what I call the "Noah's Ark" approach to admissions (2 of these and 2 of those) it allows greater precision in meeting your "diversity" goals. If the first guy on the WL from South Dakota is already spoken for, you move on to the next, and the next until you get one, without wasting three "picks" in the process.</p>
<p>At the other end, of the process, schools (with Penn as Exhibit A) are pushing the envelope as far as possible with the early admits. You will notice that there is an "imaginary wall" at 49% or 49.99% of the class ostensibly coming from the early pool. Consultants jhave conducted surveys showing that there will be diminishing returns if the 50% line is crossed: the potential RD applicants are discouraged if they think more than half the seats are gone.)</p>
<p>How to goose yield even further? There are two ways:</p>
<p>(1) admit as many "early pool deferred's" as possible with the RD admits, since this subset can be presumed to have a yield rate higher than the "ordinary" RD applicants, and</p>
<p>(2) go as crazy as you can with the "likely letters" or whatever you call them, to try and get commitments from RD applicants prior to the technical April 1 notification date. The idea is to gain advantage over the "competition" by being the first to tell a desirable admit that you "love him/her".</p>
<hr>
<p>PS: read these admissions press releases carefully. For example, URM numbers/percentages may/may not be up in the early pool - but they are a long way from being the percentage/number the school needs to meet is eventual diversity goals - even assuming they are qualified. In almost every case, early applicants have lower SAT medians relative to RD applicants - particularly the subset of each admitted at the same rate from each pool with the same SAT score.</p>
<hr>
<p>PS 2: note that I do not say Penn is the only school playing these games ... only that is one of the schools playing them most skillfully.</p>
<p>I agree with your comments especially PS 2. Stetson has been a master at this stuff for years even in the days when Penn was not as "hot" as it is now.</p>