<p>JA12, my thinkings on the lower yield at Princeton are 1.) grade deflation; 2) way too many HYPSM cross-admits compared with HYSM – but this makes a strong class at P.</p>
<p>The higher EA yields may also due to the smaller numbers of HYPSM cross-admits from EA admits compared to the number of cross-admits from RD admits. A similar case is taking people from waitlist, check how Harvard is taking people from waitlist now – a good document by the waitlist thread at Harvard Forum. Rarely they take anyone admitted at YPS. Similar threads were for class of 2012, and 2013.</p>
<p>For class of 2014, P actually has a higher Yield to Admit ratio compared to last year, which, I think, is more important than yield alone.</p>
<p>I know this has sort of turned into a mudslinging competition but I wanted to get my 2 cents in here about Princeton’s yield rate.</p>
<p>First off, I think crowing about whose yield is better is more chest-thumping than it is substance. Its a great way to measure how much students like the school, but it doesn’t say a huge amount about the school itself. Its an inaccurate measure of which schools Seniors prefer.</p>
<p>I say “inaccurate” because it’s important to keep in mind that its not a measure of how Seniors rate schools, its a Black and White “School A is better than School B” argument. Say every cross-admitted student thought Princeton was just a tiny bit better than MIT, and Princeton won the cross-admit battle 100%. Someone may look at that and say “WOW! Princeton must be MUCH more preferred than MIT is!” even if the students only slightly favor Princeton. Plus, its just the opinions of admitted students.</p>
<p>Mostly, it seems to me its most useful interpretation is as a measure of how well the Admissions Department is doing in terms of getting the people they want at their school. In that sense, doesn’t it make sense to have SCEA? What disadvantages does having SCEA give the school? I understand not having ED, as it limits students’ ability to shop Aid and attracts different demographics. But it seems to me SCEA doesn’t have any drawbacks, and gives the advantage of extra recruiting time for admitted students.</p>
<p>All of my friends who turned down Princeton for HYS said grade-deflation was one of the main reasons. (Of the 12 who got accepted, 5 are attending) One of them got off Princeton’s waitlist but quickly decided to remain at Yale because he wanted higher grades as a pre-med, regardless of the statistics indicating that pre-meds are unaffected by grade deflation. In my opinion, the notorious grade deflation is pushing many students away; HYPSM students are used to seeing A’s in high school, and would like to continue to do so. Also, the idea of “35% limit on A’s” gives everyone the impression that Princeton must have a competitive atmosphere. Again, this is just personal anecdote. I am not speaking for the entire population. Lastly, I do not think people should judge a school by its yield rate. If yield rate was that important to Princeton, Princeton could easily accept mediocre students who wouldn’t get into any other schools of such caliber and have significantly higher yield.</p>
<p>I turned down Harvard, Yale, MIT, Penn, Columbia, and good ole Darty for Princeton. HOWEVER, obviously if I had applied and gotten into Stanford that would’ve changed EVERYTHING. </p>
<p>I agree, yield is interesting to use for a conjecture about the popularity of a school, but I’m not sure why it’s so important for people to use it as a metric to judge the quality of a school. For example, Harvard had the highest yield, and probably will for a while. On the other hand, I deleted Harvard’s acceptance email right after I got it and barely looked at my acceptance package. It just wasn’t right for me. Does that make it a bad school? Obviously not. On the other hand, I was devasted by a Duke waitlist, and Duke has a far lower yield than Harvard.</p>
<p>So what I’m trying to say is the yield should have no importance to people. I guess I just don’t understand why people care so much. Like, who cares if OTHER people are choosing such and such school?</p>
<p>it’s a questionable rationalization that we “only matriculate the very best students that don’t fear grade deflation”. it could also be said that you’re wiser and more strategic to avoid unnecessarily subjecting yourself to a very badly implemented and publicized grade deflation policy. we lose many ambitious students who would nevertheless contribute much to the student body and go on to do big things after graduation. it’s a loss.</p>
<p>it also does not make sense to pour blanket praise on the ones who do enroll. how do we know they had much of a choice? they might hate grade deflation but couldn’t get admitted to our peer schools, so they come here just for the prestige. </p>
<p>for example, we now end up admitting more waitlistees now that our yield is lower. people who remain on our waitlist mostly remain there because they didn’t get into our peer schools and don’t have a choice. ultimately, our student body ends up with a loss of people who do have choices and a gain in people who don’t.</p>
<p>Really, who gives a ****? Yield is just the aggregate preference of a bunch of (mostly uninformed) teenagers or their controlling (and equally uninformed) parents. Choosing what college you want to go to is guesswork anyway. You can’t really know until you’re there. If there are fewer kids who decide that they absolutely must attend Princeton based on internet research, college rankings (but probably not college rankings, seeing as we’re first), a slanted visit, and vague media stereotypes, so much the better for us.</p>
<p>i dont know about number 4. im thinking the financial aid is comparable? I know as a whole HYPS financial aid is head and shoulders better than anywhere else, but yeah…</p>
<p>I really don’t understand the statement that Harvard gives three times as much financial aid as Princeton. Could you link to some source to support that comment.</p>
<p>tigerdad14 wrote: "I think the yield difference is due to multiple factors as previously discussed.
lack of EA/ED.
grade deflation which is perceived to hurt a student’s grad-school prospect.
losing some engineering students to MIT/CalTech. I know 2 students this yr picked CalTech over P.
financial reasons. one student prefer P over H but parent insist on H since it gives 3x FA. (Y 2x)
Marketing. One dad in preview mentioned that Y puts so muc more effort in marketing towards admits."</p>
<p>I’d suggest one more factor that might influence a few people:</p>
<ol>
<li> The incidence of vitriol and personal attacks seems to be higher on CC’s Princeton threads than on the Harvard or Yale ones. </li>
</ol>
<p>I don’t know of any reason why Princeton would attract a higher percentage of angry, immature people than its competitors, but some of the posts might lead you to think so.</p>
<p>I really agree that Princeton doesn’t recruit as well as the other schools. Thinking back, I had a great host at Princeton Preview, my interviewer was fantastic in following up with me about the schools, and the actual people I met from Princeton were great.</p>
<p>But their admitted-student website was poor, they never did chats with AdComs and students like the other two schools (Yale/Columbia) I was admitted to did, and maybe this was a personal problem, but I wasn’t invited to the regional events that some other people in my region were invited to. There were a lot more activities at Yale’s Bulldog Days than at Princeton’s Preview, and those I talked to who went to MITs admitted student days echoed the same about MIT’s student days being much more action-packed. I admittedly only stayed one night at the Preview (my Prom was that Saturday and I had to fly home) but I thought they could have done a lot of little things to make their overall recruiting better.</p>
<p>The level of recruiting is much more indicative of the admissions office than the school, in my opinion. But the bottom line is that even though they’re only attracting 5-10% less of their admitted students, those are 5-10% that they chose and wanted to attract and failed to. They’re not going to be able to overhaul their Engineering department and drastically increase their performance against M and C overnight, but they can make improvements to their recruiting overnight.</p>
<p>Its really important to students like me whose only direct impression of the school is limited to a pre-application tour, their Admitted-Student Days, and whatever they send us in the mail and put on their website.</p>
<p>so you went to only one of the days for Princeton Previews weekend and the full weekend for the other schools. Why is it not surprising that you comcluded that the other schools have more activities?</p>
<p>On the engineering front, where did you hear that Princeton’s Engineering department is in the process of being overhauled?</p>
<p>Just first off real quick, I didn’t mean to say they were overhauling their Engineering department. Rather, I was saying that there are some things Princeton could do to improve their school and their yield that are huge projects. I just threw out a random example that if they determined they were losing out to MIT for engineering students, they could pour money into reinventing their engineering program and hope that the students notice, or they could just market their school better to admitted students. It wasn’t a comment on engineering in particular, just a comment that by marketing their school better they could probably immediately improve their yield.</p>
<p>I went to one night of Princeton Preview, two of Bulldog Days, and one of Columbia Days on Campus. Columbia’s was probably the worst (although my hosts were really cool) but there just wasn’t as much to do at Princeton Preview. I had the schedule, its not like I just didn’t know what was going on. Yale’s schedule for Bulldog Days was 36 pages long. It seemed like every group on campus held an event for some period of time on campus, and there were at least 4 things happening at any given time on either night. I didn’t go to MIT, and maybe someone who did could comment on this better, but I was told MITs days were very similar.</p>
<p>At Princeton Preview, there wasn’t as much to do. There were multiple events happening at once, but it was like “Well, you can watch this play or this play at 8, then at 10 you can go to this showcase or this showcase.” I ended up watching Avatar in the theater that night–which is great, I like the movie Avatar. But I think that the fact that I was joined by a full theater of kids kind of said a lot about the choices of stuff to do on the actual campus. Do they really want us to spend 3 hours on one of two nights they are offering to see their school in a theater watching something totally disconnected to Princeton?</p>
<p>The Preview wasn’t terrible at all–the classes were WAY more accessible than at Columbia, I saw a fun play, and etc. But there just wasn’t as much stuff to do, and there wasn’t as wide an appeal. That’s not going to matter to all students–if you are really interested in the Starcraft tournament and you spent four hours there, why would you care if there were six other things to do at the time?–but there isn’t as wide an appeal without the volume of different activities.</p>
<p>You could chalk it up to “Students are wrong for not choosing Princeton for reason X” but the bottom line is that the Princeton Admissions Office, after admitting students, should be focused on getting their yield as high as possible. I just felt like they were behind in the little things in marketing when compared to Yale (my only other admitted student experience out of HYPS).</p>