Question about acceptance rates and how they're calculated

Applying to College
1

I’m a little confused about this. My son applied to the University of WA, which says on its website that it has an acceptance rate of 52%. We just got a newsletter email from the school, however, which says they received 52,000 applications for about 7000 freshman spots. This is more like a 13% acceptance rate, which is certainly changing my view of his chances of getting in!

Anyone know something that explains this discrepancy? Thx!

2

Not everyone who is accepted decides to attend. The percentage that decide to attend is called the yield rate. So:

52000 x acceptance rate x yield rate = 7000

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All schools accept more applicants than enroll so the target Freshman class is 7000 and not the # admitted from the 52,000 that applied.

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4

Also remember UW acceptance rates varies by school - computer science, engineering and Foster all have a significantly lower acceptance rate - as does in state vs out of state.

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That suggests their yield is about 25%, meaning 1/4 of students accepted, attend.

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So just to make sure I’m understanding this, more than 7000 were accepted, but of those, only 7000 decided to attend? So they may actually accept 50% or so of the 52K applicants?

…good thing my kid is smart. I think I’m too dumb to figure this stuff out!

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I wonder if that means that low acceptance programs averaged with high acceptance programs (as mentioned above) gets them to that 50% rate?

8

Yes. Roughly 28,000 were accepted to find 7000 who would attend.

Yield at good publics is usually below 50%. Schools like UW are very good, and competitive. Students who get in though, are often good enough to be accepted to schools they view as more desirable. Students can have a reduced opinion of their home school, even though outsiders have high opinions. Even Berkeley and Michigan hover at 40%. I guess it’s the familiarity.

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I’ve seen other cases in which universities used the “XXX applications for XXX spots” wording in their emails/news releases. They surely do it knowing that many people will not take yield into account and thus interpret the information as you did.

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@alexandria1: several of the CA UC’s also put this type of information in their decision email and every year I have to explain what it really means.

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This site will offer you numerical context: College Navigator - University of Washington-Seattle Campus.

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