Question about "yield protection"

Applying to College
601

What are the top 3 tiers of universities? There are lots of definitions.

This article from the NY Times classified tiers this way: Tier 1 consists of major private research institutions like Yale, Johns Hopkins and New York University. Tier 2 schools are selective private liberal arts colleges like Middlebury and Vassar. Tier 3 are major public research universities, among them most of the University of California system. The remainder — less research intensive and selective, like Middle Tennessee State, Golden Gate University or the for-profit Grand Canyon University — fall into Tier 4. By this definition, average excellent students are definitely getting in to tier 3 schools.

This blog has a 5-tier classification system, with tier 3 being, “Tier 3 These are still good schools, but are not as competitive for admissions, as they have more spaces offered, and fewer applicants overall. The most qualified students will be able to treat these as safety schools, while less competitive candidates should treat them as targets. Admissions rates for these schools are generally below 35%.” If this is your idea of Tier 3, then none of them should be considered safeties for anyone.

The Carnegie Classification system has various groupings (doctoral, master’s, baccaulaureate, etc) and each one has 3 tiers within it, with the 3 being the lowest of the 3 sections (R1, R2, etc). Assuming you’re interested in R1 (Doctoral Universities with Very High Research Activity) then that includes:
• Arizona State
• Auburn
• Baylor
• Binghamton
• Boston College
• Boston U
• Brandeis
• Brown Cal Tech
• Carnegie Mellon
• Case Western
• Clemson
• Colorado School of Mines
• Colorado State
• Columbia
• Cornell U
• CUNY Grad School & U. Center
• Dartmouth
• Drexel
• Emory
• Florida International
• Florida State
• George Mason
• George Washington
• Georgetown
• Georgia Tech
• Georgia State
• Harvard
• Indiana University
• Iowa State
• Johns Hopkins
• Kansas State
• Kent State
• Louisiana State
• MIT
• Michigan State
• Mississippi State
• Montana State
• New Jersey Institute of Technology
• NYU
• NC State
• North Dakota State
• Northeastern
• Northwestern
• Ohio State
• Ohio University
• Oklahoma State
• Old Dominion
• Oregon State

And the list goes on. Although a top student might not be guaranteed at some of the R1 institutions that are on this list, I’d bet good money they’d be accepted at many (most?) of these, and probably with very good merit aid to boot.

If we add the restriction of R1 schools that are 4-year, full-time, more selective, lower transfer-in then the list narrows down to these schools, but as this is the most selective and research-active group of Carnegie classifications, this would not be tier 3, it’d be more like tier 1. And yes, there are still schools here that top students are going to be getting into, but they may be more in the range of likelies if they’re from OOS (Auburn, U. of Delaware, etc).
• Auburn
• Boston College
• Brandeis
• Brown
• Cal Tech
• Carnegie Mellon
• Case Western Reserve
• Colorado School of Mines
• Cornell
• Dartmouth
• Duke
• Georgetown
• Harvard
• Johns Hopkins
• MIT
• NYU
• Northeastern
• Northwestern
• Princeton
• Rensselaer Polytechnic
• Rice
• Stanford
• U. Texas – Austin
• Tufts
• Tulane
• U. of Chicago
• U. of Colorado – Boulder
• U. of Connecticut
• U. of Delaware
• U. of Denver
• U. of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign
• U. of Massachusetts – Amherst
• U. of Michigan – Ann Arbor
• U. of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
• U. of Notre Dame
• U. of Pennsylvania
• U. of Pittsburgh
• U. of Rochester
• U. of Virginia
• U. of Washington
• U. of Wisconsin
• Vanderbilt
• Virginia Tech
• Washington U.
• Yale

If you say, well, what about for Baccaulaureate Colleges, and throw in the restriction for Four-Year, full-time, more selective, lower transfer-in (which is the Carnegie Classification’s most “elite” classification), you get this list, where again there are several possibilities for people to go where they would be highly likely to gain admission:
• Allegheny
• Amherst
• Barnard
• Bates
• Bowdoin
• Bryn Mawr
• Bucknell
• Carleton
• Centre
• Clarmeont McKenna
• Colby
• Colgate
• College of the Holy Cross
• Colorado College
• Connecticut College
• Davison
• Denison
• Dickinson
• Franklin and Marshall
• Furman
• Gettysburg
• Grinnell
• Hamilton
• Harvey Mudd
• Haverford
• Hillsdale
• Hobart William Smith
• Holy Cross
• Kenyon
• Lafayette
• Lawrence
• Lewis & Clark
• Macalester
• Middlebury
• Mount Holyoke
• Muhlenberg
• New College of Florida
• Oberlin
• Occidental
• Patrick Henry
• Pitzer
• Pomona
• Reed
• Rhodes
• Saint Anselm
• Sarah Lawrence
• Scripps
• Skidmore
• Smith
• Soka

602

I looked up the states with the largest degree of overrepresentation at MIT, Harvard, and Stanford. I am definiing overrepresentation as % of domestic freshman from state / % of 2020 population from state. So 1.0 = balanced, and 3.0 is a severe orrepresentation of students form that state. I used the last available year prior to COVID.

All 3 colleges have a severe overrepresntation in their home state, particularly Harvard. All 3 colleges also have a noteworthy overrepresentation among several states in the general area – northeast for Harvard/MIT and western states for Stanford. I expect you’ll be hard pressed to find any US college for which this type of pattern is not present. However, I agree that MIT does appear to have less overrpresentation among their local region than Harvard or Stanford. Perhaps this relates to it being more specialized, with more relative priority to self-selection for that specialization and less relative priority to location and/or being in home state, among typical students.

Most Overrpresented States at MIT
1 Massachusetts – 3.49
2. DC – 2.36
3. New Jersey – 2.18
4. New York – 1.81
5. Connecticut – 1.74

Most Overrpresented States at Harvard
1 Massachusetts – 7.89
2. Connecticut – 3.34
3. DC – 2.31
4. New York – 2.11
5. New Jersey – 1.85

Most Overrpresented States at Stanford
1 California – 3.24
2. Washington – 1.88
3. DC – 1.61
4. Colorado – 1.45
5. Oregon – 1.34

Another way to compare would to look at how the colleges do at larger population states that are not near the college, such as Florida or Texas. A list is below for the states with >3% of US population that are not located near the 3 colleges. All 3 of these colleges get a significant number of students from these outside of home region states, but more often than not there is an underrepresentation. Perhaps Harvard does slightly better than the other 2 on average, or it could just be a small sample size issue for this one year.

Florida: MIT = 0.85, Harvard = 0.58, Stanford = 0.64
Georgia: MIT = 0.62, Harvard = 0.71, Stanford = 0.59
Illinois: MIT = 1.40, Harvard = 0.85, Stanford = 1.10
Michigan: MIT = 0.66, Harvard = 0.69, Stanford = 0.44
North Carolina: MIT = 0.57, Harvard = 0.42, Stanford = 0.54
Ohio: MIT = 0.34, Harvard = 0.73, Stanford = 0.46
Texas: MIT = 0.93, Harvard = 0.75, Stanford = 0.71

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603

One advantage of a private high school is really their early guidance that academic breadth is very important. Lot of kids are STEM strong, but ignore the humanities and languages. The private school will make sure you have rigor in those, and preferably have something to show in those. They don’t let the STEM kids slide in those areas. This is crucially important. Good reading and writing skills are essential to get into a top school. Barring the rare naturally gifted creative writer, most normal kids can learn analytical writing. Even creating writing can be learned to some degree. In my younger son’s 6th grade class, the parents had the teacher require the kids to write a 5 page story every week for the whole year.

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604

Throughout my time on the CC I have read about top or not top tier kids offended that their #scare within or above the school’s range and they’ve been deferred and how dare they. This includes CWRU, UGA, Miami, Michigan and others.

That was the basis for my comment. Even one of the people we discuss in this thread appears of that mindset.

That’s all I’m saying. Some like Gtown defer anyone, even a clear no. Others reject and defer and defer does not equal reject.

But it will help yield for the two reasons I stated above.

Some may be offended and pull out of the process.

Others may have been accepted ED and then pull out of the process.

Both, in theory, can help yield.

605

Everyone has different definitions.
I usually go T5, T6-25, and T25 - T75. Preferably general USNews rankings and subject rankings.

606

Agree that current lumping of HPYSM makes it easy to know what people mean by T5. I have trouble with using USNWR as my reference point when schools like Amherst and Williams are in a different category (as 1,2 on a different list) - does that make them “T25” in casual conversation?

But I’m off topic so I’ll stop…

607

Williams/Amherst don’t make the T5. They probably come in at around 15 at our school in terms of elo ratings – i.e., if you pair off two schools at a time and ask kids if they prefer Brown vs Williams, or Cornell vs Williams etc, and take an average of some sort across many kids – I mean nobody is doing this exercise, but kids have a subjective feel where the consensus is.

608

My question was whether they make T25 (I listed the T5 in the acronym) - so you’d say yes. Thanks, that’s interesting to know since you’re east coast and have a better sense than I do.

609

They are certainly inside 25 – at least those two. Not every LAC obviously. I don’t know where Swarthmore falls on the list. But after that it is probably a steep slope. Part of the problem is that none of the STEM kids would pick Williams or Amherst, and the STEM kids dominate the top of the class, even in many of the humanities courses and general class ranking.

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610

Yes, everyone has different rankings, but it also goes to show how subjective ranking systems are. I find them interesting because when the bar is set at having an above-average ACT score (“More selective”), but removes the “reputation” factors (i.e. surveys when college presidents have to rank each other…often knowing little beyond USNWR for the majority of the colleges, selectivity/admissions rates that are based on the reputations built off of USNWR, etc) that you get a list with Harvard, U. Conn, U. of Denver, Carnegie Melon, Princeton, and Notre Dame all within the same tier level. Not to say that outcomes for students from these institutions will be the same, but that the level of education provided by the university is largely similar, as outcomes are affected by prestige/rankings and students coming in with higher test results are likely to leave with correspondingly higher test results as well. But as far as the education…

611

… the education is not the same. It is often materially different.

612

Hm - I’d question any lists that claim that anyone would be “highly likely” to get into these colleges?

(Sometimes, people would be better off not making lists, or obsessing about other people’s lists - and focus on living.)

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613

Thankfully, that’s not what I said. This is what I said:

Several possibilities include Allegheny, Hillsdale, Holy Cross, New College of Florida, etc. Students with 4.0UW and 1500+ SATs are highly likely to get into most of the colleges on that list, and I will stand by that statement. I did not say all.

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614

Understood.
It’s a just a long list of colleges, “several” of which might be highly likely to offer admission, while for others the exact opposite is true: anyone is little-likely to gain admission.

Then I’ll apologize: I mistook it for a mix of colleges that seemingly fit diametrically opposing criteria - thus none at all.

615

Appreciate the clarification. The length of the list was partly in relation to the question of what was necessary to get into a tier 3 university/good university, etc, and I included the whole list to show that there are a lot of institutions (most of which don’t have super low admit rates) that people can consider that are considered good schools and not fear a top student being locked out.

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616

I think some people are confusing reputation and rank with how difficult it actually is to get into a university.

So, lots of you don’t think Northeastern is that great a school. Maybe it doesn’t have as many Nobel Laureates as McGill and maybe they worked hard to raise the school rankings in order to attract more students. Maybe you don’t see the value of coops and the associated pre-professional vibe. You don’t like that they don’t have required supplemental essays.

That said, Northeastern was over enrolled last year based on a miscalculation of yield possibly because they allowed students to live on campus during COVID 20/21 with many classes in person when many other schools were fully online. And, Northeastern is still receiving record numbers of applications and the statistics of those who are admitted is high. Northeastern is in Boston and lots of students want to live in Boston.

Conclusion - Northeastern is currently extremely difficult to get into even if you are a top student. Does Northeastern practice yield protection. Probably.

Disclaimer - My son is a junior at Northeastern.

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617

I am curious what class sizes are like, and what your experience is. Thanks.

618

A prime example of the marketplace and not a magazine determining the true reality of a schools standing.

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619

@InquiringMom2

My daughter had almost identical stats: 4.0/4.8 GPA, 1570 one sitting, competitive high school that doesn’t rank but she most likely had the 2nd highest GPA, National Merit $2500 scholar, took AP calculus 10th grade, all STEM APs, 13 in total). Was a ballerina in a pre professional program. Did some science research at a competitive program. A few other ECs at school (editor, math club president, etc). Worked as an SAT tutor. Essays were quite good, and excellent recommendations (her teachers shared them with her afterwards). She was accepted into a couple top 10 schools in RD (UPenn where she is attending) and Johns Hopkins. Also to Cornell Engineering. But UNC Chapel Hill rejected her in EA… Not sure the algorithm is.

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620

Limit of 18% OOS. UNC is brutal for OOS students.

The there was a comment less than a year ago of someone in or attending Harvard turned down at UNC.

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