See entire story here:
It seems this will be likely continuing due to the unique and success combination of traditional Ivy education and pro-professional education.
Time to join the club of REA?
If this is stable and consistent in the coming (1-3) year(s), Penn should take a bold action for SCEA.
Penn Rocks • an hour ago
“Dean Eric J. Furda credited the effort during Quaker Days and the Multicultural Scholars Program combined with the Beyond Campus Initiatives as the reason for the high yield rate.”
It is funny to suggest that students are not choosing Penn in increasingly high numbers for the amazing education, the incredible students, the social environment, the outstanding professors and administrators, the great alumni network, the balance of theory and hands on experience, the strong financial aid, the research opportunities, the incredible placement, the best weather in the Ivy league, the unusual number of dual degree and special program opportunities, or the big city location that students love. Nope, it is what the admissions office does that attracts them.
Admissions does deserve credit for doing a good job of communicating the benefits that Penn offers, but I still think it would be better to say something like "Penn applications and yields have risen to record levels as students nationwide and globally increasingly recognize the extraordinary opportunities, and life-changing experiences that Penn has to offer."
While Penn’s new overall yield rate is indeed impressive, comparing MIT and Penn is like comparing apples and Oranges. MIT is EA, while Penn recruits a sizable portion in the ED round. Since ED round yield is likely to be over 90% at selective schools like Penn, this means that RD yield still is in the mid 50’s. Still quite impressive, given that many schools have Regular cycle yields in the low 30’s, but I don’t think Penn can go SCEA anytime soon, without risking a dramatic decline in yield rates. Not only that, Penn could see a decline in the number of applications in the REA round from the 5,700+ Apps to close to 4,000 Apps or even lower. which would put further pressure on the yield rate.
Why abandon a strategy that is working?
In addition to the rising yield, look at this data:
From Class of 2012 to Class of 2020
Percent increase in applications
69.8% Penn
60.7% Columbia
57.0% Brown
42.2% Harvard
37.9% Yale
37.1% Princeton
36.0% Cornell
25.5% Dartmouth
Oops just realized someone has already posted about this…oh well…
@VeryLuckyParent i think under SCEA the yield rate would prob go down a little bit but not by too much. I don’t see why early applications would decrease under SCEA. Maybe Penn should do EA ( non-restrictive) like Chicago. Chicago managed to have a 66% yield rate this year so there is no doubt Penn could do just as well or prob even slightly better with EA. The upside of EA is that Early applications would increase and thus the overall acceptance rate would decrease considerably ( assuming that yield does not go down by too much, which is a reasonable assumption given that most Penn early applicants tend to be very committed to the school and that a school like Uchicago has managed to get a 66% yield with EA).
I agree that it is very good if they are getting over a 50% RD yield.
So, I’m picking nits for the moment, but it looks like Penn’s RD yield will still be under 50%.
Per the DP: http://www.thedp.com/article/2016/03/regular-decision-release-class-of-2020
Extrapolating from those numbers, it looks the school accepted 1332 students ED, and 3661 students total. That means 2329 accepts in the RD round.
The target class size is 2445, and almost 100% of the 1332 ED students will attend. That leaves 1113 seats for RD students.
1113 RD seats/2329 RD accepts = 48% RD yield.
But maybe my math here is wrong?
Note also, though, that summer melt will drive the yield down a little bit too. Not all the ED accepts will attend (probably about 97-98% will), and a bunch of RDs who enroll may change plans later this summer. This makes it doubtful that the yield will go above 50%. In fact, yield almost always goes down over the summer.
I’ll make a more philosophical post in the other thread on this subject, but just wanted to post numbers here.
Here’s the key point you’re missing: switching to SCEA (or CERTAINLY EA), presents a significant administrative burden to the Admissions Office, and is mostly dependent on the level of financial support available to the office.
If Penn went to EA, they’d probably receive a lot more apps, AND they’d have to spend a lot more time/energy recruiting the admits who don’t have to attend. Same goes for SCEA, albeit to a lesser degree. There’s an administrative cost to this. More time would be spent on recruitment, and if the U is suddenly going to receive thousands more applications, they’d need to increase the size of the office. Further, the yield would almost undoubtedly drop, which is not a favorable outcome.
Moving to SCEA or EA would mean a modest drop in accept rate (lets say, it goes from 9.4% to 8.4%), and a slight drop in yield (let’s say it goes from 69% to 67%). Further, it’d take a lot more administrative work to keep yield high and review more applications. How is this worth it?
I’ve written about this in the Chicago forum, but the two key reasons for Chicago’s admissions success are:
1.) Outside of the super-elites (Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, and Princeton), Chicago has a lot of pre-existing academic strengths, AND is buoyed by the big investments pouring into the college. (Over the past ten years, the school’s spent probably $1B+ on it’s medium-sized college. It’s also taken on a ton of debt to build a lot during the great recession, so it was more aggressive than other schools recently.)
2.) The school has poured a LOT of money into its admissions department/public relations wing. I’ve posted this on the Chicago forum too, but Chicago’s Admissions Dean Jim Nondorf probably makes around $600K now, and he has a TON of resources at his disposal for marketing, wooing students, hiring staff members, etc. If you pour money into admissions, you’ll see results. I just don’t think Penn’s Admissions Dean Eric Furda has been given the same level of resources, and he certainly doesn’t make $600k a year (that’d make him one of the U’s highest paid employees). Also, pouring more money into Penn’s Admissions offers little return - it’s certainly selective enough as it is.
Put another way, Chicago’s institutional priorities right now may be a little different than Penn’s. Chicago’s President, Robert Zimmer, seems to have targeted selectivity as something he wants to drive down to the realm of the super-elites, and he’s invested a ton in this. (Zimmer’s invested in other areas too, of course, but College admissions/the state of the college seems to be high on his list of priorities.) Penn, on the other hand, isn’t doing this, and frankly, I don’t see a need for it. Penn’s focused more money on its medical plant, a massive innovation center, etc.
UChicago also gives a lot of merit aids to woo top students.
Yup - it’s increased merit aid a LOT - it’s basically taken a go-all-out approach to admissions. BUT, Penn certainly could focus more money here, if it wanted to, by offering higher levels of grants and decreasing the average level of student indebtedness at graduation. UPenn has the HIGHEST average student debt load amongst its peers: http://www.thedp.com/article/2015/02/white-house-ranks-penn-least-affordable-ivy
Again, if Penn invested more money here, it could probably see modest gains in its selectivity. Is it worth it, though? For Chicago, it clearly is, but it’s taken a LOT of money and investment. Chicago probably could’ve invested half as much and been just as selective as Penn or Duke (as opposed to MIT and Princeton). Chicago’s very concerned with optics of late, though.
I think it has to do with the fact that students are gravitating towards professional careers because they crave stability. Penn is one of the best “feeder schools” so it is benefiting from this development. Also, big cities are back in vogue.
http://www.thedp.com/article/2016/05/penn-yield-rate-record
This is really great news especially given the fact that RD acceptance rate increased to 50-51% and that over the past few years the ED applicant pool has been increasing tremendously.
@Cue7 I think you are calculating the yield wrongly. Penn has over-admitted this year, Eric furda said it himself, there will be more than 2445 students enrolled. Here is how i calculated it:
There were 3661 students admitted both ED and RD. Of these, 1332 were accepted ED. With an overall yield of say 68.5%, we have 2508 students enrolled. So Penn over-admitted this year. Lets assume that ED yield is 100% (actually never is, more like 98-99%). Subtract the 1332 EDs from the 2508 overall enrollment and you get 1176 RD students enrolled. RD students accepted were 3661-1332 = 2329. 1176/2329 = 50.5% RD yield. Now if the actual yield is above 68.5%, the rd yield goes up, also if the ED yield is less than 100% (will almost def is) the RD yield also goes up. Teeing into account the slight negative effect of summer melt on yield, I think there is good chance that the final yield is over 50%.
The way you calculated is goes an overall yield of 2445/3661 = 66.8% which is not what the actual overall yield was this year. This is because you put the target class size as a constraint while it really is not.
I agree with the point about the administrative burden, hadn’t thought about this. Chicago definitely invest exorbitant amounts of money and energy for advertising and admit courting etc.
Also I don’t think Chicago is as selective as MIT or Princeton. Acceptance rate does not equal selectivity. Chicago, through its EA program jacks up applications by quite a bit hence the 11000+ EA apps it receives. If it switched to ED like Penn or SCEA like MIT/Princeton its early apps would be around 1/3 of what they are now.
“UPenn has the HIGHEST average student debt load amongst its peers”
That is probably true, and they should bring it down, but it also has the second highest average starting salaries in the Ivy League, after Harvard.
Regarding EA, Chicago manages a 66% yield with EA because they are the best school with EA other than MIT, and I don’t think there is a lot of overlap in applicants between those two schools for undergrad.
However, Penn would have significant overlap with Chicago and MIT, so Penn switching to EA would probably hurt the yield of Penn, Chicago and MIT. However, Penn would also get more applicants, so it could be worth it, I don’t know.
Re. debt/financial aid:
Only one point of data here, but based on our first financial aid package, Penn has increased its generosity in the past five years. They don’t package loans, for one thing, and it seems that they are just a bit more generous than when my oldest applying in fall of 2011. They also allow a student to bring in outside scholarship (for my son, the max amount is $5950). This year, Penn will be dirt cheap for my son to attend, even less than it was for my oldest to attend MIT.
Oldest son graduated debt free, having paid less than 10K total for four years. He did have a 6K a year scholarship. Had he not had that, he would have had about 12K in debt (would have done another 12K of work study). Penn seems a bit more generous, but time will tell.
^ Yes. Penn FA is similar to or slightly better than MIT FA.
Penn gave a little bit more to my D than MIT gave to my son.
I find it interesting what the admissions officers give credit to. Harvard always gives credit to their expanded financial aid and have claimed this for the past 8 years. I find it funny that the credit goes to Quaker days, multicultural scholars program. I know a few very very disappointed kids who would give a limb to attend Penn who were not admitted, and would have fit in nicely if admitted.