150 is much more plausible. With a total student body of 695 in grades 9-12, you would expect approximately 174 new students every year. So they enroll around 150 from the outside world to start in the upper school (or whatever they call it) and add 25 from the lower school.
Milton has a lower school, so some of those 9th grade slots were probably already spoken for
We ran into some of this confusion last year. The number of admitted students will always be higher than the number of spots. You can’t get the admit rate from just the number of completed applications and number of spots. That number will always be too low. Schools admit more than the number of spots.
I remember thinking that Groton’s admit rate last year was astronomically low (around 8% with the first numbers). They then reported that the admit rate for that year was 12%. I don’t think that many of the schools report the number of actual admits.
Andover had 3,026 applications and 405 students were ** actually admitted. ** http://www.andover.edu/Admission/WelcomeAdmittedStudents/Pages/FunFacts.aspx
Re: the Milton numbers, once again. Pablo55, you are correct, and clearly that fact there are “150 openings” indicates that Milton takes about 25 students a year from its lower school, probably in a separate process. Thus there are therefore 25 slots “already spoken for”, 150 open to the general public. 25 makes sense because there are about 30 students per grade in the lower school. Unless Milton enrolls 174 or so new students each year in the upper school, it cannot sustain an upper school student body of 695 – not that there is any danger of this in the current climate!
Doubling the number of “slots” will probably get you close to the number of admitted students, though I do wonder how many boarding schools yield 50% or more of admitted students. I doubt it’s very many.
Slightly off-topic…I would imagine that the 25 or so students coming from the lower school are all day students, so the 150 openings are probably 2/3rds boarding, 1/3 day. eta: at Milton
Is the pool of applicants really getting a whole lot bigger or are applicants applying to more schools? Could it be the Common Application (SSAT, Gateway) becoming more widely used and accepted? For my part, it was very easy adding on 2 more schools to our application list that we did not originally intend to apply to. Yes, there were the application fees and supplements, but if we were not using the Common App, we would not have added them. Looking through the forum I also noticed a lot of applicants who applied to more than 6 schools (we applied to 9 - weightlisted to 4, accepted to 5) and our list started at 6 at the beginning of the process. Will this mess up schools’ metrics? i.e., they know they usually have to send acceptances to 200 to yield 100 enrolled. Does that metric change to accept 250 to yield 100? Maybe those on wait lists will have an easier time!
The numbers also change over time-- more at some schools than others, since some kids DO get in off the Waitlist. Depending on the school, the final numbers can change a couple of percentage points. Some schools’ numbers barely change, of course, but every year the final numbers go up, at least a little.
It should be because the applicants apply for more schools this year?!
There may be hopes for those in waiting list (I hope)
@ApreVerite that’s correct, 379 is number admitted, not the number of open spots.
That would be quite a large number of spots, considering the school has around 820 students.
Milton takes several sophomore boarders (mainly athletes) and a few juniors as well. so that 150 number is for 9-12, not just freshman. About 50 move up from 8th grade, so freshman admits are actually lower. Also, the freshman class is closer to 2/3 day students until the school evens out by taking in more boarders in the upper grades.
Yes Milton applications are up ~30% this year as they cite over “1400 applications for 150 openings”. This appears to be quite a surge. From the Milton Measure: In 2014, Milton accepted “about 25% out of 1100” applicants. In 2012, Milton accepted “250 out of 1000 applicants”. So if they extend the typical number of 250 offers, the admit rate dropped from 25% to 18% this year.
If a school admits x number of students do they have to honor that acceptance? For example: If some terrible scandal happened at Andover and all the kids that got accepted to Andover and Exeter go to Exeter, Exeter is going to yield more than they expected, but they don’t have the dorm space for all those kids, What would they do? Would they withdraw acceptances? Would they cram 3 kids into double rooms?
Schools do over-enroll sometimes, and yes, creating triples is one solution.
I mean a massive over-enroll. I’m talking 50+ unexpected kids accept.
Not going to happen so not worth contemplating. They are fairly good at dialing in their yield. Your doomsday scenario is very unlikely. Schools have had scandals and enrollments haven’t changed much.
^Yup. Look at St. Paul’s.
The SPS thing this past year was one a-hole and definitely doesn’t represent the school as a whole.
getting back to number of applicants/percent accepted: anybody have info on Choate?