<p>re# 59 - the Princeton admissions officer was fired and I’m sure Yale’s admissions website security levels [ as well as other college admission portals] were increased to prevent any re occurrence of this type of intrusion.</p>
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<p>Several other factors improve yield. You need to add using of an extensive waiting list, and for some schools, admitting students that would have few if any better choices. </p>
<p>Yield is a bizarre animal. Just look at how many students a selective school such as Chicago admits in its early round, and compare it to the expected enrollment. Their yield management must be entirely different than at a school such as Smith or Mt Holyoke.</p>
<p>1) Highly selective schools don’t talk to each other about applicants before decisions are made (but there is nothing barring schools from comparing admit lists after decisions are made if they want to, particularly with ED lists, if applicable).</p>
<p>2) The Overlap Group problems were in the late 80s/early 90s. You have to remember that the college admissions “scene” so to speak was very different then. The schools that were in the Overlap Group, along with the Ivies, were often the cross-applicant pools at that point in time, especially since admissions deans had been meeting in some configuration since at least the 1930s. Today one might find it odd that Colby, Mount Holyoke, and Harvard would all be in the same group, but at the time this wasn’t so odd and these schools really did see similar app pools. The Ivies in particular received much smaller, much less diverse applicant pools at that time (compared to today). The reason that the Ivies and MIT received so much attention on this issue is that the DOJ settled with all of the other schools besides the Ivies + MIT, then all but MIT agreed to the consent decree. MIT actually fought the DOJ on this issue and they ultimately settled in 1994. Section 568 of the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 was actually written “for” MIT - it specifically exempts need-blind institutions from anti-trust action when the institutions meet to set general financial aid policies/standards/procedures. It is still considered price fixing for schools to jointly determine the financial aid (aka “set the tuition net price”) of an individual specific student.</p>
<p>3) The Overlap Group was established for financial aid matching reasons, not for admissions decisions. The point wasn’t to determine who got into which school, it was to (theoretically) make it so that Annie Applicant wouldn’t have to pick Middlebury over Dartmouth on the basis of the FA award.</p>
<p>I have to say, I learnt a lot from this thread, thanks to all who participated. However, I still do not understand why the admissions personnel suggested they would know if we applied to other Ivy league schools too? We took a university tour of one of the Ivies, a couple of years ago (not before 1994).</p>
<p>Beware your HS GC. Not to make you paranoid, but there are still HS’s out there which list on the GC’s letter which colleges the recommendation is going to.</p>
<p>You don’t need to be Nancy Drew to note that if a kid is applying to Harvard, Yale, Penn, Swarthmore, JHU Duke and Dartmouth- and you’re the adcom at Skidmore-- to figure out that you’re the safety school in the pile.</p>
<p>“However, I still do not understand why the admissions personnel suggested they would know if we applied to other Ivy league schools too? We took a university tour of one of the Ivies, a couple of years ago”</p>
<p>Before a couple of years ago, If a student was applying using the common app or applying for FA using the FAFSA form, it was possible for colleges to “see” where else students were applying. I think that glitch was removed with programing corrections to both forms.
There was lots of discussion about this issue on CC, but none recently[ to my knowledge]</p>
<p>I am curious about the number of students the 10%-15% constitutes. commonapp says they sent 2.5 Million apps but do not say how many unique users. Since most of the top 20 schools except MIT (any others?) use commonapp, it should be easy to take 10% of commonapp users to detemine a count.</p>
<p>There is a perception about trophy hunting when someone applies to too many schools but there is another side to it.</p>
<p>I can say that my kid definitely sent in more than 10 applications (not all ivy schools) but I found out most of the top 5% of the school did the same. This happens at schools where the kids apply to several reaches not knowing which ones might accept them if they each admit one to three students from that school. </p>
<p>One thing that can make a difference is that income level plays a big role in that. If someone meets the free education threshold, most of the top schools offer loan free education which is not the case with lower ranked schools. So while they have a guaranteed seat in a state school, they put out all their applications to reach schools that guarantee a loan free education.</p>
<p>Six of the eight Ivies plus Stanford and MIT have yields above 50%, and the other two Ivies have yields of 48%. How many people can there be who are getting into more than one or two of them?</p>
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<p>Just as there are 30,000 vals who turned down Harvard to attend a local school. And even more who turned down a full athletic scholarship. And the list goes on. </p>
<p>Fantastic stories are, unfortunately, often truly fantastic.</p>
<p>Fwiw, HERI tracks the changes in the number of applications. This was part of a story published last year:</p>
<p>[></a> Image >](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/11/07/07hoover-chart1.html]>”>> Image >)</p>
<p>Applied to 1 colleges: 1989=25% 2009=14%</p>
<p>Applied to 2/3 colleges: 1989=32% 2009=24%</p>
<p>Applied to 4/5 colleges: 1989=27% 2009=29%</p>
<p>Applied to >6 colleges: 1989=16% 2009=33%</p>
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<p>Wow, ok. Thanks, menloparkmom.</p>
<p>xiggi - everyone is publishing percentages but what is the size of pool of applicants using the commonapp?</p>
<p>It is not knowing who might accept them is what causes students to apply to a bunch and the second concern has to do with who might give them more money. It is definitely harder for one to get into several top schools but at the same time, several schools do admit the same kid and not take anyone else from that school. From our local school, one kid was admitted to 4 Ivies (Yale, Penn, Brown and I forget the other) while several kids who seemed equally qualified got shut out. Another kid who got into Harvard ended up at UT. So it is hard to get these numbers to add up to 30k but it does happen.</p>
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<p>Most of those valedictorians couldn’t get into Harvard in the first place. Harvard could be completely filled with valedictorians and leave plenty of people out. But it isn’t. One reason is that there are a lot of valedictorians at sub-par rural and inner city high schools. I’m betting that most of them aren’t that much better than your average top 10% student at a better high school.</p>
<p>And what do you mean by “athletic scholarship?” I’m definitely sure than Harvard, nor any of the Ivy Leagues, offer them. </p>
<p>So no, not that many people are rejecting Harvard.</p>
<p>Relying on subtle sarcasm has its pitfalls. I thought that using 30,000 and athletic scholarship would offer enough of a hint. I was wrong.</p>
<p>thought I saw that the yield at Dartmouth had fallen to 52%. One might guess that those applicants turning down a Dartmouth acceptance had applied to a fair number of other schools and gotten into at least one they preferred. Of course that is just a guess. I think it would be pretty difficult to turn down Dartmouth.</p>
<p>A fair number of very well qualified applicants seem to be getting deferred at not only the Ivies and top Ivy-like schools, but also at some of the other schools that typically rank in the 30-40 range (for whatever one believes rankings are worth). I don’t want to get blasted for saying this is surprising or not, because many posters seem to have a differing opinion on that. I am, however, really impressed w/the credentials of this pool many of whom rank near the top of their class and have outstanding test scores. Given that only about 10% of deferred applicants ultimately gain admission, I may have missed something. Maybe one has to apply to 10 or more really strong schools if you have a stellar background, just hoping to make the final cut in April. But it is a bit like a chicken and egg dilemma: for if not so many were applying to a huge number of strong schools in the first place, there would not be so many great applicants getting deferred.</p>
<p>pleaseadvise: “I think it would be pretty difficult to turn down Dartmouth.”</p>
<p>I suppose it all depends on your perspective. Not every family has the luxury of being financially secure enough to enable their child to attend a school like Dartmouth without significant loans. Depending on the amount of aid (if any) that Dartmouth gives, each family needs to assess their options (and priorities) which may include attending a State U or lower tier school that offers significant merit aid.</p>
<p>GS Mom I agree w/that. I also agree it is a combined family and student decision in light of many factors. That is not mutually exclusive to the idea, however, that i still think it would be pretty hard to turn down Dartmouth. BTW I love the state of NH, one of the most beautiful and pristine in the country, so that may be clouding my thinking a bit.</p>
<p>pleaseadvise, off topic, but I wholeheartedly agree with you about the beauty of NH. It is a wonderful state to live in!</p>
<p>“A fair number of very well qualified applicants seem to be getting deferred at not only the Ivies and top Ivy-like schools”</p>
<p>I notice this trend with the chicago EA admit stats being currently posted. They seem to aiming for kids whose SAT scores are 2150 to 2300 and ACT scores of 32-34 and defer people above or below that range. I do see an exception here and there but most highend scorers are being deferred. I can only speculate that they have reached critical mass of applications going from 10k to 25k and now they are picking kids who are more likely to show up, being grateful for admission at a highly ranked school.</p>
<p>Watch for the yield to improve to 50% from the current 40% this year so Chicago can admit fewer people next year. This will be a self perpetuating engine going forward for the next 3-4 years.</p>