More than half of accepted students reject Brown, Cornell and Dartmouth.
$ is often a big factor in where students opt to matriculate.
Agreed but nonetheless rejected qualified applicants should take comfort in this fact that for whatever reasons, these colleges get rejected by every other accepted student. It probably makes colleges insecure and they often reject extraordinary students fearing rejection and messed up yield. This sounds very much like a dating game.
Your own source indicates that less than half of accepted students turn down Brown, Cornell and Dartmouth.
Agreed. Minor correction. Almost half not half as accurate yield is 52-55%, not that it changes the fact that almost every other accepted student rejects these Ivies.
Some that get in Brown, Cornell or Dartmouth also get in other Ivys and choose the other school. Some prefer Stanford or MIT. Some get full rides/great scholarships elsewhere and no aid from the Ivy. Not that many turn down Harvard.
Ummmm, no. They are all big boys and girls. This isn’t The Bachelor
Because… good applicants likely have a lot of choices? Because… not every student finds those schools to be their best fit? Because… financial reasons or family reasons to stay close to home? Because… they changed their mind senior year about their major, and picked a school stronger in that area? Because… they went to accepted student visits and were turned off by some aspect of the school? This post is so breathless - how could someone reject these schools?!? Very easily, for excellent reasons, and usually with no regrets.
There was an article a while back with a table showing the frequency students who get into multiple top schools choose one over the other. I can’t recall where it came from. Anyone recall?
Good example why to check for USNews accuracy. For the class if 2022, all 3 report higher, over 60%. Just as our own kids make final decisions on various factors, so do Ivy admits.
Imo, leave “yield” concerns to the colleges. It’s no easier to get into an Ivy than before. In fact, it gets harder.
@lookingforward The USnews article in OP’s post refers to class of 2020 data. Not necessarily inaccurate, maybe outdated.
Its really only when yield is below about 20% that it starts to affect a school’s budgeting for the following year. Am not in the least bit surprised that, for a variety of reasons, average yield is not particularly high, and its a bit of a “so what”. Many threads have been started in past years about the schools that tend to have extremely high yields (some religious institutions, some top elites, military academies). The rest is no surprise at all.
@jym626 Are you referring to data from Parchment?
It’s rather difficult to have >75% admit rates if students get into 5+ schools. Students who get into Ivies are likely to get into multiple prestigious schools and full- almost full-rides at many well-regarded universities. The private school outliers are Stanford 82% and Harvard 78.8% with MIT 73.5%, Yale 69%, Princeton 68.3% close behind. These are the most prestigious schools and they have huge endowments to give loads of money even to those who wouldn’t get money at other schools (Stanford is a prime example).
There have been several discussions about that here. e.g.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2018392-ranking-among-hypsm-based-on-revealed-preference.html
You can look at a college’s own figures.
No need to get alarmist over 3 year old numbers. It does nothing for our own kids. Unless they’re looking at a very low yield college, as jym notes. Then you worry why so low and how it affects day to day operations.
@liska21 with many applicants applying under restrictive early application regimes and acceptance rates in more competitive regular admission pools in low single digits, there may not be a boat load of super applicants getting multiple acceptances. Higher yield of SCEA schools is partly related to this in addition to their desirability.
Does USNews’s numbers really tell you the yield or “where the students are eager to enroll”? I have said earlier that with a particular Midwest school close to be the first 100% ED school, it soon would be able to claim it has 100% yield.
Let’s just do one calculation to see what the real yield is for Penn in 2016. My definition of “yield” is the percentage of students who are admitted and possibly have choices but choose to attend a particular school. (those ED admits who are required to attend don’t count) Since US News’s data is for fall 2016, I will use the official data from Penn to calculate the real yield for University of Pennsylvania in 2016.
Penn filled 54.6% of its class in ED for a class size of 2445. (https://www.thedp.com/article/2015/12/early-decision-acceptance-rate)
So only 2445-1335=1110 seats left for those RD applicants. Penn admitted 2329 students in RD.
(https://www.thedp.com/article/2016/03/regular-decision-release-class-of-2020)
How many of those 2329 RD admits are eager to fill those 1110 RD seats? 1110/2329=47.65%
The real yield is 47.7% not 67.8% showing in USNews article. If you agree with my calculation, feel free to click “agree” below. Thank you.
@ccdad99 - no not the parchment comparison, though thats a similar idea. There was a research article published several yers ago about cross-admits and which they chose. If time allows I’ll look for it later.
It underscores how applicants often misinterpret acceptance rates. Those not applying ED who are admitted to places like Brown are also admitted to many of the other top schools whereas those who are not are often accepted to none. The yield protect strategies don’t eliminate that redundancy despite the fact that some of the strategies are aimed at doing so. (see https://www.nber.org/papers/w10803). Most students I know who didn’t apply ED and were admitted to an Ivy were also admitted to others. And as surprising as this might sound, most turned their offers down. The obsession with the Ivy Leagues on this site isn’t justified. They are great universities in general. But I don’t know that many generals applying. Seriously they are obviously great universities but there are hundreds of places to choose from-each offering different opportunities. It’s all about fit.
In terms of why they turned them down, many were simply judgements made after angst and weighing the cost benefit ratio. And I should add here that I wouldn’t necessarily ave made the same call. But that’s ok cause I wouldn’t have gotten within a mile of an Ivy League school as an applicant and, you know what, I did just fine. I went to a school with a great fit to what I needed at the time. That’s what I urge students to do now. Take all the factors into consideration-yours and the schools. Then go for the match.
So what were some reasons a student would turn down Brown & other Ivy League schools? Some who were full pay decided they had less expensive options (UNC, Wisc, Ann Arbor, UVA, and more) offering many or more of what they wanted than did the Ivies they were accepted to. {true disclosure; For none was this Harvard. But for quite a few it was Brown}. Some wanted a more energized campus and surroundings; to be near or in a vibrant city with a vibe like NY or Boston. Some medical school bound turned down places like Brown & JHU for financial reasons or because they wanted to be the top student of their college applying to med school the year they’d be applying. Some accepted a slot on the less upscale side of Cambridge or went for sun (Stanford or Caltech). Others trudged to places like CMU because they were looking for something very specific. Still others opted for smaller LAC’s like Williams, Swarthmore, Wellesley (see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775705000439). Others wanted more rah rah spirit at college (more competitive majors/programs at Penn State, Syracuse) or any program at Michigan.
As far as I know, none are disappointed or unhappy with their decisions. I know none who transferred out. Few who were medical school bound ended up there but all who have already graduated are doing interesting things regardless of where they went. Those who opted for fit over name are glad they did.