@ccdad99 I understand what you are saying but I don’t think you can drive your ED applicant pool up just because applicants perceive the college is easy to get into. There are several schools, an applicant may have an easier time getting admitted to if he/she applies ED but still won’t apply because the school isn’t his/her first choice for whatever reason. For example JHU which is a top school has a much higher ED acceptance rate than UPenn and it’s ED rate is also significantly higher than it’s own RD rate but it’s commitment ratio is still lower than UPenn.
For colleges that are need blind this ratio has even more explanatory power in estimating popularity
@ucbalumnus You are absolutely right. For colleges that don’t have a binding or restrictive program, yield rate is a good metric ( notwithstanding yield protection schemes). But for colleges that offer ED/SCEA yield may not be the best measure to judge a college’s popularity because these schools can artificially inflate their yield rates by limiting competition and goosing their admission process. Convincing a kid to commit to a college by deliberately walking away from other potentially favorable options thru binding ED or SCEA is much harder to do.
@surelyhuman All I am saying is that applicants who like numerous comparable schools can decide to ED to schools that they feel that will give them a significant bump in their acceptance chances. That in turn may expand the school’s ED pool.
However, the convincing may not be due to something especially favorable about the college to the applicant. It may be that there is now a common perception that your chances of getting into a desired highly selective college are greatly reduced if you do not apply ED somewhere, so more students are applying ED because, even if they are not sure that the ED school is their first choice, it is clearly preferred over the expected schools that admit if they do not apply ED anywhere. For example, suppose a student wants to apply to Rice, Emory, Duke, Vanderbilt, and Alabama. S/he prefers all of the other four to Alabama, but is not sure which one s/he prefers over the others. If s/he believes that applying ED is a boost for admission, and that s/he has no chance of getting into the non-Alabama schools RD, then s/he may apply ED to one of them even if it is not a clear first choice.
Whether or not such perceptions are true is another matter.
There seems to be a common assumption that students have multiple Ivy offers to choose from. My D18’s high school last year had 8 students head off to Ivys. Only one of these students had multiple Ivy offers (H and Y). Two of these 8 were accepted SCEA (H), and one used ED (Columbia). The other 5 acceptances were through RD and none of the 5 RD had multiple offers. Perhaps the conventional wisdom that a plurality of these students have multiple Ivy offers needs to be revisited.
^Not disagreeing with you but I caution against extrapolating based on anecdotal experience. At my son’s school they had 23 go to Ivies. 12 accepted ED with almost all of the RD kids getting multiple Ivy offers. At least to hear the parents tell it.
Not saying it’s the norm but certainly contrary to your experience. Doesn’t mean either is correct but clearly some kids are declining elite schools and with all likelihood it is to attend other elite schools.
If you have top ten schools going after the same top students who apply to all ten schools, the average yield would be only 10%, because each admit would have ten offers on hand. On the other hand, if the selection is entirely random among the top and near top students (now the size of the pool is ten times as large) the yield would be close to 85% and average number of offers would be just a little over one. The reason the yield is closer to 85% rather than 100% is that even in a random distribution of acceptance the lucky ones can still receive more than one offer, thus lowering the yield.
The fact that most top schools have yields between 50-80% rather than closer to 10% suggests that the process is more likely a random selection process among top/nearly top applicants. As such, single offer would be the more predominant scenario.
^ No such assumption was made. I was using a model to show that if the pool of applicants to top schools is relatively fixed and the schools have similar preferences for admits it is actually rather impressive that the schools can achieve 50%+ yield. It shows a somewhat random process. And as a result, multiple offers ought to be a small minority among admits.
You can study his profile. But he has deleted his most highly hit video (he even posted a video explaining why). That deleted video has his stats and other detail information in his app. He said he was a premed in his earlier video but after one quarter in Dartmouth, recently, he said he is no longer a premed. He got a scholarship to attend an elite private high school but developed some mental problems there. His stats are not high comparing with west/east coast standards but definitely within range.
He said he has four main options going into his final decision (he got admitted to a bunch of others):
[]Vanderbilt – full tuition scholarship. He said “… doesn’t vibe well with southern culture.”“The diversity is still lacking.” He eliminated Vanderbilt first.
[]USC – full tuition scholarship. He said he absolutely loves the school. He said the thought he was going to go there, until Ivy day. So at least for this student, he can’t resist an Ivy. He said financial aid was not “that bad” for Brown/Dartmouth. He appealed and got some more money. He is from Las Vegas. He said “USC quickly fell the the bottom of my list … it would have been so great to help my family with finance and stuff like that.”
[]Brown – He said “I absolutely love everything about it.” After admitted student weekend, he said “Brown was a hoot, that was a fun time.”“it did feel right at Brown.”“Brown was really nice, I absolutely love the people there.”“Oh, my gosh, it was a fun time.” However, “Brown’s financial situation was a lot more messy than Dartmouth… my dad explained it to me … I kind of have to take Brown off …” I am so sorry that he missed the “Brown Promise” by one year.
[]Dartmouth – He said after admitted student weekend “it didn’t sit super comfortable with me.”“I didn’t vibe as well with the students there.”
As you can see, unhooked students who got admitted into Ivies really have something in their apps which make them stand out.
“Finance” is the reason he chose Dartmouth. Did he reject Ivies? NO.
I don’t want to give you a false sense that everyone who got admitted into Ivies has multiple offers. This guy “only” got one offer – Yale. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bS5hLOmOE8)
Even though the admission process at super-selective schools is not random, the difference between insider and outsider viewpoints means that insiders (i.e. those doing admissions readings) can see that it is obviously not random (for the most part), while outsiders who have no visibility to either the subjectively graded aspects of an application or the context of the entire applicant pool may find that the results look random for applicants who are not obviously disqualified by stats.
But note that there could be some credential randomness, such as two top students in math who have different math teachers write their recommendations, and one happens to be a better recommendation writer than the other.
Obviously, to the AOs its not random. But for top applicants who apply to ten schools on average, the outcome, on the spectrum from entirely random (85% average yield) to entirely predictable (10% average yield), is skewed more towards random than predictable.
only question which someone brought up earlier, is my hunch is most people choose HYPS over state flagships, but there are some full ride fellowships (morehead to UNC for example) that are fairly nice and a finalist I know who didn’t even get it, was admitted to both Stanford and Harvard. So that would make the number lower but still “random”…
If the college considers LoR significantly, the quality may be a significant factor that is uncontrollable and unknowable by the applicant, rather than just a hair split.
For example, in the examples in https://mitadmissions.org/apply/parents-educators/writingrecs/ , if David, Jen, and Brian all were similarly strong applicants, but, due to choice (for reasons other than LoR for college) or assignment of high school teachers, got the recommendations shown, who would be seen more favorably by an admission reader?
I agree with @ucbalumnus. Stats get you past the first gate in the process. Essays, LoR, and if required Interviews is where you seal the deal. I don’t consider these as minor variables. I do believe it is believing that they are minor is why so many stat smart kids strike out in the process.
I think you missed my point, @ucbalumnus. In your post #71 you referenced almost identical students with different LORs. Perhaps you meant “credential randomness” differently than I took it. You are adding lots of “ifs”. “IF” an elite school strongly considers the LOR and one math teacher’s writing skills are better than another (I am not talking about a letter from a famous legacy relative or such), that may make that one variable a “random” variable, but the admission process in totality is not "random. Especially with more schools reading/reviewing using a team-based process or multiple review process, it’s likely one “spike” will get discussed across several readers.
Credential randomness is not randomness in the college’s admission office. It is, however, a random event for the student to have gotten better or worse credentials (e.g. by getting a teacher who is better or worse at writing recommendations).
