But only for colleges confident that they are not likely to lose students admitted RD to other schools. HYPS probably assume that they are only likely to lose cross-admits to each other, or for financial reasons (which are less likely due to high SES applicant/admit pools and good FA for the rest), so they use SCEA/REA to get applicants to declare their first choice, but without having to bind them like ED does, which may make some applicants more comfortable applying (e.g. if they are uncertain about FA).
^They were in an Ivy Wise release last spring. I didn’t check each school individually. I suspected they are close given I had spot checked versus Brown where I have first hand info source.
Again I think they are close and representative but not precise and in the case of EA require some assumptions.
None the less the point was that during RD round those that get accepted to Ivies with an approximate 5% acceptance rate typically will have other alternatives including other Ivies, Ivy extendeds and merit money. It is the quality of the subset of applicants that leads to the options and the resulting yields.
As it relates to the OPs question. People are saying no to Ivies but it is in most cases to attend other Ivies, comparably elite schools or for financial reasons. The common link is strong candidates have great choices. The system is not random and the yields at elite school supports this reality.
Unlike ED, they prevent applicants from applying EA elsewhere. There are a number of EA schools that admit students with credentials similar to those SCEA schools are interested in.Some applicants may choose those EA schools over SCEA schools if given the choice. They expect a certain degree of commitment (not only over other SCEA schools). In that respect. I don’t find ED drastically different than ED.
Princeton class of 2022 RD yield rate calculation:
[quote]
Princeton offers early action admission to 799 students for Class of 2022/quote
[quote]
Princeton University has offered admission to 1,941 students, or 5.5 percent of the record 35,370 applicants for the Class of 2022/quote
[quote]
yield rose to 69 percent of the 1,941 who were admitted, /quote
So a total of 1339 students are in class of 2022.
Assuming 85% SCEA yield (IMHO) ==> 679 SCEA enrolled ==> 660 RD enrolled ==> 660/(1941-799) = 58% (RD yield)
I think the 69% overall yield number should be used for Princeton because those SCEA admits could have gone elsewhere.
Yes @nrtlax33 – that is the same calculation I did in post #93. My post #99 is similar but uses the CDS numbers and assumes 90% SCEA enrollment
Yale SCEA for the Class of 2022:
and RD/total:
and yield:
So, assuming 90% SCEA yield on the SCEA+QuestBridge kids, 805 enrolled from that pool and 773 (1,578 - 805) were admitted RD and enrolled. RD yield was 773 / (2,229 - (842 + 52)) = 58%. If SCEA+QuestBridge yield was 85%, then 760 were admitted from that pool and enrolled, 818 were admitted RD and enrolled, and RD yield was 61%.
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/12/14/yale-admits-14-7-percent-of-early-applicants/
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/03/28/yale-admits-6-31-percent-of-applicants/
https://news.yale.edu/2018/08/23/incoming-class-2022-sets-record-socio-economic-diversity-and-yield
I feel SCEA is a mirage of choice but given that RD round acceptance rates are so dismal, what choice is even a successful applicant really getting?
At least the cost of failure can be lowered for ED if you apply EA somewhere and ED acceptance rates are generally better. If you fail in your SCEA bid, you really have very few realistic options at the competitive schools given their extremely low RD rates.
I have seen unhooked top performers(top 1%, near perfect scores, great EC’s, etc) at my public school reach for the SCEA gold and come up tragically short. Then they scramble during the RD round and it usually doesn’t end well. I mean it’s not a big deal because they usually get accepted to the state flagship but still…
You can apply to the same set of EA schools for SCEA as you did for ED, in fact ED is far more restrictive since you have to pull your app to other colleges if you get in. I see your point in that de-facto they may be the same since the SCEA admit will pull the apps since the yield for SCEA and ED are very close. But having that choice not to attend a college where you got in SCEA is big.
“and RD yield was 61%.”
I did not think that the ivies, outside of Harvard, would have this low RD yield as the OP suggested.
HYPS REA/SCEA means that you agree not to apply ED anywhere, or EA to any domestic private school, so other EA applications are limited (EA to public schools are ok, as are early applications to meet scholarship deadlines, early rolling admission applications, and applications to non-US schools).
Looks like HYPS mainly care about not having EA to multiples of them (or MIT), and not so much about public schools, schools with merit scholarships, or rolling admission schools that they assume they will not lose a cross-admit decision to.
When you apply SCEA you cannot apply to other SCEA schools. Your SCEA school knows that they are your number one choice and there is no risk of losing you to their competitors in the early round (realistically in the RD round, too). You cannot apply EA to other private schools. They don’t risk losing you to a group of very elite EA schools, either. Finally, you cannot apply ED, which removes the risk of you committing to another elite school that uses ED. Sure, at the end of the early cycle you can apply anywhere you want, but what is the likelihood that you will be admitted to an elite school with RD acceptance rates in low single digits? This almost eliminates all competitors using SCEA, EA, ED in their early application cycle. Any perception of choice you have after SCEA acceptance is just a perception. It is not real. Therefore, SCEA has either the intention or consequence of yield protection as well as lowering acceptance rate, just like ED. This is why as wonderful as these schools may be, their SCEA yields are closer to ED yields at other schools and their RD yields are much lower than people expect, closer to RD yields of other elite schools. It is giving credit where credit is not due, to put these schools “in a league of their own”, as far as their early application strategies are concerned.
I wonder if that’s entirely true. I don’t disagree that SCEA yield rates are almost as high as those for ED, and this has the effect of yield protection. I don’t think it’s accurate to say, though, that these schools’ RD yields are “closer to RD yields of other elite schools”. As we saw upthread, RD yields at HYP range from close to 60% to close to 70%, which seem really high. Essentially, close to two-thirds of the time, these schools win a jump ball with the rest of the world (and probably most of their losses are to each other). I think RD yields at most top-50 private universities and LACs are ordinarily well below 50%.
Additionally (and this relates to @surelyhuman’s “commitment ratio” concept), one thing that hasn’t been discussed here is the percentage of the class that’s filled early. If a school has a high commitment ratio (i.e., ratio of early applicants to total class size) and admits less than half of the class early, that tells you (I think) that the school feels confident that it’s going to win enough of the jump balls in the RD round to get the class it wants even though it theoretically took a risk by not locking most of them up early.
Going back to my Yale example (since that’s the one I have the numbers for), Yale has a commitment ratio of 3.63 (5,733 / 1,578), among the highest. I suspect that Yale has a target of admitting half of the class early, because that’s what they’d get if the SCEA+QuestBridge yield were midway between 85-90%, which seems reasonable. They have a strong enough SCEA pool that they can comfortably fill half the class from it, but they can also leave half the class to chance in the RD round, knowing that they’ll get over 60% of the kids they admit then, and that the class as a whole will be in line with what they want.
Put another way, if Yale (and the other SCEA schools) only cared about yield, they’d admit most of the class early. After all, early applicants tend to present with better applications on average than the RD pool and, as we’ve seen, Yale could fill its class almost four times over from the SCEA pool. In fact, given that they filled half the class by admitting less than 15% of the SCEA applicant pool, and deferred 55%, they could have filled nearly all the spots simply by also admitting the top quartile of the applicants they deferred.
They don’t do this because they know their overall yield is going to be among the highest anyway, because (being rich) they don’t need most of their matriculants to be full-payers (who tend to apply early because they’re FA-insensitive) and because they want to reserve half the spots for applicants in the RD pool, where there are many great candidates (including many of the best low-SES applicants, who often don’t apply early) who are significantly more likely than not to accept an offer if made (particularly because those who got an SCEA offer elsewhere have almost certainly taken themselves out of the running).
Contrast this mindset with that of another top-quality school which optically has a very high yield but appears to admit a substantial majority of its class ED. It would appear that that school would rather pick most of its class from the far-more-limited pool of applicants willing to commit early to attend than take the risk of a jump ball (potentially against the SCEA schools) to fill half of its seats.
If school is absolutely confident that when an applicant is going to accept their offer when extended one, why place any restriction to the process of applying for that offer? Why not have only EA and RD or just RD? Is this not intended to preserve yield? They can only lose a limited number of jump balls among each other.
There are a variety of factors. I’ll use Harvard as an example because the lawsuit provides specific numbers that aren’t available for others. As noted in my earlier post, in the class of 2016, Harvard had the following yields by applicant status:
Harvard Class of 2016: – According to Previously Linked Lawsuit
SCEA yield was 94%
RD yield was 68%
Overall yield was 80%
Harvard Class of 2022: – Extending SCEA trend line
SCEA yield is ~95% – 964 Accepted, ~916 attend
Reported Overall Yield is 82% – 1962 Accepted, ~1607 attend
RD yield is ~69% – 998 Accepted, ~1607 - ~916 = 691 attend
Calculated 916/1607 = 57% of matriculating students were accepted SCEA
Harvard 2018 freshman survey reports the same 56.8% of matriculating students were accepted SCEA
Of those 57% of students accepted SCEA, Harvard freshman survey reports they tend to be wealthy. Rate of SCEA admit by income level are below. One reason to avoid admitting larger portions of your class by SCEA is it goes against income diversity goals. Or if you don’t care about income diversity and instead want to admit more full pay kids, one way to do so is admit more via SCEA/ED.
[QUOTE=""]
$500k income – 71% admitted SCEA
$40k to $80k income – 43% admitted SCEA
<$40k income – 32% admitted SCEA
[/QUOTE]
Another key reason why Harvard may want to avoid admitting more SCEA they don’t miss out on highly qualified applicants. Specific regression coefficients are below for how SCEA influences chance of admission, after controlling for hooks and various other factors. The larger the number, the bigger the associated impact on chance of admission. Harvard is already giving a boost for SCEA applicants that is larger than associated with a increase from “respectable” to “excellent” grades combined with 100-200 point SAT increase. As the degree of SCEA admission boost increases, the worse their class meets goals for admitting students who best reflect the stated admission goals on the website. It also can hurt Havard’s reputation and brand image, if they get a reputation for strongly favoring the wealthy SCEA applicants and not applicants who apply RD for FA reasons.
Dean’s Special Interest List: +2.32 (10x increase in odds of admission)
Legacy: +1.84 (6x increase in odds of admission)
Children of Faculty/Staff: +1.70 (5x increase in odds of admission)
Applies SCEA: +1.28 (3.5x increase in odds of admission)
Academic Rating Increases from 3 to 2: +0.84 (2x increase in odds of admission… associated with increase from “respectable” to “excellent” grades combined with 100-200 point increase on SAT)
One important consideration that is often ignored, is the different colleges are concerned with what other competing colleges are doing. Harvard hasn’t always had a SCEA admission policy. Instead they’ve switched policies relatively often. The class of 2007 had an EA admission (not SCEA), Classes of 2012-15 had no early admission option at all. They often switch early policies in relation to what similar colleges like YPS are doing, or in some cases YPS imitate Harvard’s early admission policies. Harvard is also no doubt acutely aware thar Stanford has sometimes had a better overall yield than H in recent years. I wouldn’t be surprised if the percentage admitted SCEA is largely an effort to stay just slightly ahead of Stanford and hold the #1 yield rate spot among highly selective academic colleges.
SCEA/ED is to serve institutional need. There are so many buckets (census, major/concentration, full-pay/FA, etc.) which need to be filled. It is best to partially fill those buckets in the early round to avoid last-minute scrambling to fill some empty buckets after May 1.
A look at Duke’s class of 2022 data shows that its RD yield is well below Ivies.
(https://admissions.duke.edu/images/uploads/process/Classof2022profileWEB.pdf)
For class of 2022
3219 – total number accepted
1740 – total number enrolled
early decision accepted – 879
early decision enrolled – 869
regular decision accepted – 2340
regular decision enrolled – 1740-869=871
regular yield – 871/2340=37.22%
@DeepBlue86 's observation that
is absolutely true. Duke lost a lot of cross-admits.
Stanford has 35% of its students from CA, which is probably one of the main reasons for its high yield. If you are from CA and admitted to Stanford, you are likely to stay in CA … it is a different country in some way.
I couldn’t find whether anybody asked this earlier in the thread, but how much is yield affected by the Common App? If it’s relatively easy to apply to all Ivies at once, wouldn’t the top 1%-2% of applicants be turning down most of their offers?
Funny thing about these schools, most people think they are looking for the best academics, but in fact they are looking for future leaders** in their fields **. Sometimes that correlates with very high academic scores/grades but mostly that is secondary correlation, IOW future leaders (in there field) often have great academics but that is not true for all fields (especially those that are not STEM). This is why you see a much higher correlation to admits with very high academic scores at MIT/CT etc. then most Ivies.
CU123, ahh, That is not why you see a much higher correlation to admits with very high academic scores at MIT/CalTech than most Ivies. The reason you see such high scores at schools like MIT is because MIT does not consider legacy status or development admits. Also every student must take 2 courses of calc, 2 of physics, and actual bio and chem classes (no dummied down classes like “math for a sunny disposition” so they don’t admit students unless there is solid evidence that they will make it through the rigorous curriculum. And that is true regardless anticipated major.
Most students accepted to all these schools are also strong academically {although it is rumored that sometimes some of the legacy/develop admits of Ivy’s help to improve the GPA’s of those who aren’t–something that, if true, probably wouldn’t hurt the legacy/development admits since many may not need their own achievements to access opportunities.} But that might account for the lower scores and lack of relationship between academics and some outcomes-factoring in family money might correct it some.
I don’t disagree but I would say, for example. a 30 ACT with a 3.8 GPA national debate champion is much more likely to be admitted then a 36 ACT 4.6 GPA debate state qualifier both majoring in political science. The former is just more likely to be a leader in their field.
Yields at most top 50 USNWR colleges are below 50% for overall as well. I listed the highly selective academic colleges with >50% yield in post #46 (http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21917457/#Comment_21917457 ). 36 out of the top 50 USNWR had less than 50% overall yield. Among the highest ranked non-military LACs, 47 out of USNWR top 50 had less than 50% overall yield. If you limit to just RD, only ~6 of these 100 colleges have >50% RD yield.
Some of the top 50 USNWR colleges with lower yields are listed below. Yield rates are based on IPEDS 2017-18.
Emory Oxford – 12% Yield / Emory 27% Yield
Case Western – 16% Yield
UCSB – 17% Yield
Pepperdine – 18% Yield
UCD – 19% Yield
UCSD – 19% Yield
RPI – 20% Yield
Some of the top 25 with lower yields are
Emory Oxford – 12% Yield / Emory 27% Yield
Rice – 36% Yield
UCLA – 37% Yield
USC – 37% Yield
WUSTL – 37% Yield
Caltech – 41% Yield
@nrtlax33 Yes, I agree SCEA/ED is to serve institutional needs. I was just objecting to the notion that SCEA is “miles above” ED since it gives the applicant the “choice” not to attend when in fact it rarely does. It clearly serves the needs of the institution among which is yield protection, just like ED. The only true “test” of who wins jump balls (and by how much) that @DeepBlue86 is describing would be applicable if all schools offered RD or EA/RD.