I keep reading these posts and wonder why schools can’t pick what is best for them. If a consumer doesn’t like it, they can choose not to consume. If enough consumers don’t like Styrofoam Big Mac packages, then McDonalds will change the package. If a ED1, ED2, school has found a system that gets them a class full of students of students that it believes will fit it’s purpose, why should it change? Too many people think the admissions offices of these universities sit around and put together ill intended plans to rise in the rankings, beat another university, offend students/parents by not picking them. I prefer to think that they try to get the best class they can get and do so in a manner that makes sure that they can accurately plan to fit the universities capacity.
@lostaccount MIT EA applicants are much more self-selective than SCEA applicants. Only a small portion of their applicant pools overlap, so their comparisons are not really apple-to-apple. Direct comparisons with ED schools are much more relevant, however.
Would an SCEA school worry about losing some of its admits to other SCEA/EA schools? Yes It’s not simply about the yield number. It’s about the bragging rights, the perceived prestige, the higher certainty of class size without utilizing waitlists, etc.
“It’s about the bragging rights, the perceived prestige, the higher certainty of class size without utilizing waitlists…”
Exactly. Not much different than ED. That’s why they should call it SCED.
Regarding using just HYPSM vs top ~12 vs top 20 vs top 25 vs top 50, as stated in my first post in this thread, I believe yield more closely follows a combination of selectivity and early admit policy than top ## ranking in your preferred publication. Selectivity more closely correlates to which colleges a student chooses to apply to as backups, and which colleges are applied to as backups is associated with yield.
For example, in the area of upstate NY where I grew up, it was common for students (and parents) to prefer RPI over MIT. This group almost never applied to the more selective MIT as a backup in case they were rejected by their preferred RPI during RD since hardly anyone who is rejected by RPI would be accepted by MIT. It makes more sense to choose less selective colleges as backups. As such, this group doesn’t decrease MIT’s yield even though they preferred RPI over MIT. However, it was common for students who preferred MIT to apply to the less selective RPI as a backup, so they do decrease the less selective RPI’s yield. In this group, yield follows selectivity rather than degree of preference.
The stats below compare yield by selectivity, using admit rate as a proxy for selectivity. To compare more similar colleges, I only included private, non-religious, non-LAC, non-HBCU, not very small 4+ year colleges that reported ACT score stats . There does appear to be a bit more sharp difference between HYPSM and everyone else than expected based on the trend line. However, there does not appear to be dramatic distinction between being above a particular top ## threshold and below that threshold.
HYPSM – Average 75% yield
Top 6-10 lowest admit rate - Average 60% yield (64% without low outlier Caltech, Chicago is high outlier)
Top 11-15 lowest admit rate - Average 54% yield
Top 16-20 lowest admit rate - Average 45% yield
Top 21-30 lowest admit rate - Average 32% yield
Top 31-50 lowest admit rate - Average 24% yield
I really don’t think colleges are fretting over yield rates, nor bragging about them. Stanford stopped announcing acceptance rates. USNWR stopped using acc rate and yield in their rankings.
I think colleges use SCEA and ED simply because they would like to fill a significant portion of their class with students who truly demonstrate that it is their first choice. And there is nothing wrong with that. That this pushes yield up is an statistical consequence, not the objective of it.
That doesn’t ring entirely true to me, in part for the reasons @lostaccount cites. There are other elements to this, though.
I do think there’s a club/branding effect, wherein HYPS like being seen as being in their own category, and would consider moving to ED as representing a step down in prestige. Princeton wants to be grouped with Harvard, not Cornell, or Penn, or Columbia.
Second, it suits this group of highly comparable tippy-top universities to have an early round that requires applicants to signal a first choice among them. HYPS could all fill their classes many times over with superstars, and when they give an offer that’s turned down, it’s quite likely that it’s because the person chose another school in the group. Viewed that way, it’s entirely logical for Yale to want to know with a high degree of certainty that if they give this particular superstar an offer, she’s going to take it and not hold out for Princeton or Harvard. Unrestricted EA wouldn’t accomplish this.
This goes to why these schools care about yield - it’s not so much because they view it as a measure of prestige, because they’re already considered to be at or near the top. It’s more that, if they could, they would handpick every member of the class to get the exact population they want. With 70->80% yields, they’re actually not that far off, and are in the fortunate position of being able to be much more granular about who they admit. They won’t be satisfied until they get to 100% yield, though - but primarily for this reason, not because of the perceived prestige of a high yield.
Regarding EA, as far as I can tell, the only schools that use it (without an ED option) are ones that have some clearly differentiating qualities and therefore dominate a niche market. MIT and Caltech are the top science-focused universities in the country, and a large number of STEM superstars will always rank them first. Georgetown is arguably the top Catholic university in the country and the best university of any kind in DC. And so on…
If HYPS could fill their classes many times with superstars and if their applicants only chose among them, why not have unrestricted EA with 1/4 the yield at worst and still get the same superstar quality class? If Princeton, since you gave it as an example, wants to be grouped with Harvard, not Cornell, how is this not about perceived prestige?
I stated it on another CC thread before but I’ll rephrase it here:
Unrestricted EA gives an applicant a valuable option. Just like a stock option, the holder of the option (in this case, the applicant) has a right but not the ***obligation *** to choose something. The cost of the option is borne by the school (the writer of the option). SCEA restricts that option (i.e. puts conditions on the exercise of the option), making the option less valuable to the applicant, and therefore less costly to the school. ED completely takes away that option, making it worthless, entirely eliminating that cost to the school. This is just simple math and economics. And it is this simple economics that drives what the schools are doing.
!NJParent. I think you are partially correct for some schools. But your assessment is simplistic. It’s partially a function of economics but not entirely. There are other factors that enter into the equation, some of which I’ve already stated.
A lot of speculation.
@ccdad99: as I’m saying, HYPS would like, if they could, to be able to pick every individual in their classes and know with absolute certainty that if admitted, they will enroll - wouldn’t you, in their position?
It’s not enough for them to assemble “the same superstar class” from thousands of applicants that they don’t view as interchangeable. Their ultimate goal is to be sure that they’re getting this bassoonist rather than that one, exactly the desired numbers from exactly the right states, and on and on - and they’re not a million miles from being able to do that now, with yields of 70-80%.
To the extent they care about yield, this is the reason. As noted, they could fill their classes in the early round and have yields in the 90% zone, but they’d miss out on all the talent in the RD round, which they have a 60% or better chance of getting anyway if they admit them then.
And they know that the greatest barrier to their being able to hand-pick their classes is that they lose admits to each other. So they’ve deployed a tool (SCEA) that simultaneously (i) differentiates them from every other school that aspires to be grouped with them but relies on ED; and (ii) provides a high degree of assurance that the applicants they admit early will choose them, rather than any of the other members of the club. It’s quite clever, actually.
This is a world of difference from schools that have used ED as a defensive weapon to boost their yields so that they can (i) maintain their position in college rankings; and (ii) have at least some handle on who and how many of the kids they admit will actually show up, given that their RD yields are generally well below 50%.
@lostaccount What I meant by economics is not simply about money. Economics is also about the study of rational behavior.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford are the best known schools with REA / SCEA where the applicant is not supposed to apply ED anywhere and not supposed to apply EA to schools not falling under certain exemptions, However, “single choice” EA is sort of a misnomer, since the exemptions listed on the web sites are quite numerous (e.g. public schools, early deadlines for scholarships, rolling admissions, non-US schools).
Tulane used to have both SCEA and EA, with SCEA as an indicator of a higher level of applicant’s interest. Its SCEA was more restrictive, with fewer exemptions than at HYPS. Tulane now has ED instead of SCEA (and still has EA).
Georgetown has EA with only the restriction that the applicant not apply ED anywhere.
Notre Dame also has REA, as described at https://admissions.nd.edu/apply/early-regular-decision/ . Like many religious colleges, Notre Dame has a higher yield than expected based on selectivity. Their yield was 55% in 2017-18, which is roughly the same as Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth.
Data10- To be specific and accurate…
Brown’s yield last year was 64.9% based on 2,566 acceptances and 1,665 enrolled. It should also be noted that Brown used ED candidates to fill only 44.3% of their entire class which is the reason why at 51% Brown had the highest RD yield among Ivies who offer ED (Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, and Cornell).
I am undeniably and unapologetically a Brown fan but I believe those are the numbers.
All previous yields I’ve listed in this thread from 2017-18 IPEDS, which lists the following, All 4 colleges I listed had yields of 57% +/- 2% in this federal database.
Yield for 2017-18 as Reported in Federal IPEDS Database
Brown – 59%
Dartmouth – 58%
Cornell – 56%
Notre Dame – 55%
If I switch to a source of official university publications for the class of 2022, then I get the following yields. With this source, all 4 colleges I listed appear to have yields of 60% +/- 1%. Either way, the yields at these 4 colleges are similar, which was my point.
Yield for Class of 2022, as Reported by the Listed University
Brown – 61% (see http://www.browndailyherald.com/2018/10/12/university-yield-rate-hits-time-high-61-percent/ )
Dartmouth – 61%
Cornell – 61%
Notre Dame – “Nearly 60%”
This was my source…
The article is dated in March and has phrases like "Admitted students have until May 1 to accept the University’s offer of admission. Brown anticipates an incoming class of approximately…", so it sounds like an estimation before many admitted students made their decision about whether to attend Brown or elsewhere. I believe the official university numbers are on the ones I listed, as published at http://www.browndailyherald.com/2018/10/12/university-yield-rate-hits-time-high-61-percent/ .