<p>The 12% admit rate prediction was originally reported in an 8/24/06 piece by Emily Sachar on Bloomberg News Service. According to her story, "Pennsylvania, founded in Philadelphia in 1740 by Benjamin Franklin, expects the percentage of applicants admitted now to drop to 12 percent from the current 17 percent, said Dean of Admissions Lee Stetson." The Daily Pennsylvanian was not cited as a source.</p>
<p>How intriguing, said the beaver.</p>
<p>The reporter for Bloomberg, Emily Sachar, is a Stanford grad, although her husband went to Penn.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.emilysachar.com/about.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.emilysachar.com/about.html</a></p>
<p>Factoring in the RD yield rate would be, in my opinion, a tremendous boost to the credibility of rankings.</p>
<p>Problem being that universities that have a special affinity for "Tufts Syndrome" would have more incentive to game the system. I, personally, would prefer that anxious high school applicants not have to face rejection because they're "too good" over having a "better" ranking.</p>
<p>The authors of "The Early Admissions Game" and the "Revealed Preference" study seem to think that the is limited utility, in the long run, to heavy reliance on "Tufts Syndrome." </p>
<p>Eventually, a school that looks to goose its yield rate by rejecting or waitlisting highly qualified applicants who, it suspects, are likely to gain admission to a school further up the academic food chain, hurts itself by trimming the quality of the class as measured by SAT scores, fraction in the top 10% of their high school class, etc. </p>
<p>(It was noted, for example, that Princeton's one-time tendency to dodge certain applicants it viewed as ticketed for Harvard or Yale left it with a lower SAT median.)</p>
<p>Princeton doesn't have to worry about that now since they pwned Harvard this year</p>
<p>Princeton is still getting killed by Harvard with cross admits, trails with its SAT median, way behind with its yield rate, and way WAY behind in its "open market" RD yield rate. In selectivity, Princeton trails not only Harvard, but Yale, Stanford and MIT as well.</p>
<p>Byerly, do you have the data for RD yield rates at the top ten or so schools?</p>
<p>Probably. Somewhere. For 2009. For the Ivies + Stanford + MIT.</p>
<p>I usually calculate it for those schools plus the top 4 or 5 of the teeny-tinies.</p>
<p>a drop like that wont happen. Look at Cornell:</p>
<p>two years ago, admit rate of 30% from 19,000 applications (roughly)</p>
<p>applications go up to 24,500 next year, admit rate is 27%</p>
<p>applications go up to over 28,000 the next year after, admit rate is 24%. </p>
<p>The acceptance rate lowered, but it wasn't a dive bomb. </p>
<p>If a school gets a huge increase in applications, the yield will almost certainly go down. Penn will get more applications with the switch to the common app, but the yield will suffer. This will increase the acceptnace rate relative to what it would have been in past years had all of the students they accepted enrolled.</p>
<p>Can you PM me the data?</p>