Saying a 13 spot jump is significant is an understatement…but what does this mean for those of us who are applying for a spot in the 2020 class? Will the competition be much steeper?
Of course this is very hard to answer, but the best guide is probably to look at what has happened to USC. They have moved up a lot in the last decade or so, now at 23. I think they were in the mid to upper 30’s back then. Unfortunately USC does not appear to participate in the Common Data Set, so I am hitting a brick wall there. If you can find data on them over the last years, in terms of admit rate, average test scores, that kind of thing it might shed some light on your question, although other factors besides USNWR ranking certainly contribute to the reason these data points might have changed.
My guess is that the competition will be steeper, but although the term “much” is subjective, I suspect it won’t be dramatically different. 20-30 points total on the SAT, a point or a little less on the ACT maybe. What would have been right on the edge before might shift that much. Just my guess. I don’t think you are looking at needing stats like you would for Duke or Vandy yet. I would point out that Tulane tied with Boston U yet even when a few places lower than BU, Tulane had slightly higher average stats. Obviously that was the graduation rank effect, but still it shows that people are not exactly correlating the USNWR ranking with that kind of selectivity.
Moving away from stats, will this bump mean a lot more applications? Tulane already was one of the highest for applications received. So again I think this probably won’t mean a huge shift in competition based on sheer volume. bottom line, my intuition is that you are looking at a small change, not a seismic one. It shouldn’t change your application strategy, I wouldn’t think.
I agree with you FC, but I think the high yield they had this year will cause them to be more competitive next year. I have seen it said that this year is the largest class Tulane has had.
Yes, easily the largest. While the yield is still not high by overall standards (which is OK since Tulane takes this into account), it does mean that a small change of 1% in the yield makes for a large class. And that is exactly what the change was, I think, from 17% to 18%. I agree Tulane is likely to be a bit more cautious in the number of admissions this year based on that one data point PLUS the big bump from USNWR. Otherwise changing behavior on a one year trend would be kind of silly. But I think you make an excellent point. The 1730 students in this class basically just hit the limit of the dorm space available (thank goodness for that new dorm, Greenbaum). Any larger next year and it might be a real issue for space.