If you look through the results threads of UC Davis, you will see a number of very highly qualified students who were wait listed or rejected this year. Understood that admissions are holistic, but it looks suspiciously like protection of yield to me. And I don’t see the same pattern in the other UC schools.
I would argue that private schools have carte blanche to do what they want on this front, but public schools should not be engaging in such shenanigans. If the school has identified that the yield from a certain tranche of students is very low, they can still let them in and be able to let in almost as many students who they think are more likely to attend. It is not fair to the high-achieving students who actually do want to go to Davis, or those who need a high quality and affordable match / safety school. Shut-outs DO occur, as we’ve all seen on CC.
I believe for most state schools, the probability of admission is generally proportional to a student’s level of academic accomplishment. However, if other state schools follow suit, and being too far at the top end actually lowers the probability of admission, then the concept of a “safety school” essentially disappears.
This will cause students to apply to EVEN more schools to avoid being shut out. The last thing we need is something else to greatly exacerbate the vicious cycle of students applying to more and more colleges. Students will be having nightmares of their top choices rejecting them because of not making the cut or bad luck (with so many qualified applicants applying to so many schools), and their erstwhile safeties rejecting them as well because of not thinking they would go there.
@ inn0v8r Tuft syndrome is an “alleged admissions practice” and IF it is occasionally practiced by some top Universities, it’s because the colleges feel pressured to “play the game”. Colleges want great students, but they also want to accept great students that also really wants to go to their school. Many people start throwing around words like “Tufts or Yield” syndrome just because they didn’t get in, when it could’ve been something lacking with their essay, lack of EC, or too many other people with their same qualifications interested in the same field or major.
Alternate theories regard the “yield protection” as a myth propagated by college students who failed to gain admission to elite universities.
I agree that state schools should not be doing this. Three of my friends who have 35/36 ACT and around 4.5 GPA got denied from Cal Poly SLO. There is no reason for them to be rejected cus SLO doesn’t even have essays or a space to describe extracurriculars. Im OK with private schools like Tufts protecting yield, but UC’s and Cal States shouldn’t because everyone applies to multiple UC’s or Cal State’s, so yield is pretty irrelevant.
dtdbull20, there is plenty of empirical data supporting the fact that at least some schools do and some schools do not practice Tufts Syndrome. This is not just a hypothetical idea. Go to: http://www.nber.org/papers/w10803
Note this which is extrapolated from the paper and read at least the first half of the paper:
“To
make this strategy concrete, suppose that Princeton wanted to raise its matriculation rate. It
could decide to admit only students who were very likely to fall just short of the admissions
thresholds for Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, and other close competitors. The students
admitted would thus have no colleges in their “menus” that were close competitors to
Princeton, and they would be likely to matriculate. Students who attend Princeton would
almost certainly prefer that the university not pursue such a policy because it would reduce the
peer quality of their fellow students. Yet, by the standard of the matriculation rate, Princeton’s
measured appeal would rise just as its actual appeal fell.”
@BigNoodle - Cal Poly SLO runs admissions solely on a computer calculation, with the highest scores being admitted. Look up “MCA” score on the Cal Poly board. The biggest issue with comparing grades/test scores across those that are admitted there is that admission is by major ONLY. My guess is that your high-stats friends were applying CS (probably the most competitive major)? That’s a whole different ball game than applying to a less impacted major. Most of the points in the MCA score are academic,but there are also points given for non academic items like being a first-generation college student. I greatly prefer the more cut-and-dried process to the whole “holistic” thing, since that can mean anything they want it to mean.
Maybe they are ignoring actual demonstrated interest, and are instead imputing it from the strength of the application relative to the typical student there…?
I understand if you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but after looking through the results threads, I personally don’t think that the major or essay is the likely reason for what has happened…
The above means that overall admission stats for UC Davis will be misleading to students trying to assess reach/match/safety from them. A student who applies to a popular division or major will find the selection bar to be higher than the overall admission stats imply. This is not unique to UC Davis.
Yes, totally agree that the bar can be very different by major
Sorry, but not following your argument on indirect indicators.... Are you saying no schools use direct indicators? What I mentioned (imputing) would be in a gray area....
Schools that consider “level of applicant’s interest” use indirect indicators like whether the student is “overqualified”, order of schools listed on FAFSA (in previous years), whether the student checks the admissions portal, whether the student has a recorded visit, etc… The main direct indicator would be the “why [this college]?” essay, but it is not necessarily the case that all colleges using “level of applicant’s interest” have such an essay.
Admission by division or major is a significant factor at many schools, but appears underrated by applicants, so it is probably a big factor in admission surprises.
I don’t think schools reject/defer/waitlist high stats students just because they want to protect yield for some rankings (yield isn’t even that big of a factor in the USNWR ranking system). Another more important reason may be that they need to manage enrollment in an increasingly difficult environment. I can’t imagine what a challenge it is to wade through tens of thousands (and in the case of some of the UC’s, a hundred thousand) applicants and try to admit just the right number. If yield is higher than expected, they run the risk of overadmitting and are faced with insufficient housing and classroom space. Schools such as UC-Davis know that many students are using it as a back-up and are not going to accept, so why bother offering them a place and throwing even more uncertainty into the mix?
You can look up admit rates by campus and GPA. I would not be surprised if some of the students who thought UCD would be a “safety” had GPAs not in the very high percentage admitted range (89% for UC GPA 4.20 or higher; compare 52% for UC GPA 3.80-4.19). I.e. they underestimated how selective UCD is. And then add in the effect of popular majors.
@blprof correct, I didn’t claim if it was happening, it was happening for rankings. I am not sure why they would do it. Dealing with enrollment could certainly be a reason.
I am sympathetic that it is hard to fill a class with so much uncertainty in yield. But again, follow this to its logical extreme of many state schools doing it, and the end result would be awful.
Probably because they are not. It is rather likely that the students who are complaining about this sort of thing underestimated UC Davis’ selectivity when applying (and did not take into account the increased selectivity when applying to popular majors), so they assumed it would be “safety” when it really is not.
@ucbalumnus you keep saying they aren’t doing it, but did you look through the threads?? As an example, somebody just posted a 2360 and 800s on SAT IIs and a 4.2 UC GPA and said they were wait-listed. I mean it’s competitive to get into UCD, no doubt, but not THAT competitive.
*doubtful, since UC-recalculated GPAs tend not to get that high due to the cap of 8 semesters’ worth of honors +1 points.
As noted previously, 3.80-4.19 GPA applicants had a 52% admission rate last year. It is entirely possible that selectivity increased this year, and many of the students in the above thread applied to majors that are likely more selective than the school overall. The above applicants, based on their GPAs, should not have thought of UC Davis as a “safety”. There is no indication from the above of “Tufts syndrome”, “yield protection”, or otherwise “level of applicant’s interest” games.
You need to include the test scores and consider things jointly to get the full picture. If the test scores are high, then that should move the probability of admission higher than the unconditional 52% number that you mentioned. Also clearly 4.19 should have a high probability of admission than 3.8. Adding scores to what you posted:
4.14, 1890/ 28; mechanical engineering
unknown (looked it up, it is 4.0), 33 ACT computer science
unknown, 27; economics
4.0, computer science
4.0, 1860/ 28 biological science
4.07, 32 ACT, 800 Math II; statistics
4.48*, 2170 SAT biomedical engineering
4.2, 2360 SAT, 800 SAT IIs; not specified
The last three of those to me are hmmm.
From other threads here are some more examples of people wait listed:
4.8; 36; unspecified engineering (said regents at other schools)
4.04; 2320; 800 Math II; Applied Math
4.1; 2230 Engineering - already accepted at Berkeley, Vanderbilt, and UCI
4.4; 34 780 Math II; Aerospace Engineering
4.2; 2160; Poly Sci
4.2; 34; Math
3.9; 2260; Economics
3.95; 34; Biology
4.43; 2120; BME
4.2; 2350; computer science (rejected outright)
3.9; 2270; 800 Physics 780 Math II; Physics (rejected outright)
4.0 unweighted ; 2160; 800 Math II, Physics, Chemistry ; Computer Science or Math; already into Case Western with scholarship, UCSD, and UIUC.
4.08 ; 35; 800 Math II Chemistry, 790 Physics; computer science
4.83 (weighted and #1 in class), 35, Computer Science
I don’t want to go through and find and post examples of lower stat folks who are admitted, because I don’t want to take anything away from their accomplishment. But hopefully my point is clear. These are some really high scores/tests combos. It looks very strange to me. I think we are going to have to agree to disagree.
^^ It looks like more than 1/2 of the list were applicants to engineering or computer science, which would have much higher bars than the average. And since UC GPAs cap at 4.40, a couple are overstated for sure.
My S was rejected from Davis with a 4.15 GPA and a 31 ACT. I was a bit surprised, but he did apply for civil engineering. We considered Davis a match school, certainly not a safety. There did seem to be some outliers (on the low end) on the acceptance thread, even in the engineering majors, but once a school uses holistic admissions, it is hard to judge by the numbers. Hopefully we will have better luck with other UCs.