Note that you are probably overestimating the effect of very high test scores. UCs appear not to emphasize test scores that much once they are above a threshold range (which varies by campus and major/division). UCs are probably not like CSUs where extra SAT or ACT points compensate linearly for lesser GPAs.
In any case, the listings above (discarding the GPAs that are too high to be UC-weighted GPAs, which top out at around 4.3 or 4.4 for those who took maximum honors courses with an unweighted 4.0) do not suggest “Tufts syndrome” or “yield protection”. Remember, even those with >= 4.20 UC-weighted GPAs were admitted at 89%, not 100%, last year. Throw in the effect of applying to popular majors (including engineering and CS majors), and we see that it is not surprising that some students with those stats did not get admitted to UC Davis.
Isn’t that one of the colleges that gets ~50k applications for half as many seats? I would imagine many very qualified students are rejected.
I don’t think college admissions is purely stats driven. They don’t rank the standardized test scores and take the top 22k, or however many students they need to fill their seats, they read the applications and accept the students that fill an institutional need. Having high test scores puts you in the running. It doesn’t guarantee acceptance.
I agree w/ @ucbalumnus . Also, the plural of anecdote is not data. I’m not sure how much we can really glean from self-reported scores on a public forum, especially when a school is considering 10s of thousands of applications. Always, there will be strange results that can’t be easily explained. My daughter’s GC likes to tell the story of a student whose number 1 school was UC Santa Cruz. He was rejected to Santa Cruz but got into Cal. Who knows why? The UCs have 14 factors they consider in their holistic review – there’s a lot that can go into admissions. I’ve seen the headscratchers among my kid’s friends – like a super-strong student who was WL at Davis, while other students were accepted. But I think the applicant pool is so large at the UCs, and certain majors (like engineering and comp. sci.) are so competitive, we can’t say there is any kind of yield protection going on w/out a lot more data.
The results do not even seem to be that strange. Most of the complaining seems to be with respect to “test score heavy” applicants with second-tier GPAs (UC-weighted 3.80-4.19, probably 3.4-3.8 unweighted), often applying to popular majors.
I don’t mean to offend anyone. I am a huge supporter of the UC system and what they do. They are an engine of prosperity for the state, and we are blessed to live here and have that option.
That said, I am pretty frustrated. I get it, some people don’t think there is anything out of the ordinary going on. That is why I said arguably in my original post. Because I don’t know for sure. There certainly is not going to be enough data on here to convince anyone or prove anything. If you truly believe in your heart of hearts that it is not happening, I am not going to change your mind. But I only ask you leave it out there as a possibility for the sake of answering my original question, even if you don’t think it likely. I did not title the thread “UC Davis is managing yield!”
What happened with UCD in some cases strikes me odd when considered in conjunction with the grades and scores of some of the acceptances. And while I agree grades are more important than scores for the UCs, more is usually better than less on all fronts from what I can tell. If you look at Naviance-style clouds, it is clear.
But I can never know they didn’t all send in an application with typos, act like a jerk to their recommenders, and so on.That said, another poster (2290 sat 4.1 UC GPA, rejected from CS) just said " A lot of people at my school who already got into ivies, regents berk/LA, MIT etc. were rejected or waitlisted by Davis. A lot of people with stats like me, maybe a bit higher, were rejected."
I would appreciate it if people take a crack instead at my original question - would it be okay for state schools to practice yield management and why or why not? If you don’t agree it is happening at UCD, that is your prerogative.
@inn0v8r I’ll take a crack at your question – is it OK for the UCs to practice yield protection? TBH, I don’t know. Yield protection wasn’t a concept I was familiar with before joining CC. My understanding is that the private schools who practice it often have demonstrated interest (via visits, interviews, and essay, etc.) as factor of admission, which the UCs do not. In that way, the private schools are better able to gauge whether a particular applicant is truly interested in the school or put it down as a safety. In addition, since there is only a single UC application, there is no way to show what your top choice is. So the only way the UCs would have to practice yield protection is to reject or WL kids who fit a profile that is less likely to accept, and I think that’s a pretty crude method. We are in Northern California, and there are kids at our public school who would be MUCH more likely to choose UCSC or UCD over UCSB or UCSD for proximity reasons, even though the other schools are arguably higher ranked. If those kids are high stats and get WL/rejected from UCSC for yield protection reasons, that’s a problem. I guess that it is all to say that IF the UCs were to actually practice yield protection, it would be great if applicants had a way to demonstrate interest in particular campus. But then that adds a whole additional layer to applications – will kids have to write a “why this campus?” for each school? Will the schools start to track visits? I don’t know the answer. The UC application would have to change – you couldn’t have a single application where applicants were expected to say “UCSD is my top choice and here’s why, and TBH UCR is my safety.”
I do not think that generalized state universities should play the "level of applicant's interest" game to raise their yield. Presumably, they do have yield management, but mainly in the context of predicting yield (e.g. knowing that, for example, only 1 out of 20 admits in a given "overqualified" range will matriculate, versus 1 out of 2 admits for whom this school was a reach), but that is not the same as rejecting "overqualified" applicants.
The "evidence" posted in these threads does not make much of an argument that UC Davis is rejecting "overqualified" applicants for the purpose of raising yield. Most examples are in the second tier GPA range (last year's admit rate 52% for that range), and many applied to popular majors with higher selection thresholds -- in other words, they may be seen as *less* qualified by the admissions readers, relative to others whom they rate higher. The applicants in question only seem "overqualified" because many people here overrate the effect of SAT/ACT scores on admissions. Additionally, UC Davis says that "level of applicant's interest" is "not considered" for admission purposes.
Thank you for the thoughtful response @LionsMum . There is definitely a “sorting” problem, whether it be for the UCs or for schools in general. I wonder if the UCs might ever have a system where you rank the schools you are applying to or something. Of course, one doesn’t know how the finances are going to look until they get the results back.
Is it possible an acceptance at a higher-ranked UC could hurt your chances at another one? This was an interesting question posed by a poster on the other wait-list thread.
My best guess would be if there is yield protection going on, it is really just to try to deal with the scarce seats in the popular majors primarily, as an earlier poster mentioned. If you are looking at accepting 4 people with a 25% chance matriculating (by your estimate) versus 10 people with a 10% chance of matriculating, then while both fill the same expected number of seats, the latter has a much higher variance of the number of seats filled. Yield protection is probably not even the right name for it. Enrollment management?
Yeah. I’m kind of in that bucket at the moment. I’m a bit shocked that I didn’t get in. Granted, my UC GPA isn’t extremely high, but I’ve seen applicants with worse GPAs and test scores getting in, and to the same major (Computer Science and Engineering), at that. This seems to be a pattern with UC Davis. On numerous occasions there were applicants who got into (much) more competitive schools getting denied or waitlisted to Davis. However, there is a subjective portion of the application (as manifested in the essays and EC section) that could have made the admissions officers think that the student was not a good fit for the school. There’s definitely a lot of factors present in the application that determine whether the applicant gets accepted, so it’s impossible to say for sure that there is any specific reason or reasons causing higher GPA and test score applicants getting waitlisted or denied.
I think once you have an essay involved with the admission process there is no guarantee high stats will get you in to any college. Just think, one statement from an essay may give the impression that you are arrogant, a suck up, not really interested in their school, or a number of other issues. Simply having the grades and test scores does not necessarily make you a “desirable applicant.” Reading an essay is highly subjective and someone may just not like you that much…
I think everyone also needs to understand that the content of one’s transcript such as specific coursework and grades in specific classes are highly relevant to specific majors such as CS and engineering. For example, high performance consistently in math and science courses shown by accelerated work, AP scores, Subject tests and SAT/ACT sub scores in those areas as well as work outside of school in those areas will make a huge difference in the weighting that a school will afford to an applicant in a STEM major for example. And I also think people do not understand the level of test scores and GPA required at the midpoint to be competitive in an Engineering school whether it be UCD, UCSD, Georgia Tech etc. The acceptance rate and midpoint for scores and GPA is VERY different in schools with a highly ranked Engineering school than it is for an admit to other schools in the university and it isn’t always published in detail. And keep in mind for those being rejected in CS majors at any school this year, the competition is super fierce, the number of spots for those majors are limited and if a school does not consider an alternate major, you could be shut out when you would have been accepted for another STEM major much more easily.
Also, UCs will look at your record relative to others at your high school. If you have high stats, but not as high as your peers, or did not get ELC status, or didn’t have as much rigor, that could lower your chances. I will admit that there seem to be more head scratchers at Davis than at the other UCs, but I would be more inclined to believe it’s more about “fit” than some kind of yield protection. There are plenty of kids with even higher stats who do get accepted. Plus, at the tier Davis is in, I would think rejecting high stats kids would be at best a wash rankings-wise. You would be more selective, but at the expense of lower average stats for your accept pool. Maybe at the Harvard/Princeton level yield protection makes sense, but not at a school that has a 20% yield like the mid-tier UCs all have.
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering is very very competitive at UCD due to its proximity to Silicon Valley. Many students in EECS go on to work for Facebook, Google, and other tech giants. It is my belief that UCD doesn’t have tufts syndrome, but rather their EECS program is extremely competitive and should not be considered a safety or even target for most applicants.
I have two friends who did not get into UCD. One of whom had a perfect 36 on the ACT. Both were EECS applicants. In addition, neither are competitive enough for UCD to reject them from tufts, since both were also rejected from UCLA EECS. Fortunately one got into Northwestern and another into JHU BME.
So after reading some other comments from posters, apparently there some very high grade / high test score people who were rejected from UCD, and not just in CS/EECS etc. But the same folks said there others were accepted with these high stats. So it is not clear to me whether it is “Tufts” syndrome or not.
I do note that they also consider applications by department, so maybe that caused some weird randomness. And @chx178 that is a great point on proximity to silicon valley making it even more competitive.
At least I think we all generally agree “Tufts” syndrome would not be okay from a state school…the original purpose of my thread.
It could also be that a lot of people are trying for more STEM (mostly engineering) majors. I was waitlisted to BME at UCD, and I know people with similar stats to mine who have been accepted to UCD and Cal Poly SLO for majors such as biology or economics (I managed to get into SLO for BME though). I’m also aware that a LOT of people tried to apply for Computer Science and Business, causing those majors to become impacted (possibly due to the societal push towards programming as a norm).