"At least 50 percent of accepted applicants at these schools decided to enroll … Many schools with a high yield are selective. Yield, the percentage of admitted students who enroll, is big business in college admissions. Schools want their yield rate to be as high as possible, because it not only reflects popularity among applicants but also allows institutions to shape and set the tone of the incoming freshman class.
Stanford University in California, which accepted 5 percent of applicants in fall 2016, had the highest yield among any National University, according to the data that 294 ranked National Universities submitted to U.S. News in an annual survey. A National University offers a wide range of undergraduate majors as well master’s and doctoral degrees.
The California institution boasted a yield of 82.1 percent in fall 2016 – an increase of nearly two percentage points compared with the prior year." …
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2018-01-23/universities-colleges-where-students-are-eager-to-enroll
So wealthy schools that can afford to give generous financial aid and less expensive public schools have a high yield. No surprise there.
Well, yes, but there are some on the list that don’t fit that criteria. BYU is #2 on the list of highest yield universities, which makes sense once I think about it. There are also a number of public institutions. The article left me wanting more detailed information about the schools that aren’t big names - what is it about them that makes them so good at predicting yield?
Predicting yield is not the same as getting high yield.
Well they might be predicting who will say yes or no really well and factoring that into admissions, thus resulting in a high yield.
Many of the ones with high yield seem to be regional favorites, or another specific selection criterion. For example Berea selects mainly from one region plus those who want their “work” model. I’m sure that they have an essay and / or interview to help find those students. Several of the publics on the list I am betting know their regional drawing pool well. Then there are the service academies – they have selection process that weeds out students well. And Barnard has the same selectivity as Columbia and FA advantage, plus it’s a women’s college which narrows things further. The large state flagships like North Dakota, Alaska, and Nebraska – there aren’t that many other schools for those students to choose from.
Not a lot of mystery on this list, IMO
Just looking at the yield rate is meaningless. It must couple to a low admission rate to make it a school students really ever to attend. Our local CC has very high yield too as only those will attend applied. I don’t think they are that eager to attend or if they have a choice. Lower yield rate may also due to large population of OOS admission like UMich. The OOS yield is around 1/3 or in state.
Many public universities don’t mind being used as safeties and don’t mind having low yields (so they don’t reject overqualified applicants), but they still want to be able to predict yield so that they do not overenroll or underenroll. Presumably, they can model the chance that a given admit will yield based on past history of admits of similar strength (an admit with top-end stats is less likely to yield than an admit who barely clears the admission threshold), although they may still have uncertainty based on factors outside their own school (e.g. changes in other schools’ admission, financial aid, and scholarship practices changing how attractive those other schools are to the same admits).