@ClarinetDad16 That has to do with location. UAF attracts a completely different crowd than the other group you mention. Comparing it to Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn is completely apples to oranges. On the other hand Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn attract practically the same group of students, or at least highly overlapping groups of students so the comparison is valid.
^ The measures of yield and admit rate should apply to ALL kinds of schools, regardless. Yield rate or admit rate by itself sometimes will mislead. However, the ratio of yield to admit would avoid the shortcomings of both. For instance, BYU has an admit rate of 54% and UAF has an admit rate of 70%. So, the yield/admit ratios of both will separate them hundreds of miles from Princeton or Yale. ( did not mean to be mean, just try to clear the concepts, sorry)
@ewho yield/admit ratio has its limitations too. NYU has a yield to admit ratio of about 1. BYU has a yield to admit ratio of 1.5. Does that say something about the popularity/selectivity/quality of BYU vs NYU? The two schools attract completely different applicant pools.
To me it makes no sense that yield should apply to ALL kinds of schools. schools attract completely different student pools, different geographically, academically, socioeconomically etc.
Comparing yield for the top 20 schools makes sense to me. Comparing the yield of an ivy league school located in a major city on the east coast or a school like NYU, with the yield of a mormon school in Provo, Utah makes no sense. Regardless of acceptance rate.
On the other hand it makes sense comparing a school NYU to any Ivy in terms of yield since many applicants use NYU as a backup to their top choices.
And by the same measure, US Naval Academy = Princeton or Yale. Check it out.
If Schools A and B both have high yield/admit ratios, then that tells you that the slots at these schools are highly valued by their respective applicant pools. But if there isn’t much overlap between the two applicant pools, then comparison of the two ratios may not be very meaningful.
I also think interest of average applicant also comes into play a lot in yield. A school that has no essays to write will draw in much more disinterested applicants than a school that has 4 essays. The amount of mail the college sends will also effect how interested the average applicant is. A college that has strong applicant recruiting tactics will also draw more disinterested students than a school that doesn’t use mail as much, resulting in less applicants deciding to apply because “why not? Never heard of this school but its highly ranked so I guess I’ll increase my odds by applying to another top school and if I get in I can actually look at it”.
Just me but I also think these tactics lower yield more than they do decrease acceptance rate. Acceptance rate will somewhat decrease because they receive more applicants, but given that these additional applicants are less likely to attend if accepted, I don’t think that it has a great effect, whereas a lot more disinterested students will be accepted and yield will ultimately lower.
Should they be grouped in tiers? Like what USNEWS did for the schools below certain levels?
Why US Naval Academy can not be compared with Princeton and Yale?
We can make the comparison of yield/admit ratios, but I doubt that the result is meaningful, because I doubt that there is a great deal of overlap in their respective applicant pools.
We could also compare the yield/admit ratios of UCLA (35/17 = 2.06) and Liberty University (45/22 = 2.05), but again I doubt that the result would be very meaningful, for the same reason.
Does this say something about the “same” kind of “desirability” for their own applicant pools? How do you measure that then, if we don’t use yield or/and admit rate?
I think it shows that both schools are considered desirable within their respective applicant pools. But they cannot be validly compared to each other, because their respective pools are probably very different.
It might be reasonable to compare UCLA’s ratio to those of schools like Berkeley or USC, because there could be substantially similar applicant pools in those cases.
It might be reasonable to compare Liberty’s ratio to those of schools like Regent or Oral Roberts, because there could be substantially similar applicant pools in those cases.
But I personally wouldn’t draw any conclusions from a comparison of UCLA’s ratio and Liberty’s ratio, even though they are nearly identical. That’s just my opinion though, you are welcome to disagree.
The list goes on and on, Kennesaw State, Georgia Southern, University of Florida to name three have really high yields.
If yield demonstrates popularity, strength of brand, kids excited to attend, schools that win the jump ball…
The number is the number. You can explain it away to one factor or another, disregard Early Decision, waitlist, affinity, location, selectivity, etc.
But yield is yield and one can compare schools to other schools using the number to rank. Or actually look at the sub-data say for RD to rank on that basis.
Some interesting schools with very high yields.
@Corbett so it makes more sense to measure the same “species.” I’ll agree on this.
I have no idea what to take away from yield/admit ratio but I’m still really glad someone posted them.
Pasadena is not the same as Boston to many 19 year olds.
For students who are into “STEM”, CIT is a very specific taste. You either like it or you don’t. MIT can be more things to more people. Stanford can be even more things to more people.
In my experience with students that is a bit of the reason. (or. see #11 which I read after I made this post…)
I am going to guess that you don’t live in the Northeast. 
The Ivy League crowd (not sure if they qualify as the real world) takes this stuff really seriously. (I think there is a clause in the Ivy League Joint Marketing Agreement that states that if your yield drops below some predetermined level, you risk expulsion from the league.)
Here is Dartmouth’s announcement for the Class of 2020. The title and first three paragraphs are all about yield.
http://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2016/05/yield-increases-to-53-for-class-of-2020/
Note that the director of admissions moved to a new position after the yield dropped a few points for the class of 2019 and they started a search for a new director…
To be fair, that is not an official Dartmouth announcement. "The Dartmouth" is an independent student-run newspaper (note the .com address). So it was students, not the Dartmouth administration, that decided on the editorial slant of that particular story.
The official Dartmouth announcement about the Class of 2020, which was issued on the same day, is here (note the .edu address):
https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2016/05/1156-accept-offer-join-class-2020
The official announcement, unlike the story in the student paper, does not obsess about yield in the first 3 paragraphs. It waits until paragraphs 4 and 5.
When you invite guests to your party, only 40% actually come. I assume that it is not a good thing to tell your neighbors, especially when you think that everyone wants to come.
On the other hand, you want more people interested in your party, the more the better, so you can choose the ones you want.
You want more invited people to come
/ (over)
to choose the people from a large pool.
Which in that case UCLA is the most popular school in the country.
And if you want the school kids are most eager to attend (if accepted) that is BYU.
@ewho you want more people interested in coming to your your party but you also want as many high-quality people as possible coming to your party… both quantity and quality…
The party analogy doesn’t really work for the admissions process at selective colleges. If it did, then you would start by sending out party announcements to hundreds of people in your town, inviting them to RSVP. Then, after you receive lots of RSVPs, you would write back to most of the people who ressponded, to tell them that they’ve been disinvited. You would try to impress your friends by disinviting as many people as possible.