<p>Wesleyan's president, Michael Roth, announced on his blog today that Wesleyan has received over 10,000 applications for admission for 2013. This is over a 20% increase, and Roth also noted that Wesleyan's peers have not seen this tremendous rise in apps.</p>
<p>Good luck to everyone, although Wes will definitely be admitting more students this year, due to a lower predicted yield and the desire to raise the incoming class size slightly for financial reasons.</p>
<p>Wow!!
I didn't know they were changing the size of Wes classes -- will it be dramatically different?
Is the lower predicted yield because of the economy, or what?</p>
<p>Thanks for posting this</p>
<p>lower predicted yield is because people are applying to more schools 9-10 vs. 7-8 for example... not dramatically lower, but a percentage point or two. </p>
<p>wes is planning in increasing the incoming class size from 720 to 750 for the next four years to boost revenue a tad. overall size of Wes should go from 2,750 to 2,900. shouldnt have much of a noticeable effect, especially since Wes is keeping its student faculty ratio at 9:1 by hiring professors even in this crappy economic environment. Wes has at least 4 faculty searches ongoing right now. class size should go back to 720 beginning with class of 2017. this class increase is all speculative, as the trustees will vote in february whether to implement it</p>
<p>It makes me extremely happy to see this kind of attention being showered on our school but I hope we avoid having an excess in enrollment like the class of 2010. We can assume that there will be a lower yield, just hope the yield falls within the predicted numbers. Adding an extra 30 students won't affect life too much, or at all, but are the trustees still talking about increasing the frosh class for several successive years or is this proposed hike the only increase?</p>
<p>So, guesses as to what the RD acceptance rating will be? :</p>
<p>the proposal on the table for the trustees would be for 4 consecutive classes to be 30 students larger... no more, no less I assume. as for the acceptance rate, I dont think it will fall by too much. because of a lower predicted yield, Wes will admit over 2,000 so I'd bet between 20-25%</p>
<p>Even if it's 25%, the admit rate will decrease 4 percentage points. That's insane.</p>
<p>Sigh :(</p>
<p>I think judging by numbers like that is a bit misleading, though -- what if the extra 2,000 applicants decided to apply because of something dumb like alum success in bands? Applicants shallow enough to apply for a reason like that would likely not have the academic creds to get into Wesleyan, so they may not be real "competition".
I mean, I doubt <em>all</em> of them are band groupies or something, but I'm just pointing out that it may not affect qualified applicants as much as one might think. :)</p>
<p>Dumb/naive question, but how does the school ensure that the incoming class expands by only 30 students? What if a lot more students than expected accept Wesleyan's admission and enroll?</p>
<p>there's no way of insuring that. that's why it is a bit of a tempest in a teapot, in the sense that there have been years when the adcoms "overadmited" by at least that much -- followed by a lower admit the next year. The point is, it amounts to no more than a rounding error in the larger scheme of things.</p>
<p>FWIW, Amherst is also increasing its class size this year, by 25 students -- and, that's a permanent decision:
The</a> Amherst Student | News | College Admits 31 Percent of Early</p>
<p>I don't think that band or entertainment success would be a direct cause of a surge in applications but it certainly would give you a reason to run a google search that would open a door to Wesleyan and other LACS, which might not normally be on a student's radar. LAC's were not on most people's radar at my HS. If you didn't get into an ivy, then you went to a high profile Catholic college. Word of mouth generates interest and any kind of mainstream success would stimulate that kind of attention.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>I agree with kman. I don't think there are that many people who would apply JUST because they want to go to the same school as MGMT, or whatever. But Wes has just been in the media more because of alumni success, which means more people will look into it, etc.</p>
<p>I think Wes also got a boost when Obama stepped in for Teddy to do the speech. Just a guess. =P</p>
<p>That too :D In general, Wes's name has just been in the media more, recently.</p>
<p>In recent years, Wesleyan has been getting significantly more applications than its Little Three counterparts. The unusual thing (at least to me) is that this difference is due almost entirely to Wesleyan's popularity with female applicants.</p>
<p>The most recent data I could find, for Fall 2006 admissions, show the difference. The numbers for male applicants were remarkably consistent (less than 2% difference) for all Little Three schools:</p>
<p>2,941 Wesleyan
2,956 Amherst
2,899 Williams</p>
<p>But the numbers for female applicants showed a quite different story:</p>
<p>4,301 Wesleyan
3,724 Amherst
3,100 Williams</p>
<p>Not sure why Wesleyan is so much more popular with women. It would be interesting to learn if this factor is continuing to contribute to the current increase in applications.</p>
<p>^ I'd be interested to see if that trend is being held constant, but something else is going on. Brown apps went up 21% but every other elite school saw far more modest increases if not a decrease. To further justify my mainstream hypothesis, there were many wes shoutouts on last night's How I Met Your Mother. Including this interesting website regarding a certain mysterious WESU 88.1 former DJ [////////</a> D O C T O R X \\](<a href="http://mysteriousdrx.com/%5D////////">http://mysteriousdrx.com/)</p>
<p>Maybe there is a trend to less preppy, more liberal schools. Brown and Wesleyan both fit this description.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Brown apps went up 21% but every other elite school saw far more modest increases if not a decrease.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Maybe it's coincidental, but Brown, like Wesleyan, is also noted for attracting female applicants. For example, compare the following numbers (from 2007-08 Common Data Sets):</p>
<p>Male Applicants:</p>
<p>7,714 Brown
7,036 Dartmouth</p>
<p>Female Applicants:</p>
<p>11,383 Brown
7,140 Dartmouth</p>
<p>^ WOW, lol. So I suppose it's much easier for a boy to get into Brown than for a girl?</p>
<p>Basically, if you're a white girl without a 2400 on the SAT or an amputated leg, you're screwed. SIGH. :(</p>