<p>Take the improvement in yield (percentage of admitted students who actually enroll), which was 38.7 percent this year, up from 33.4 percent last year, and 30.9 percent two years ago.</p>
<p>“The striking jump in yield is all the more impressive when you consider that the vast majority of our students were also admitted to several other elite private schools and, thus, had wonderful choices,” said Mike Mills, associate provost for university enrollment. “Increasingly, students are choosing Northwestern for its uniqueness among the nation’s top schools.”</p>
<p>The jump in the yield followed a 25 percent increase in early decision applications of students who took themselves off the market to commit to only Northwestern if accepted. And the total number of applications -- 30,975 -- was 12 percent higher than last year and nearly double the number received in fall 2005 (16,228). Accordingly, only 18 percent of applicants were admitted this year, versus 23.10 percent last year.</p>
<p>The Class of 2015 represents 50 states and 32 countries; 7.2 percent (6.9 percent last year) of the students are African American; 9 percent (8.2 percent last year) are Hispanic; 7 percent are international students; 7 percent are multilingual; and 19 percent come from families who are first-generation Americans. Ninety-one percent of the admitted students were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes, and 14 percent are Pell Grant recipients. </p>
<p>I don’t see this as anything to cheer about; this bodes poorly for next year’s applicants, who may well have to contend with an acceptance rate below 15%. Northwestern’s appeal used to be that a kid with a stellar by not perfect high school record – maybe not enough leadership positions or couldn’t ace the ACT/SAT – could still get an Ivy League-quality education. Now it’s getting to the point where you’d better be exceptional in every way or it’s state college for you!</p>
<p>does anyone know how many students tend to “melt” before school actually starts? the reason i ask is because i’m a hopeful transfer applicant and i really hope to get in! but i’m worried since the class is so big.</p>
<p>Transfer, it sounds like Northwestern accepted too many students this year for the slots available and is hoping both for some “melt” and some gap year requests. It’s unlikely those students will get replaced.</p>
<p>“Northwestern’s appeal used to be that a kid with a stellar by not perfect high school record – maybe not enough leadership positions or couldn’t ace the ACT/SAT – could still get an Ivy League-quality education.”</p>
<p>I’m not easily offended, but somehow I find this really insulting. Really, NU has never been “leftovers.”</p>
<p>^ Agreed. Also, it’s silly to think that Northwestern is losing its appeal in becoming more selective, or that increased selectivity is an issue unique to Northwestern. It is a national trend that colleges everywhere are becoming more and more selective, and the fact is that selectivity is often what draws students to various universities. While this may make it harder on applicants next year, it pretty much guarantees that the students who come to NU in future years will be even more incredible students. I really can’t see how this is a bad thing for anyone.</p>
<p>Hardly leftovers! My son and I are currently helping one of his junior-level classmates prep for a re-take of the ACT. This young lady’s first choice is Northwestern, and she is absolutely incredible: Ranked 3 in a class of 400, NHS President, competitive on math team and scholastic bowl, a great writer, a marathon runner, and deeply committed to doing good deeds with nearly 900 hours of community service already under her belt. Her only downfall? An ACT of 27.</p>
<p>Two years ago she certainly would have been among the 5 or 6 accepted from my son’s Chicago high school. This year only two were accepted, a decade low. We fear she will be found appealing but ultimately won’t make the cut, unless we can get her ACT score up sharply.</p>
<p>@LoremIpsum, if she could rank 3rd in her class, I am sure she could score higher on ACT. Unlike SAT, students who do well in classwork do score high in ACT. It’s surprising that she only scored 27.</p>
<p>I also thought your comment above didn’t really make sense. Increased selectivity could only benefit NU and its student body drawing future students from a bigger pool of applicants who are stellar in both academics and other activities. I understand that this change would hurt some of the applicants like the one you have mentioned, but this hardly means that the school itself is losing its appeal.</p>
<p>Of course, Northwestern is not losing its appeal, far from it! It’s more like having known a favorite restaurant and now no longer being able to get in because the place got trendy and exclusive. My lament is for the top-ranked Midwestern public school kids who have never before looked beyond the Midwest and whose guidance counselors haven’t yet begun to teach these kids how to sculpt the perfect resume beginning in 9th grade.</p>
<p>I am fairly sure we can get the young woman in question to raise her ACT score from 27 to the mid-30’s. She was quite stunned when my son showed her 20-second shortcut solutions to math problems that may take 3 or 4 minutes to solve using brute force. Now that she realizes that the ACT is more like a strategy game than a conventional classroom test, she’ll do just fine, jettisoning diligence for out-of-the-box thinking.</p>
<p>Lorem - I don’t get you thoughts at all. My daughter, ending her sophomore year, was admitted to Dartmouth and Yale but waitlisted at NU. (She did not, btw, “sculpt” the perfect resume in high school, she just took classes that she wanted to.) There are many, many, many options between Ivy League and state colleges all over the country with many excellent “Ivy League quality” programs.</p>
<p>It seems that your problem is with mid-Western families and guidance counselors who have mainly focused on NU. Expanding their horizon of wonderful potential colleges should be a plus not a minus.</p>
<p>What you say is true, but when admission rates plummet rapidly, as has happened over the last 2-3 years at NU and U of C, it takes time for that understanding to filter out to parents and counselors. Most public school counselors tend to reference historic Naviance data and those averages may be 4-5 years out of date. Many parents base their advice on the success of an older sibling or cousin or neighbor’s child who may have gotten in 3-4 years ago. This can leave many promising candidates unprepared for the current reality until it’s too late.</p>
<p>By “sculpted,” I don’t mean the high school classes chosen, but rather the development of leadership roles in multiple ECs plus significant community service involvement. These elements of a “balanced portfolio” are not obvious to a kid who comes from a school where most of his or her peers only apply to state or community colleges. They would not have been obvious to my son and me, had I not discovered CC a year and a half back.</p>
<p>In the longer run, everything will work itself out. In the short run, I know some truly promising kids who could well miss their shot at a superior education.</p>
<p>Well, it’s of course different for every math problem; the other sections have more global strategies (in science, ignore most of the opening text and focus on the graphs if you hope to finish). It’s mostly a matter of looking at the test from a different perspective: If you realize that the ACT has these repeated back-door solutions, you stop relying on your calculator (a distraction!) and start to look for them.</p>
<p>Here’s a specific math example that I wrote up for my son’s friend:</p>