What college enrolls the highest % of applicants?

Applying to College
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I’ve been thinking about this a lot: which colleges ultimately enroll the highest percentage of their applicants? A lot of colleges with very high yield (i.e. Harvard, UChicago) have exceedingly low acceptance rates, while colleges with high acceptance rates are often unselective state schools with very low yield.

While trying to figure it out (at least among the USNews T50 + T20 LACs) I used Texas A&M as a baseline, as it’s a popular university in a large state that still has a fairly high acceptance rate. According to their website, they enrolled 11,603 first-time freshmen out of 41,476 applicants in Fall 2022, meaning that 27.97% of applicants that year eventually enrolled.

From there, I looked for schools on those lists with acceptance rates above 27.97 percent. If they fit those criteria, I checked their enrolled/applied ratio, and I actually found no schools that beat A&M!

So I guess that for now, A&M wins out. But maybe I’m missing something? If anyone ever stumbles on an example that beats out A&M, I’d be very interested in seeing which school.

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Having close to 28% of applicants ultimately enroll in the university seems like a high percentage. If any school beats this, I would expect it to be a state school for the simple reason that a lot of in-state students will apply and choose to go there.

So I checked a few schools in the Northeast (where I live) to see what I would find.

For U.Mass Amherst, I found on the U.Mass web site that for the class that enrolled in September of 2023, they had 50,345 applicants, and 5,259 actually enrolled. This is of course quite a bit lower than the TAMU numbers that you provided.

For UNH I found an article in the New Hampshire Bulletin that states: “At UNH, the number of applicants has increased since 2019, from 18,474 for the 2019-2020 school year to 21,016 in the 2022-2023 school year. But the number of students who have actually attended after being accepted has dropped from 20 percent to 16 percent.”

For UVM I found 30,231 applicants, 18,075 acceptances, and 3,000 enrolled. Here again the percentage of applicants who enroll are way less than the TAMU numbers. UVM has quite a high number of out of state applicants and out of state students (who presumably also have options in other states).

Perhaps the more detailed numbers I found for U.Maine gives away a reason for lower “enrollment to applicants” ratio for smaller states. Among Maine residents, they had 4,335 applicants, of whom 1,259 enrolled. This is a 29% of applicants enrolled, which would beat the TAMU numbers (barely) if it weren’t for out of state applicants. Among out of state applicants, I see 10,376 applicants, of which 971 enrolled.

I am thinking that the Texas numbers might be higher due to its being such a large state, both in population and in physical size. Up here in New England you do not need to drive that far to get to the neighboring state’s flagship. In Texas just sheer distances might discourage attending university in other states.

This makes me wonder about New York and California. However, both of these states have so many very good universities that the percentage of applicants attending any one would seem likely to be smaller than the TAMU numbers.

Which made me wonder about Alaska. I do not think that I trust the numbers that I found. What I found suggested for U.Alaska Anchorage an acceptance rate of 65% and a yield rate of 41%, which comes out to an “applicant to enrolled” rate of 26.65%. This is close, but still not quite up to the TAMU numbers. However, I do not know if the numbers I found are accurate.

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Thinking of the characteristics of a school that could top A&M:

  • highly-regarded public school, but not THE prestigious flagship that would attract a swarms of OOS applicants
  • in a state where the flagship rejects a lot of applicants such that other public schools in the state get a higher yield
  • specific school culture reputation such that it would discourage shotgunning types
  • fanatical school loyalty and devotion to traditions spanning generations, again increasing yield

So, yeah, maybe no other school can beat out A&M.

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I think auto admit helps with yield too.

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Michigan State USNWR #60, has a 71% acceptance rate

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Did you check out ASU & UCF ?

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Acceptance rate alone can’t answer the question. What is their yield? The question is what percentage of applicants actually enroll.

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For fall 2023: 58,879 applications and 10,917 enrolled. 18.5%

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BYU blows TAMU away. They enrolled 5,565 of the 10,559 (52.7%) of applications.

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I see that’s an acceptance rate of 67% (not unusual), and a yield of 79% (super unusual for such high acceptance). Makes sense given the school and the applicant profile, not to mention the cost.

Anecdotally, the people I know who get into BYU tend to go to BYU. My kid has a friend that didn’t want to go and was relieved she didn’t get in. An LDS parent paying the bills would have a hard time turning down that offer ($6500 yearly tuition)!

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University of Wyoming’s latest CDS says that 1,627 enrolled for frosh entry, or 28% of the 5,797 who applied.

Arizona State University’s latest CDS says that 15,151 enrolled for frosh entry, or 22% of the 68789 who applied.

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I think that this is a very good point. Auto-admit at UT Austin probably makes a big difference for the yield at Texas A&M. If there was no auto-admit, then the in-state students who are going to end up at UT Austin would have also applied to Texas A&M. However, if a student is auto-admit for UT Austin, then they do not need to also apply to TAMU.

When I saw how high the “applicant to yield” ratio was at TAMU, the first thing that I thought of was “what about all of the students who end up at UT Austin but also apply to TAMU”. Auto-admit is probably the answer to why this does not pull down the TAMU numbers.

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Kennesaw State University
Applied 21,106
Admitted 14,320
Enrolled 7,024

So 33%

This is actually down from a few years ago.

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Kennesaw State University is growing in popularity among Georgia students as the University of Georgia & Georgia Tech are overwhelmed with applications due to the free tuition plans for qualifying Georgia residents funded by the state lottery.

Kennesaw State’s campus is beautiful & located in a very nice section of the state of Georgia.

Had a cousin who held (now retired) a chaired professorship there for years. Nothing but positive comments about the university.

P.S. The Southern Polytech campus was used by many as a steppingstone to admission to Georgia tech with advanced standing. My reference was to Kennesaw State’s campus in Kennesaw.

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Their yield used to be more than 60%. Among the highest. But as UGA & Tech have gotten harder to get into, more students are applying to Kennesaw and yield has gone down somewhat.

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Both campuses are nice. The old Southern Poly one in Marietta is not as nice as the main campus in Kennesaw but I like it.

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This made me think of UAlaska Fairbanks, which I believe is the state flagship. Their common data set says that 627 out of 1414 applicants enrolled, or 44.34 percent. Still, looks like BYU wins out!

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I’m thinking Michigan State is in a similar position…

Maybe also NC State, VA Tech, FSU, Washington State…

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My mistake

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Some states aren’t going to be in the running for this if they have free applications for instate.

In Colorado, residents can apply to all state schools with a check mark on a single application, so why not? Most have no intention of attending Colorado School of Mines or Ft. Lewis, or Mesa, but why not give it a check mark and see if a huge financial grant comes your way?

My twin nephews each applied to 10 or more schools but had they had to pay $50 per application, I think they would have each applied to two, and if my brother was paying, each probably would have just applied to one!

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