What's the utility of EA?

<p>But since the yield rate on early admits (and deferred early admits taken later) is higher, they constitute a higher fraction of the matriculant group.</p>

<p>Which, honestly, is fine with me, Byerly.</p>

<p>"Not to disagree with your post, but to clarify, a total of 1483 were admitted. 45% of admitees were EA."</p>

<p>Thanks! Even less alarming. :)</p>

<p>How does this square with the claim that there were 1,513 admits, when both domestic and international categories are counted?</p>

<p><a href="http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statistics/index.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statistics/index.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The 1,513 number for total admits, with 1,009 matriculants, has appeared elsewhere. It is from these numbers that I have calculated the 66.7% yield rate.</p>

<p>Perhaps somebody forgot to add in the waitlist admits someplace.</p>

<p>For the purposes being discussed the wait list admits can't be used as there is no way to tell which (EA or RA) pool they came from.</p>

<p>Well the yield rate is not disclosed for the early admits vs the regular admits in any event, with ot without EA deferreds or waitlistees.</p>

<p>Byerly, they only admitted 30 from the waitlist last year. Statistically insignificant.</p>

<p>Matt said [url=<a href="http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answers/autumn_questions_omnibus.shtml%5Dyesterday%5B/url"&gt;http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answers/autumn_questions_omnibus.shtml]yesterday[/url&lt;/a&gt;]

[quote]

Finally, because some people are confused about this -- each year, we admit what we anticipate to be 30% of our enrolling class early. This past year, we admitted 377 students early, anticipating an 80% yield, or 301 of those students to enroll. Ultimately, we saw 299 of them enroll (pretty good guesswork!). This was 29.8% of our enrolling class. We deferred 2370 applicants who we felt could be competitive in the regular action pool, and put them at equal standing with the regular action applicants. Ultimately, 295 deferred students were among the 1106 students we admitted during regular action. Again, we aspire to leave 70% of our class to be filled during regular action, with competitive students deferred from early and applying regular evaluated on equal standing.

[/quote]

So the yield for EA applicants was 80% and for RD applicants was 63%, with an overall yield of 67%.</p>

<p>Don't forget the waitlistees, Mollie</p>

<p>Well, then add an error bar of about 2% to that 63% figure -- if all of the 30 waitlistees matriculated, the RD-minus-waitlist yield would be 61.4%, and if none of them matriculated, the RD-minus-waitlist yield would be 64.2%.</p>

<p>Do waitlistees tend to matriculate at a higher rate than non-waitlistees? I wouldn't tend to think so, but I don't have any information one way or another.</p>

<p>Are you kidding? Waitlistees tend to come in a very close to a 100% yield rate, since they are quizzed about their interest before formal admission. Thus, 30 waitlist admits may raise the admit rate, but they ALSO raise the overall yield rate.</p>

<p>And to reiterate, the admit rate for applicants in the early pool, originally and after initial deferral, was about 22.6%</p>

<p>The yield rate on the motivated deferrees was not reported, but I would estimate it at between 70-75%.</p>

<p>Thus, at a minimum, about 47% of the class was filled by "motivated" applicants from the early pool, and 53% by "regular" RD applicants. There were 8,408 "regular" applicants, and 811 of them were admitted. </p>

<p>Admit rate for "true" RD applicants - 9.6%. Yield rate on "true" RD admits - perhaps 61% - assuming a class of 1,009.</p>

<p>Oh, I didn't know -- I thought maybe their yield would be lower because they may already have decided firmly to attend another school.</p>

<p>Those who express no interest for whatever reason - such as having accepted a place elsewhere - are not admitted from the waitlist. Waitlist admission is a case by case thing, since it is generally used to fill "holes" in the class, diversity-wise.</p>

<p>Again, based on the best evidence:</p>

<p>Overall yield rate: 66.7% (1,513 admits, 1,009 matriculants)
Early applicant yield rate >75%
RD applicant yield rate - about 61%</p>

<p>Early pool admit rate: 22.6% (including deferreds)
RD admit rate - 9.6% ("true" RD applicants only)</p>

<p>I see. Well, I only know one of the waitlist admittees, and she matriculated. I guess I could have extrapolated from that data point. :)</p>

<p>I will be interested to see if Harvard's yield goes down when they eliminate EA. I suspect that they will still be picking the same kids, but in one unified pool -- so the outcome will be the same, and the same percentage of "high-yield" and "low-yield" applicants will be admitted, we will just not be able to analyze it at this level of detail.</p>

<p>In the same vein, I truly do believe that the increased yield from MIT's EA pool arises from a better fit with MIT rather than the fact that EA applicants matriculate at a slightly higher rate. And I understand that you believe it works the other way around. I think it is not possible to distinguish between those two possibilities given the data to which we have access.</p>

<p>I was thinking about this the other day -- admits who attend CPW also matriculate at a higher rate than admits who do not. In this case, it's either that a) students who are seriously considering MIT are more likely to attend CPW in the first place and b) CPW is just so awesome that it changes minds. I think there is an analogy with EA application there.</p>

<p>...and I feel like noting, with some degree of irony, that I was an RD applicant who did not attend CPW. And here I am!</p>

<p>So you are a statistical anomaly!</p>

<p>And I'd make a ballpark estimate that the Harvard yield rate may decline from 79% or so to 74% or 75%, assuming that both Stanford and Yale (in addition to MIT) decide, for tactical reasons, to "feast on the early bird specials". The early schools (even the EA schools) will have minimum of 90 days of exclusive negotiations with their early picks.</p>

<p>Against this, I assume that both Harvard and Princeton will be throwing massive financial aid packages at their RD admits - in excess of the current high numbers. (One factor that, I believe conviced Harvard that this could work -particularly in achieving a substantial increase in the diversity of the class - was that the yield rate among those eligible for the tuition waiver - or near waiver - for families under $80,000 was about 87%.</p>

<p>I think there will be a massive change in the composition of the class from the Class of 2008 to the Class of 2011. Incidentally, I expect the SAT median may drop, as SAT scores will not be as significant factor in evaluating the people they will now be recruiting so heavily.</p>

<p>Byerly, you only have 106 posts to go! (6560 now)</p>

<p>Almost exactly the number of Harvard undergraduates.</p>