<p>I don't really understand this. I'm hearing that waitlists will be really important this year because colleges are trying to protect their yield. Why, though? Who cares if the yield is really low? Does having a low yield somehow indicate a bad college? Because that's just...silly.</p>
<p>Or is it part of the US News ratings system? Because then that would make sense. Haha.</p>
<p>It is NOT part of the U.S. News rating system. </p>
<p>There is some illogic in what you heard, because using waiting lists or not using waiting lists doesn’t have a lot to do with protecting yield. Using a binding early decision admission process or not has MUCH to do with protecting yield.</p>
<p>I have to disagree, using wait lists can protect yield. First, student generally has to send back still interested in staying on WL. Many many people here have said to have chance on WL, send back it is your first choice. So it will protect yield.</p>
<p>Even if USnews doesnt use it, yield is a marker that some watch. </p>
<p>That being said, I dont think colleges are using WL to manage yield, I do suspect it helps and also helps manage finaid.</p>
<p>First of all, the college ranking system is almost single-handedly destroying colleges.</p>
<p>Second of all. Why would colleges care about their yield? Yield being the number of students who actually attend out of the amount accepted. I don’t know. You try and figure it out. And if you can’t you probably shouldn’t be going to college.</p>
<p>because if you have a low yield…whats the point of having a class</p>
<p>A higher yield makes a university look more prestigious.</p>
<p>Umm, isn’t it obvious? A higher yield lets you accept less students and still get your class which increases your selectivity and that one IS on US News. Now whether they really do care though, I don’t know. I find it difficult to believe that colleges with millions of dollars in research grants and thousands of professors and grad students really care about US News.</p>
<p>Managing a school’s yield makes it easier for that school to predict the number of students it accepts to get the number of attending students it wants. If one year its yield is unexpectedly low, the freshman class is too small. If its yield is unexpectedly high, the freshman class is too large. Both cause problems.</p>
<p>This year, schools don’t know if the historical yield trends will hold. They are using wait lists not so much to “protect” the yield, but to protect the size of the incoming class. They accept the same number of students as before, but increase the size of the waitlist as a hedge against the possibility that many fewer accepted students will actually attend.</p>
<p>A high yield is considered a reflection of high esteem by students and families, and thus is an indicator of a school’s prestige. </p>
<p>I think it is a useful number, when rounded into ranges and not treated too precisely.</p>
<p>Well, they do not want a small class because they rely on that tuition to pay for their professors, staff, and campus upkeep. If a class is too small, they lose money. It’s better to create a large waitlist to ensure you create a class large enough to pay for the upkeep of the campus but not too large so that it makes the campus overcrowded.</p>
<p>But why such large waitlists? They put hundreds, sometimes thousands, on the waitlist and accept a very small percentage off of the list. Why subject so many to false hope?</p>
<p>They do the large waitlists because each of those people have specific characteristics. For example, if a large amount of engineer majors decide not to attend, they need enough engineer majors to replace a potentially large amount. If they were short 34 engineer majors after all the students have decided where to go; it would be more likely that they would find that number in a list of 1,000 than 100.</p>
<p>well to respond to Shesonherway: take NYU for example last year they placed around 1,800 on thier waitlists and about a 1,000 accepted a spot on the list, ultimately around 500 students were accepted. </p>
<p>It really depends on the school. some schools admit a lot from the waitlist and some admit very few.</p>
<p>Nasty- that’s still 500 that got their hopes dashed. Why not start with 900 offered a spot on the waitlist, 500 accept, 500 get in?</p>
<p>Also, NYU is unusual. Tufts and WashU are notorious for loading their waitlists and only taking but a few. It’s a travesty.</p>
<p>
This has to be the real reason for USNews-conscience colleges. Hardly anyone knows what yield is, but literally millions of people look at the USNews rankings. Even if moving up a few spots only affects the opinion of .01% of viewers, that is significant. Moving from the second page to the first probably results in hundreds of applications.</p>
<p>… depressing.</p>
<p>And schools with millions of dollars and thousands of professors and graduate students care about ranking because that’s the way that they got that way. Even before U.S. News started ranking schools, other people were ranking schools, either formally or informally. Schools with better reputations attract the top investment dollars from private foundations and public granting organizations (because the quality of your institution is evaluated in the process of grants), which in turn attracts brilliant young professor hopefuls with publications and great research experience, because they know that there will be money there for them to do their research. That, in turn, attracts the best and brightest potential graduate students who want to work with these brilliant professors and get comfortable stipends from the grants already mentioned, which increases the visibility of the school, which thus increases the amount of undergraduates who want to come and pay their tuition dollars to the school.</p>
<p>Reputation builds reputation, which is exactly why the U.S. News rankings have been essentially the same since they’ve come out. There is no need to even check them from year to year – some schools will move around slightly, but virtually all will stay in roughly the same spot from year to year.</p>