Why is Duke's yield so low?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Duke University
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<p>The fact that Duke’s yield rate is low doesn’t detract from the university to me at all (and shouldn’t detract anyone else from applying or considering it!). As previous posters stated, Duke admits students without explicitly practicing yield protection with the RD pool. This means that for the students who did choose to attend Duke, they are still among the sharpest in the nation, and thus will make for a highly intellectual and fun environment!</p>

<p>I recently committed to attending Duke’s class of 2018, and am happy with my decision! For the record, I turned down offers from Yale, Stanford, Penn, Columbia, and Brown. </p>

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<p>@terminatorp did you get the AB or Robertson?</p>

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<p>@spuding102 Yes, I am grateful to be an AB Scholar recipient :)</p>

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<p>@terminatorp I think I saw you post your rejection of yale picture on the Facebook group. Why the AB over say yale or stanford</p>

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<p>@spuding102 Yeah, some people seemed to take it the wrong way ;)</p>

<p>Well, since I am really interested in undergraduate research opportunities, as an AB Scholar, it’s even easier to get access to labs you really want to work in (it comes with a guaranteed $5,000 stipend for research). The full-ride is also definitely a nice plus, although finances weren’t the main reason why I chose Duke.</p>

<p>In general though, being from the south, Duke felt more at home compared to the other schools. After my visit (at the time I didn’t hear back from the AB committee), I was still seriously considering Duke. I loved the beauty of the campus, and I felt that undergraduate students generally were the priority at Duke (although Yale’s pretty undergrad focused as well). Programs like Duke Engage, which provide funding and advising for overseas projects were also pretty compelling. </p>

<p>So even without AB, Duke was still seriously in the books for me. Sure, one could argue that Yale/Stanford could have more “prestige” but that ultimately doesn’t matter too much in the long run. Even then, one should realize that Duke is quite prestigious - it just happens to be newer and thus has less of a “legacy” than the Ivy League schools do.The fact that it is so highly ranked in such a small amount of time is remarkable, and a testimony to how productive the institution as a whole is. </p>

<p>I’ll be honest - I initially applied to the Ivy league schools earlier this year solely because of so-called prestige…which down the road, I realize, wasn’t the best way to go about the process. It’s about fit, and what you plan on studying - will you enjoy your 4 years, but also get to do what you want to do effectively? I felt Duke fit in pretty well :slight_smile: </p>

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<p>Welcome to Duke terminatorp!!! You are going to love it here. There isn’t anything that you can accomplish at Stanford or Yale that you couldn’t at Duke or any top 10 school. The icing on the cake is that you will get intimate access to professors and top-notch advising.</p>

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<p>terminatorp, you definitely made the right decision. </p>

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<p>Hold on a second - colleges shouldn’t be patted on the back for “not practicing yield protection during the RD round,” especially if the college heavily relies on ED for the early round. Again, disregarding when a college engages in yield protection, such efforts detract from applicant choice. </p>

<p>Again, ED is a strong form of yield protection, because it guarantees that only those strongly interested in the school apply, and stellar candidates without such interest oftentimes don’t apply. Put another way, if the goal of the “yield blind” school is to attract as many qualified candidates as possible, having an ED policy is an awful decision. How many supremely qualified candidates does Duke miss because of their ED policy? By having an ED policy, there could be accomplished students who forego Duke because they’re hesitant to make such a commitment.</p>

<p>Sure, some of these kids trickle down into the RD pool but, if current yield rates indicate anything, it’s that virtually all schools rely very heavily on their early pools. The qualified candidate who didn’t apply ED to Duke most likely applied early elsewhere. </p>

<p>Look at the numbers, folks, yield is up everywhere: at Yale (71.7% - an all-time high), Princeton (70%), Harvard (82%), Dartmouth (54.5%), Northwestern (50%+), Chicago (probably 55%+), Penn (66% - the highest in years), etc. etc. </p>

<p>How have all these colleges gotten MORE selective AND better with their yield? By instituting and making heavy use of early decision/action programs, schools are essentially colluding with each other to minimize the number of cross-admit battles that take place. SCEA programs at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. ensure that the tippy top schools don’t have as many cross-admits, and ED programs at Columbia, Duke, etc. do the same thing. </p>

<p>Based on these numbers, I don’t believe for a minute that all top schools aren’t protecting their yield in one way or another. </p>

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<p>Cue, I gather all early decision (ED) or early action (EA) programs have a certain degree of yield protection in mind. However, I believe ED policy holders undoubtedly yield protect more so than EA adopters with SCEA somewhere in between, although I think SCEA is a lot closer to ED than EA in terms of the school objective.</p>

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<p>Theluckystar,</p>

<p>I agree - of the three policies - EA is the lesser evil, although make no mistake, it’s a poisonous policy as well. </p>

<p>High school is short enough, and there’s no reason colleges should increase the pressure on high school students to make important decisions even earlier. By emphasizing early, colleges put more pressure on high school students, and high school students have less time to make an important decision (colleges also have a little less data on the applicants - e.g. their first semester senior year grades). The only reason schools emphasize the early round is because they all care so much about yield. </p>

<p>Just as colleges emphasize the common or “universal” application - just having one generally uniform regular decision deadline (say, in January some time) would ease pressure significantly. Students can then get into a range of schools, compare financial aid/merit packages, visit a range of schools in the spring (rather then having a frenetic junior year summer of trying to figure out which school will be the ED choice), and then make a decision in May.</p>

<p>The above policy, of course, would throw college yield rates way off. Really only Harvard and Stanford would have strong yields, and all the other top schools would have 30-50% yields. Still, in today’s competitive college marketplace, if schools like Duke or Chicago or Cornell have 40% yields, that’s not bad. </p>

<p>There was a time not long ago where a 40% yield was considered pretty good. Nowadays, I suspect enrollment officers get fired if they report back such numbers to their college presidents. We’re in an age where every college has to have a 5% accept rate and a 70% yield rate, because apparently such cosmetic factors matter so much. Schools need to look as stratospherically exclusive as possible. </p>

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<p>Cue is “spot on”. ED, EA, SCEA are also the easy button for adcoms.
-They know the accepted students will accept and they are the students first choice (U’s know what they are getting).
-Early students tend to be well funded (this improves the vision of need blind universities)
-They fill half the class from 3,000 applications (RD requires half the class to come from 27,000 apps) Less work for the adcom.
-No courting work in April (less work for the adcom).
-The class is filled sooner so the adcom know what they need to “build the class”.
-And as Cue noted, their numbers look better which makes administrators, students, & alumni happy.</p>

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<p>From what I observe, ED and SCEA have far more leverage in achieving higher yield than EA while EA would get more applications due to a “why not” effect which may drive down admit rate at the end as the main objective.</p>

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<p>SCEA is used to great effect by Harvard. This year they accepted 21.1% of SCEA applicants (as compared to 25.1% of ED at Duke) who will represent approximately 55% of the class (as compared to 47% at Duke). Harvard’s overall admit rate this year is 5.9% suggesting that the RD admit rate is roughly 2.7%. Ironically, of HYPSM, MIT at 9% and Stanford at 10.8% are at the lower end of the EA spectrum with Yale (15.5%) and Princeton (18.5%) in between. </p>

<p>Given the current admissions environment, IMO Duke is managing the balance between creating a strong diverse class and generating statistics that position the school as highly selective properly. </p>