<p>Newpaper articles and press releases from many colleges suggest a record number of applications for the Class of 2010. Although we're near the top of the echo-boomer cycle, the increase in applications is certainly caused by an increase in the number of applications per applicant, and not due to a sudden unexpected increase in total number of applicants. In this (mostly) zero-sum game with a finite set of high school seniors, it seems only logical that yield rates must come down for this cycle. Colleges love bragging about their increased selectivity rates, but wonder whether we'll be able to uncover any dirty little secrets about decreased yields this year. Will colleges now have to go deeper into their wait-lists, or did they readjust appropriately regarding yields?</p>
<p>The increase in applications is also caused by an increase in the number of applicants. If you look at demographic data, you will see that there are between fifty and a hundred thousand MORE high school seniors every year until 2009.</p>
<p>Justaparent, when the number of application jump at one school, ALL the applicants are discrete applicants. No applicant can send two applications to the same school. </p>
<p>Let's take an example to see what happens to the yield. </p>
<p>Class of 2009
Applications 4000
Admits 1000
Enrolled 400</p>
<p>Class of 2010
Applications 5000
Admits 1000
Enrolled 400</p>
<p>The results: Acceptance rate dropped from 25% to 20% in 2010. However, the number of admiited and enrolled students stayed the same. Accordingly the yield is still 40%. </p>
<p>A higher number of applications does not necessarily cause the yield to change. As far as more students applying to more colleges, we do not have much evidence -if any- that this translates into a greater number of acceptances per student.</p>
<p>the other side of the coin</p>
<p>Student A applies to 6 schools and gets into 3. He will matriculate at one, and decline 2, lowering the yield rate at those two schools.</p>
<p>5 years later his younger brother...</p>
<p>Student B applies to 10 schools, and gets into 6. He will be turning down 5 schools, and pushing their yield rates lower.</p>
<p>The increase in applications is driven by both demographics, and an increase in the number of apps each student sends in on average. Schools will cover the corresponding drop in yield with larger and more aggressively managed wait lists.</p>
<p>and with EA/ED programs.</p>
<p>My understanding is that it will be harder to get off a waitlist this year in that many of the top schools waitlisted more students just in case.</p>
<p>Any ideas about whether this is true?</p>
<p>"Student B applies to 10 schools, and gets into 6. He will be turning down 5 schools, and pushing their yield rates lower."</p>
<p>TH21, that assumes that schools do not forecast their yield correctly, and that student are ACCEPTED at more schools. Again, while the reports continue to illustrate a rising selectivity, reports of higher numbers of multiple acceptances are entirely speculative. </p>
<p>For each individual school, it does not matter if a student is the recipient of 25 acceptances or 3, the student is EXPECTED to respond to a certain set of pre-established patterns. We can safely assume that schools are and have been planning for students having multiple acceptances. Should we assume that the milions spent on enrollment management consulting fees do not produce results? </p>
<p>Case in point: increase the applications sent to Harvard to 50,000. They will still issue about 2400 acceptances and expect 1600 students to attend. They could have 10,000 applications and the acceptances and yield would be the same.</p>
<p>Xiggi:</p>
<p>You may very well be right. However, your hypothetical assumes that applicant pools of 4000 and 5000 will each produce an "admit" field of 1000. With 400 matriculants, of course, the yield would be the same. However, your assumption is that there will be only 1000 admits may not be correct because those 1000 applicants, on average, will have applied to more schools. Those candidates -- my assumption this time -- should be admitted to proportionally more schools, thus threatening the projected yield. This is an interesting question: Will Ad Coms admit more candidates or will they simply boost the admissions numbers from their waitlists in the event that their yield from the initial admitees doesn't follow from their prior years? I suspect the latter as it is easier to fudge the yield and protect the USN rating. And isn't that what this is all about . . . .</p>
<p>DD is one of the few kids in her graduating class who applied to only a handful of schools. Many students in her class applied to and got accepted to 10 schools or more. This means that 9 schools or so will not be getting them as admitted students. I have seen this "trend" increase in recent years as students apply to many many schools, sometimes looking for the best finaid package as well as the college match. For families in a community like ours (middle class), this can be one of the driving forces behind increase applications. Also, has anyone noticed the increase in "fast track" applications...no essay, no fee, decisions within two weeks or so? DD got at least a dozen of these and in fact is still getting them. DS never received one...and that was only three years ago. These types of applications are no fee, no risk applications...and they are short. I think these also are increasing the number of applicants (and many of these types of applications are sent to students they intend to accept).</p>
<p>"However, your hypothetical assumes that applicant pools of 4000 and 5000 will each produce an "admit" field of 1000. With 400 matriculants, of course, the yield would be the same. However, your assumption is that there will be only 1000 admits may not be correct because those 1000 applicants, on average, will have applied to more schools."</p>
<p>Well, my hypothetical assumption was loosely based on Swarthmore classes of 2009 and 2010. Applications jumped from 4085 to 4850 and admits were pretty stable at 900 versus 897. Since Swarthmore does make its CDS forms public, in due time, we will be able to discover the extent of the subtle changes in wait list movements and final yields. </p>
<p>Time will tell</p>
<p>If some erosion in yield is to occur due to increased applications per student, the shift will be gradual and most noticable in lower tier schools. Thus, xiggi, your use of Harvard and Swathmore is somewhat disingenuous.</p>
<p>In the past, students applied to "A" safety school. It was called a safety, because admission could safely be predicted. Now, many students apply to three safeties. It's those type institutions that will reflect any change in yield.</p>
<p>TH21, do you believe that Swarthmore yield of 42% is subject to the same market conditions as Harvard's? Would it be more educative to check the yield for a "safety" school such as UT-Austin, which was about 58% for the Class of 2009? </p>
<p>Which are the schools worth reviewing? </p>
<p>Incidentally, here are a few figures about Princeton:</p>
<p>-2007- -2008- -2009- -2010=
15,726 13,695 16,510 17,563 (Applications)
-1,601 -1,733 -1,807 -1,792 (Admits)
10.2% 12.7% 10.9% 10.2% (Admit rates)</p>
<p>-1,601 -1,733 -1,807 -1,792 (Admits)
-1,176 -1,172 -1,229 ? ........ (Enrolled)
-73%- -68%- -68%- ? ........ (Yield)</p>
<p>471 1045 1207 ? (Wait list offered)
27 79 0.... ? (Wait list enrolled)</p>
<p>there are a LOT of forces at play right now. im in the process of sorting all of it out, but yield is indeed on the decline. some schools are certainly exceptions (yield is up quite significantly at carleton and vassar, for example)... but for every school experiencing increases there are about two that have shown steady declines (including elite institutions like amherst and bowdoin). </p>
<p>the problem with xiggis hypothetical situation is that it will likely only result in the highest quality class if every other institution follows the same strategy of keeping absolute admissions constant. if a second school increases the number of students it admits, the number of students matriculating at at the first will decline, thus forcing the use of a waitlist, which may result in a weaker class than was possible if the top waitlisted applicants had been admitted originally. because schools dont have perfect information when making acceptance decisions, we end up at an equilibrium where both admission rates and yield rates are down, though admissions are down far more than yield (probably the 'usnews effect').</p>
<p>i dont have quite enough data yet to conclude what types of schools are being most affected yield-wise, but i will comment when i do.</p>
<p>i can expect the yeilds to drop. i was accepted into 11 schools, to that means that 10 get one less person. now think of this, basically everyone in my honors and ap classes applied to about 20 or 30. a few years ago we would have probably had to choose between 4, not 20. this is a HUGE difference.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I think it is reasonable to assume that students who apply to more schools are likely to be accepted to more. My son was accepted to 8 out of 9 schools he applied to 5 years ago; my daughter was accepted to 9 out of 12. Both kids had reaches, matches & safeties. </p>
<p>I do think that colleges do a fairly good job of projecting yield, and I think they accept students with yield in mind. I think that they do try to read between the lines of the application to ascertain whether a kid is likely to accept -- but it probably is also getting increasingly harder to tell.</p>
<p>My guess is that there will be some changes in yield, but I also think that the changes will tend to be very small -- that is, a college that had 40% yield last year is not going to plunge to 30% yield this year, but it may go from from 40% to 39%.</p>
<p>I also think the changes in yield will be small and follow a checkerboard pattern. Some will go up, some will go down. This issue does not seem very easy to analyze as it requires an enormous amount of data, especially on a national basis. I checked a few reports and sent them to Ericatbucknell. </p>
<p>From the 2005 NACAC Report: </p>
<p>"The average yield rate, or the percent of admitted students who enroll in the institution, for all four-year post-secondary institutions in the U.S. is 50 percent."</p>
<p>From a somewhat older report: </p>
<p>Trends in College Admission 2000 presents the results of four admissions surveys conducted jointly by the College Board and other major education associations between 1979 and 2000. The latest survey was conducted by ACT, Inc.; Association for Institutional Research; Educational Testing Service; the National Association for College Admission Counseling; and the College Board. Respondents were 1,644 two- and four-year institutions.</p>
<p>Thus, the more applications per student the lower the yield rate. Other factors, such as the economy or the prestige of an institution, can also influence yield rates. Acceptance rates decreased slightly in four-year public and private institutions, although acceptance rates in privates peaked in 1992. The changes in application, acceptance, and yield rates varied somewhat by group. For the total group, application rates increased from 2.5 applications per enrolled first-time, first-year student to 3.5 in four-year publics and from 3.6 to 4.7 in four-year privates. </p>
<p>*Yield rates for the total group decreased from 55 percent to 42 percent for four-year publics and from 45 to 35 percent for four-year privates. * </p>
<p><a href="http://airweb.org/images/trendssummary.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://airweb.org/images/trendssummary.pdf</a></p>
<p><a href="http://airweb.org/images/trendsreport.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://airweb.org/images/trendsreport.pdf</a></p>
<p>Do the reports that Duke is accepting off the wait list pre-May 1 indicate that their yield is short of expectations?</p>
<p>Also - for the experts - Can a school totally mask a drop in yield via the wait list? I assume that yield is calculated as class size including wait listers divided by total acceptances. Ergo, a drop in yield this year may not show up until next year where a larger number of acceptances are issued.</p>
<p>So are you saying that it will be even harder to get into schools next year?</p>