Mount Holyoke appears to have lost ground since 2012, when it had 3876 applicants, a 42% acceptance rate, and a 31% yield. In 2017, there were 3446 applicants, a 51% acceptance rate, and a 30% yield. From “Applications, Acceptances, Fall Matriculants” at https://www.mtholyoke.edu/iresearch/admissions-and-first-year-snapshot
The article states it is focused on the 2018 entering class…data that is not available on the Mount Holyoke link you cited above.
2018 data isn’t yet publicly available for any school.
Correct - but that is what the article is focusing on - what happened with the 2018 entering class. And the people quoted are people in those colleges who would have that data. So people trying to make arguments off of data they don’t have yet are not looking at the same things that the people quoted in the article are looking at.
The problem is that the reports of yield at this point are premature because of the summer melt factor. A certain fraction of students who deposit in May don’t show up to enroll. That happens at all schools, but at a school the size of MHC, the loss of 30 students would represent about 2 percentage points of yield. So I’d also want to know their historic melt rate.-- or else wait until the data is reported after the fall semester starts and final figures are available.
Before then it’s a matter of making assumptions that simply may or may not be borne out.
“how many of the above posters are willing to simply write off the claims of the actual admissions staff at the women’s colleges”
No one is writing anybody off. We’re interested in seeing more evidence. Answers to student surveys are not holy writ. We haven’t heard whether yield went up at Haverford too, or whether a lot of Haverford enrollees stated that they chose an LAC because of the current political climate.
The “actual admissions staff” are not neutral parties in this conversation. When they speak to the press, they are marketing a message. So they will present an angle on the truth that aligns with the institution’s public brand. They’re never going to say that yield went up because they hired expensive enrollment consultants and poured money into their recruiting operation…but that may in fact be happening, too. We don’t know.
We also won’t know until CDS data is available what the figures are for ED admissions. A small increase in number accepted ED will have a disproportionate impact in yield.
CValle make that two data points, your description describes my daughter as well.
Be careful of confirmation bias.
btw: what does the current administration and right-wing culture have to do with Pitt and other coed universities?
(Hint, with the exception of the Service Academies or a religious college, most Unis lean progressive. It just seems to me that your D would have also been very interested in a women’s college 3-4 years ago, under a different Admin.)
Confirmation bias would be if I had already believed that women’s colleges would have a bump due to the current pollitical climate and therefore I was more likely to believe the statements in the article.
However, I had no idea one way or another if that was the case and I certainly hadn’t given it any thought.
Why are people so invested in arguing that the point made by the article is NOT true? We will never know what college she would have chosen 4 years ago…because she was in 9th grade.
As to why not the other schools, well a big part of it is that she didn’t want to be sitting in a class next to a frat bro in a MAGA hat.
I find it fascinating that YOU feel the need to argue to me that my daughter did not pick her school based on the current political climate and a decision to insulate herself from more conservative/sexist aspects of American culture.
I know why MY daughter picked her school. That is the only information I can be 100% certain of.
The article states that admissions officers at similar schools believe that many other young women have decided to attend a women’s college for the same reasons that my daughter did.
I found it interesting that there may be a trend here of which my daughter was a part but of which she was unaware.
That’s all folks.
“Why are people so invested in arguing that the point made by the article is NOT true?”
Which post argued that the point made by the article is not true?
Many of us went to women’s colleges. I endorse any young woman who wants to. My BFF did, as well, and at
times throughout my life since, I’ve found friendships forming with other women’s school grads, a commonality in thinking, confidence, boldness, and more. This is before we even realize we’d both been to a single sex institution.
But the experience is not simply about the political climate. And I want to note something I realized during my business career: life includes both women and men. We work with them, we need negotiating skills and yes, sometimes we sit next to (or work for) the former frat boy who still hold beliefs different than ours. It is good to learn to get along.
Your daughter has time. She will learn ALL she needs to. But I feel strongly, as said, that this is not simply about shutting out the unpleasant world. You want to embrace a women’s college for the many right reasons.
There are not very many women’s colleges; most four-year colleges are not women’s colleges. Therefore, if the MeToo movement had only a small effect on the young women of the high school class of 2018, that would translate into a big effect on applications and yield at women’s colleges.
Spitballing here, suppose in 2017, only 1% of plausible candidates for women’s colleges applied to a women’s college. Then, in 2018, as a result of MeToo and other women’s issues, suppose a still meager 2% of women decided apply. That’s still a tiny amount, but it would mean that applications doubled at women’s colleges.
I don’t have any inside information, but it wouldn’t surprise me if applications and yield were up sharply. We’ll see.
As the percentage of college grads who are women has grown, many schools are giving preference to men to balance their enrollment. The effect is that it is harder for women to get in. Some of those women may be rejected from a co-ed college but be admitted to a similar quality women’s college. I say, good for them!
The relationship between yield and whether the student sees the college as a reach, match, or likely can be seen clearly at https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/freshman-admissions-summary . You can get it to show “Freshman Yield Rate” by “HS GPA” for any UC campus. You will see that yield rates go down as HS GPA increases, since those with higher HS GPA are more likely to have other choices, while those with lower HS GPA may have only gotten into that campus as a reach, leaving it as the most attractive choice.
The current environment exposed what a lot of us already knew or had experienced about being a woman in the workplace. I also know young women who were finding what they were learning to be terrifying. I am guessing that the women’s colleges incorporated what we were hearing in the news into their own marketing messages and that it resonated with many. And they already had a pretty well honed pitch. Smart applicants typically repeat some part of that pitch in their essays and interviews to show fit. My guess is that there was something of a virtuous cycle here, so nobody is lying.
At the end of the day, these schools have always offered a terrific education, often at a good value. Given how difficult it is to get into so many excellent schools today, I am not one bit surprised at their appeal - politics and environment aside. For a smart, high-achieving woman who cares about academics, women’s colleges are a great option.
I would hope students would have a better reason to choose a college than to self segregate against other’s differences, (whether political or sexual, or religious, etc). One of the most valuable parts of attending college was celebrating the differences, and the late night debates that ensued. There are good reasons to attend a women’s college, but self segregation from the public isn’t one.
Oh but that can be appealing to some. I don’t begrudge those women that choice. No matter which college you choose, Big or small, coed or single sex, it is still a bubble and the outside world awaits. If Radcliffe would have not been absorbed it would have been one of my choices, but in some ways my coed college years taught me to hold my own with the guys on more than a tennis court.
It’s a bit odd to see this view expressed on CC where there’s so much emphasis on getting “top students” into “elite colleges” where they will self-segregate against those less academically able—and for that matter, where most students will come from upper-middle class suburban backgrounds, just like them, and the overwhelming majority will be in the same age cohort. And no one seems to bat an eye if some Catholic students prefer Catholic universities or Mormons prefer BYU or orthodox Jews prefer Yeshiva. So why anyone would think self-segregation is particularly a problem for women attending women’s colleges is a bit mystifying.
But seriously, I don’t think most women who choose a women’s college do so to sequester themselves from the world’s diversity. One of my two daughters chose a coed LAC, the other chose a women’s LAC, one of the Seven Sisters. That daughter applied to one other women’s college and 6 or 7 coed colleges and universities, and she had excellent opportunities all around. She made her choice based on fit, and in her case it was the right choice. A lot went into that, but part of the attraction for her was that in addition to the academics being first-rate, the student body at her college was actually more diverse racially, ethnically, religiously, culturally, socioeconomically, and geographically than most of the other colleges on her list. About a quarter of the students are internationals, an unusually high percentage, and they came from a broad array of countries on every continent (except Antarctica). Nor was there any shortage of contact with men. About half the faculty are men, for one thing, the only difference being that women and men on the faculty are on more of an equal footing at women’s colleges both in terms of numbers and in terms of pay equity and power dynamics. Her college was also in a consortium with several coed colleges including one just a mile or so away, such that there are many joint ECs, and many, perhaps most students at both schools take some classes at the other school, so there were typically some men in at least some of her classes, whether taken at the women’s college or at the coed college. And of course, she had many relationships with men before she ever went to college. I think that’s pretty typical.
That said, I do think there are some differences that particularly appeal to some women. This may sound like stereotyping, but I think social science research has borne it out: women in group settings tend to be more collaborative, and men more competitive. The culture at my D’s school strongly emphasized collaboration and strongly de-emphasized competition. Both are valuable skills, but some women simply prefer, and may do better in a collaborative environment. Research also suggests that on the whole women tend to get less recognition in coed environments, partly because some women tend to defer to men in their presence, but also because some teachers, both male and female (probably unconsciously) simply call on men first and more frequently, and lavish more praise on men for their contributions to classroom discussion. This also can affect female academic performance. Then, of course, there’s the whole business of jock culture and frat-boy misogyny, which many self-respecting women don’t have the time of day for.
I’m not saying women’s colleges are the right choice for all women. But for some they’re a sound, sensible choice.