Yale received a record high number of early applications this year, marking a steep rise in its single-choice early action application total for the second consecutive year.
In this admissions cycle, 5,733 students applied early action to the Yale class of 2022, a 13 percent increase from last year, according to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. Last year, the number was 5,086, and, in the three previous years the number of applications consistently hovered around 4,700. The number of early applications received this year surpassed the previous all-time high of 5,557 in 2008. Still, Director of Outreach and Communications Mark Dunn said Yale’s outreach strategy is focused on “improving the quality and diversity” of the applicant pool, rather than increasing the overall number of applicants.
Yale admitted 871 in the early round last year (the first year with a class expanded by about 200 because of the two new colleges), and I would guess they’ll admit around the same number this year. Why? Because I think they project a yield of 80-90% on SCEA admits, and historically they seem to have wanted to avoid admitting in the early round more than half of those who eventually enroll. Class size is now targeted at 1,550 - you do the math. If I’m right, the early admit rate will decline from 17.1% to 15.2%, in line with H (14.5% last year) and P (15.4% last year).
Yale has accelerated its marketing efforts…" including mailing campaigns to high-achieving low-income students" most likely due to its lagging relative selectivity.
while the article is couched in terms of improved outreach to under represented groups… it’s obvious Yale has stepped up their marketing efforts to ALL groups… and I’m sure U of Chicago’s pace setting success in this area has something to do with it.
make no mistake every school markets like crazy… Princeton boosted it’s marketing efforts last year… Harvard does a ton of marketing… it’s all for selectivity appearances.
The admissions arms race is getting more and more competitive between the colleges.
^^^If selectivity is so important to Yale, why did they increase their class size by 15%, a move that, all things equal, would make perceived selectivity fall significantly? And still, they had a yield last year of 71%, close to their highest ever - which doesn’t look like “lagging selectivity” to me.
Do you have any evidence of this? The simpler explanation for the rise in early apps is that the market adjusted because the increase in class size caused the odds briefly to look a little better than the peer schools.
While Yale is frankly proud to have been stepping up its outreach to lower-income/first-gens (as you can tell from the increasing number of Questbridge matches), as far as marketing to higher-SES/prep school kids is concerned, I can cite some real-time anecdotal evidence to suggest that Princeton, Stanford and Yale send comparable amounts of mail (not much), Harvard’s a bit higher and UChicago is off the charts.
There are 2 primary reasons why selective schools like high yield rates. One is bragging rights/rankings. If you have a high yield rate, it implies that the school is more desirable over others and is factored into some of the ranking formulas. This is where it is argued that ED is being used as a form of manipulation to inflate yield thereby increasing perceptions of desirability and boosting rankings (see UChicago). EA on the other hand does not mandate matriculation and the higher yield is more representative of that school being a true first choice.
The more institutionally sound reason for wanting high yield is that the selective schools want to assemble “ideal” classes which have so many “round” kids, so many “spikey” kids of varying interests and talents, so many artistic/musical kids, so many STEM kids, so many URMs, so many legacies, etc… It’s easier to assemble a tailored class when it is more predictable that a high percentage of students admitted will matriculate. In the ideal world, AO’s probably don’t mind that the yield of accepted students be slightly lower than the desired class size so that they can fill out the holes from the waitlist.
I suspect that one reason for increases in SCEA applications (as well as ED at other schools) is simply more applicants thinking they aren’t going to get in RD, as those RD admit rates get lower (and often much lower than SCEA or ED numbers). Marketing may have some effect, but I don’t know how many lower-income students are going to get a mailing from Yale and then apply there SCEA.
I also would guess that the increase in class size was made to take advantage of resources and to produce more Yale grads. If Yale wanted to do it for those reasons, a possible small effect on selectivity wouldn’t change their minds.
ED/EA apps are likely increasing at almost all highly selective colleges because of perceived advantages. Besides Yale, UPenn and Cornell have also reported significant increases. Only Stanford and MIT don’t seem to be playing that game.
@sbballer highly doubt Yale is looking or should be looking at Chicago for its marketing strategy. What pace setting success? Chicago applications went down last year, despite their super aggressive marketing. i think Yale neither needs to make that aggressively because of its name nor even wants to be seen as aggressive as Chicago when it comes to outreach. Yes every school markets a lot, but none to the level that Chicago does. Especially HYPS don’t need this as much.
My projected number of admits in post #6 above (around 871, like last year) was close to the actual number of 842, but not quite right, and I think it’s because I didn’t include the 52 Questbridge admits that were announced two weeks earlier. If we assume 50 of those matriculate (after all, they have a full ride to Yale, to which they’ve been matched through a program) along with 720 (~86%) of those admitted SCEA, that will mean that Yale will have filled just under half the class early (770/1550 = 49.7%), which, as I noted above, looks like it may be their target.
Interestingly, Yale’s 14.7% SCEA admit rate is right on top of the 14.5% and 14.7% rates that Harvard and Princeton announced earlier in the week, which may not be entirely coincidental.
