<p>I totally agree that retention, whether freshman retention OR six year graduation rates and the ability of the schools to predict who is likely to fall into the desired category is very important to the schools. For this reason, I have always felt that an application that highlights an applicants loyalty to an organization or activity over many years is a big, big hook. Although now important to a lesser degree than before, I also agree that yield remains significant in that it directly affects a school's acceptance rate. Every bit counts.</p>
<p>As far as Wash U - they are notorious for rejecting the vast majority of non ED or non-legacy kids at our school, even those who go on to get elite acceptances. In conjunction with their known reputation for inundating students with marketing materials, I think there's no doubt that this school, more than most, does try to game the system. </p>
<p>I think Northeastern U had the largest jump in rankings of any of the colleges last year. Its location in Boston as well as its coop program have become very popular. There are certain schools in the category that one generally used to think of as pretty safe for a certain type of student, ie Northeastern, Syracuse, American and University of Miami that have become much harder to get into over the last five years due to their popularity. We were at one of the above mentioned schools on Friday - was shocked to hear how the admissions rep pushed the concept of taking the SAT over and over (and over) again. No such thing as too many times, was the clear message! No doubt that rankings are very much on the minds of these schools.</p>
<p>For predicting chances, I agree that recent scattergrams are still the best way to go if you can get them. The trouble is, that at every school we have visited, they are saying that acceptance rates are dropping dramatically year by year, so that makes it harder to know what is safe and what isn't.</p>
<p>The thing that has changed is the number of applications schools solicit and the number of applications that kids send. Yes there is a babyboom echo but what that means is that the 35,000 students the top 20 schools faught over 6 or 7 yeras ago has now mushroomed to 40,000 students but instead of sending out 4 or 5 applications these kids are now sending 8 or 10. That means stellar applicants to the top 20 schools have "ballooned from 125,000 to 350,000" or at least that is what it seems like when looking at an individual top 20 school who now recieves 16.00 stellar applications as opposed to 6,000. The reality though is that the pool has really only grown from 35,000 to 40,000. The rest is just additional applications.</p>
<p>The schools now what the real competitive situation is and they know what their yield will be and the WashU's and Tuft's know that they will not win against even a crappier Ivy so there are stellar applications they know they can reject. The evidence is in both the application and the interest shown and probably also in the zip code although heven forbid that I would accuse these places of not really being need blind. I mean they would never reject a kid because they know he is going to be offered big merit money at a second tier school and his zip code shows he needs it.</p>
<p>I am a little cynical about these things. I have spent too much tme looking at the underlying numbers - how many kids score what on standardized tests, how many seats there are to fill, grade inflation, the numbers manipulation that goes on from taking the tests multiple times and frequently under dubious conditions, the willingness of people to spend huge amounts of money for the dubious status of sending their kid to a name brand school as opposed to the one where they are most likely to prosper, the utter hypocrisy and frequent mendacity of college administrators. I just don't buy the arguement that it is that much tougher to get into a good school. The schools just don't have that much larger a pool to select from and they have gradually increased the number of seats available.</p>
<p>"Mini, Yale doesn't need to "game" the system by rejecting the thousands of Vals who apply. It has to reject most of them, unless it wants to build its campus all the way up to Bridgeport."</p>
<p>No, but over time, that is precisely how they built up their national reputation from simply being a finishing school for Groton. (To be fair to that earlier time period, Yale is less economically diverse today than they were 30 years ago.)</p>
<p>(In fact, for H., that is why Conant put so much muscle behind the use of the SAT - also a way, according to The Chosen, to prevent it from being overrun by east coast Jews.)</p>
<p>I have "heard" that many colleges went much deeper into their wait lists last year because so many kids now apply to 8 or 10 schools, rather than 3 or 4, thus handing each college (except the absolute top, of course) with many more "No thank you's." I think that this situation may lead to more colleges admitting those kids with good stats who really want to attend there, rather than those who just treated the college as a safety. I think that, if this is being done, then good for the colleges and the students who really want to attend them.</p>
<p>Intereesting stat on Tufts. It definitely suggests that something unique is going on there. Over the same period most selective schools have had the SAT ranges creep up at about 5 points (on 1600 scale) a year. The Tufts move is very large.</p>
<p>Could be they just decided to scratch most other admissions criteria in favor of moving up in USNWR rankings. (In other words, I wouldn't necessarily assume it is a good thing.)</p>
<p>Interesting point on how yield still affects "Selectivity" in post #34. You actually changed my mind, how often does that happen in these threads.</p>
<p>Tufts has long been an underrated school and it is finally receiving the PR it deserves, which accounts for more highly-qualified students to not only apply in recent years but to accept the offer of admission from Tufts. I don't think Tufts is trying to take only high SAT kids to manipulate their ranking. Their jump in stats in recent years cannot be compared to the rise/decline/stagnation of stats at schools like HYP which have always enjoyed top PR/recognition, etc.</p>
<p>"Thanks for the correction. But the move for Tufts still seems exceptionally large."</p>
<p>And not independently audited either I might add. There are ways of fudging the numbers - not saying Tufts is doing this but one of the problems with the Common Data Set that USNWR and others use is that the numbers are self-reforted and not independently audited. There may be classes of admits that are not included in the numbers for instance some schools have been known to not count students who start in the Summer.</p>
<p>The people on this website are ridiculous. If any other school's SATs shot up the way Tufts' have lately, there would be awe and "Great for them!" but because it's Tufts there's skepticism and cynicism. I don't understand why people can't accept that the school is simply deservedly making leaps and bounds in its accepted AND enrolled pools that match the academics and opportunities it offers.</p>
<p>BTW: the average SAT (CR+Math) for the ENROLLED class of 2010 was 1405.</p>
<p>lolabelle, since I'm the OP, to be fair -- I was prompted to open this thread (although mistakenly referring to Tufts, then correcting myself) because of alarming results I had seen for Boston U and Northeastern in the last week. I didn't open it to bash Tufts, nor do I think others necessarily were replying in that spirit, either.:)</p>