<p>I recently checked some regular decision threads for top public (state) schools, etc.. Not Ivies - they are not out yet. </p>
<p>I found some really interesting anomalies. I see some amazing candidates with extremely high SATs (well over 2300, or even over 2350), near perfect GPA and what appears to be really exciting ECs getting outright rejected, NOT even wait listed. Based on what's provided, they are cut above most of the accepted candidates.</p>
<p>I know, I know: you are going to tell me about essays. But let's assume that not all of these really top candidates are irredeemable jerks and fools who will write something that will really turn off the adcoms. </p>
<p>I hear that some good LACs and right below Ivy type private schools sometimes reject candidates when they <strong><em>smell</em></strong> a very high likelihood that the candidate will not come when given acceptance because they obviously applied to these schools as ultra safties. I know that yield management is a very important consideration for these private schools.</p>
<p>Do you think some top public schools are also doing yield management?</p>
<p>I hate to sound like a lawyer but…it depends on the school. Big state schools are more into stats than ECs and essays. They have to be because of the huge number of applicants and huge number of slots to fill. Morever, they don’t have to depend on private/alumni donations like private colleges, they don’t have to care (very much) about legacies, either. The other consideration is cost. The flagshop state u’s are always going to be in demand because there are more poor and middle class students than rich ones, so they will always have a ready pool of applicants. It’s like being the only funeral director in town. Unless people stop dying there will always be customers. In this light, I don’t see yield management being a critical concern for state schools.</p>
<p>It also may depend on which colleges you are looking at. UNC, UVa, UCLA, Berkeley – they’re all pretty darn competitive for out-of-state and international students. There’s a limited number of spots available and lots of applications. Also – I don’t know if they are need-blind for out-of-staters, and I know they aren’t for internationals. My guess is that the high-stat students you are seeing rejected are (a) internationals or out-of-staters, (b) with need, and (c) lousy essay writers.</p>
<p>^^ Plainsman,
I have to disagree with you on several points. First, states are broke. Some have been for a long time, which is why some top “publics” like Michigan and Virginia are well down the road toward quasi-privatization. Michigan, for example, now gets only about 7% of its operating budget from the state; the rest comes from its very substantial endowment, a phenomenal research enterprise that generates hundreds of millions annually in external grants, IP licenses and royalties, tuition revenue (including a handsome amount from the 35% of the student body that is OOS), a highly profitable sports program, licensing of sports apparel and other paraphernalia carrying one of the nation’s most widely recognized and sought-after brands, etc. They care just as much about alumni contributions as any private; and for that reason, they pay a lot of attention to legacies, and they make no bones about it. They may be something of an outlier among publics at this point, but only because they’re much further down a road that many, perhaps most other public flagships will have to follow as state tax dollars become scarcer and less reliable as a source of revenue. But because their ability to attract top OOS students depends largely on the prestige associated with the brand, they’re as interested in maintaining their U.S. News stats as any private, and yield management is part of that game. I think a lot of other leading publics are catching on very quickly, and are jockeying for position relative to each other and relative to their private peers and competitors. You’re describing how publics operated 20 years ago. Some may still, but not the top ones.</p>
<p>From what I’ve been able to gather, Michigan practices holistic admissions and yield management - the 2300 kid with good ECs gets rejected but kids with lesser stats get in. My recollection is that they do this in response to the outright ban on the use of race as an admissions factor in the state. The others seem primarily numbers driven, but as JHS said, very difficult to get in for everyone. Heck, UNC seems the fairest, admitting nobody from our district. That definitely makes yield management easier.</p>
<p>bclintonk’s post makes sense. I followed posts by some of these ultracompetitive rejects from top public schools, and I noticed that some of them already got EA, likely letters, or admissions from top 10 colleges in USNWR. On top of the amazing numbers, they must have compelling stories demonstrated in their essays, etc.</p>
<p>Other than yield management, there is no other way to explain how these SAT 2350+ GPA 3.8+ candidates got rejected from public schools: after all, the best ranked public school (Berkeley) is still ranked 21 in USNWR. Needless to say, USNWR ranking is not everything, but it serves as a ball park gauge as a competitiveness and selectivity.</p>
<p>Top state schools in general have far lower yields than most top private schools. It’s interesting to see the accepted student stats vs. enrolled student stats at schools like Berkeley and UCLA. These schools have good reason to believe the high income and low income portion of their highest stats accepted will probably choose an ivy, top private U or top LAC. If they practiced Tuft’s Syndrome it wouldn’t surprise me.</p>
<p>I’ll bet virtually every college rejects a small percentage of students to whom they’ve given their top academic ratings; in addition to the reasons JHS gives, it can be due to poor fit (like listing an intended major that the college doesn’t offer), obvious lack of interest, being an international from an over-represented country, or disciplinary red flags.</p>
<p>The yield rate for students at the top of the applicant pool is small once you move out of the super-selective (HYPMS) sphere, but guessing wrong about a top student who would enroll is really costly. I really think that most adcoms are more interested in putting together the strongest class possible than in ranksteering, but even if they were interested in lowering their admit rate to advance in college rankings, it’s a dumb strategy: average SAT scores and class rank–like the ones you get from yielding a high-end academic student–are worth 9x more in USNews’s formula than admit rates. (Yield was eliminated from their formula years ago.)</p>
<p>And there’s the demographic issue. Class of '09 is at the peak of a baby boom, the largest class in history. Stellar students are being WL-ed and rejected this year, simply because the colleges are being bombarded with apps from super-stellar students.</p>