<p>which discusses the issue of students with more than one offer of admission deciding where to attend. The article links to figures for what yield was found among class of 2006 high school graduates as they decided where to enroll among the top 100 U.S. News national universities and top 100 U.S. News national liberal arts colleges. </p>
<p>CC participant Hanna was right about Brigham Young having a higher yield than Harvard, which is not easy to do. And somehow I don't see Yale listed at all (I even searched on the webpage, to make sure I wasn't missing iit), which is an odd omission in the data.</p>
<p>Very interesting data, but is hard to read with the combination of publics and privates and ED/EA/only RD colleges mixed together. The public/private comparisons are especially interesting to me. There are 41 national universities that have yield of 40% or better, but of these, 26 are public universities led by U Nebraska at 66%. </p>
<p>Among colleges ranked in the USNWR Top 30, the top five were:</p>
<p>79% Harvard (had EA last year)
69% Stanford (SCEA)
67% Princeton (had ED last year)
66% MIT (EA)
66% U Penn (ED)</p>
<p>Hawkette: I am not a math geek but the Emory number looks so low! They have both EDI and EDII (yield 100%) where last year they accepted about 450 students...Their total class target is 1,200...Does that mean their RD yield is ridiculously low???</p>
<p>add: I guess I'm not exactly sure how this is calculated given the ED factor for any of the schools....</p>
<p>I think all of the USNWR-provided yield numbers include the ED (I & II) and the RD statistics. All of the bottom five have ED while four of the top five (this year at least) have EA or nothing. </p>
<p>For the top privates, the yields for all but HYPS in the RD round aren't very good and almost certainly below 50% in all cases. Some colleges take an inordinate amount of students via ED (Princeton used to take almost half its class this way; U Penn takes nearly 60% of its class from ED applicants , though not all get in via ED; Columbia accepts nearly 60% of its class via ED). So take the yield numbers with caution as the numbers after HYPS, for all of these highly acclaimed colleges and particularly in the RD round, decline pretty sharply.</p>
<p>Colleges count on applicants ignoring yield when they issue press releases about the (always rising and always impressive) statistics of their admitted classes. OF COURSE colleges admit outstanding young people, but those outstanding young people can afford to be choosy and surely won't enroll at every college that admits them. The way to compare colleges with the most recent year's figures is to compare enrolled classes, reflecting which students really thought each college was the best available choice.</p>
<p>"It amazes me how many people get into MIT and don't go! "</p>
<p>Many MIT applicants have also applied to Harvard, Yale and Princeton and would prefer them to MIT.
I know at least one applicant who views MIT as a safety.</p>
<p>MIT as a safety is an idea that needs to be put to the test of practice, preferably with a sure-bet safety easier to get into than MIT already on the applicant's list.</p>
<p>It cuts both ways, 4 years ago Harvard was trying to beef up its engineering program -- I know applicants who applied to Harvard as a safety backdoor to MIT.</p>