<p>
[quote]
About 67 percent of admitted students have decided to join the class of 2014 in the fall, down slightly from the 68.7 percent matriculation rate recorded at this time last year, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeff Brenzel said Monday.
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<p>Thats because of so much cross-acceptance with Harvard, Princeton, etc.</p>
<p>It’s been a difficult year for Yale from the standpoint of public relations.</p>
<p>A 1.7% difference is roughly 34 people out of approx 2000 admit offers. Is this statistically even significant? Just wondering…</p>
<p>No. It’s pretty much the definition of meaningless variation.</p>
<p>However the trend must be a little worrisome for them. Here are the final matriculant/admit ratios over the past five years:</p>
<p>2005 70.3%
2006 70.0%
2007 69.1%
2008 67.6%
2009 66.8%</p>
<p>(I note that the actual yield numbers must be calculated a little differently from just matriculants/admits as I could not reproduce the 67.9% rate the article cites for 2009. I assume the difference is admitted students who postpone entry).</p>
<p>It would be interesting to see the SCEA yields in particular.</p>
<p>Yale has suffered from that murder story this past year also. Or it could just be some random double admission thing between Harvard etc.</p>
<p>In addition to Annie Le’s murder, there were two tragic undergrad deaths this year. I think that especially for families who have not had the opportunity to visit Yale, this kind of news creates the mistaken impression that the campus is unsafe or the atmosphere too stressful. Recall that Yale is the only Ivy whose application numbers did not increase this year; the application deadline fell on the heels of the news of Ms. Le’s murder.</p>
<p>Interesting numbers, Descartesz. Haven’t H and P also experienced similar small declines in enrollment over the last few cycles? (Obviously, H’s overall yield remains higher than Y’s, P’s lower.)</p>
<p>H and P are harder to read as dropping EA has affected them.</p>
<p>Harvard
2005 - not available
2006 79.2
2007 78.7
2008 76.2 - first non-EA year
2009 - not available</p>
<p>Princeton
2005 68.1
2006 68.6
2007 67.7
2008 58.6 - first non-EA year
2009 59.8</p>
<p>Thanks for those numbers, Descartesz. It does appear that H has also experienced small incremental reductions in yield over the last cycles. I didn’t realize just how hard Princeton got hammered when it dropped binding ED.</p>
<p>hypsm —> hsymp</p>
<p>good news for hopeful transfers??</p>
<p>^^To make room for transfers, current students must decide not to return to Yale for their sophomore year. There’s no evidence Yale’s retention rate, at about 99% the highest of any U.S. college, is diminishing.</p>
<p>If you take a “trend” of a handful of percent in isolation, why is that valuable information to the school or to anyone? It isn’t much in the way of information unless you compare the classes admitted to the yield rate and then look at the 1/3 who don’t enroll to understand why. You would also need to look at the admit rate to see how those choices affect yield. So for example, let’s say that Yale was actually “worried” about this so-called “trend.” If they do an actual analysis on their admits - which I’d bet they do - and for some very strange reason they decide that they want their yield higher - why, I don’t know - then they could adjust the accept mix and generate a higher yield. (Of course, that would mean having to reduce the number of admits.) So again, not useful information. All it tells me is that Yale admits 100 and gets about 67.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to know if legacy admit trends are comparable to the decline.</p>
<p>What you really need to find (and which is nearly impossible to find) is the HYPS-cross-admit rate. That way, Stanford could acknowledge (for better or worse) people’s claims that they admit fewer cross-admits, we could see whether Princeton gets hurt because they accept so many cross-admits, and etc.</p>
<p>I have to wonder whether the explanation for this trend (if it really is one) is an increase in cross-admits to cheaper schools, such as honors colleges at state universities, or good schools with merit awards. It may not be that the top schools are declining, but rather that a larger group of schools is demonstrating top quality and value.</p>
<p>That explanation makes sense. I recall that a number of years ago on CC, it was something of a novelty item when a student poster, after much deliberation, chose a full ride at Vanderbilt over Yale at full freight. There were pages and pages of discussion. Now kids frequently choose merit scholarships at schools like Vandy, Duke, and Emory over HYP, and they often do it with little angst. It’s certainly understandable. There’s a misperception that all families who don’t qualify for need-based aid are rolling in dough In this economy, especially, that’s not the case. Very, very few families don’t miss $200,000.</p>
<p>Bumping this</p>
<p>a GC at our hs told us that several (about 12-15) of the top students (2010) who were admitted to most selective schools this round DID choose other very nice schools that offered much better financial packages…and turned down the bigger names</p>
<p>I think also–SCEA hurts Yale</p>
<p>We know someone who was encrouaged to apply SCEA and was deferred…she was very sorry she did the SCEA and put all of her eggs in that basket so to speak…
In the end she is going this fall to a very nice state U (out of state for her) into the Honors college program</p>
<p>It seems to me that if Yale went from SCEA to unrestricted EA, they would be unlikely to lose much yield from that round, especially if Harvard and Princeton continue to not have early admissions.</p>