Yield Rate

<p>I'm not sure if this is the correct term...but what percentage of students (historically) who apply to harvard and get accepted actually end up going?</p>

<p>Don't know about historically, but in the 2005 US News listing it was 78%</p>

<p>And in the spirit of avoiding homework, I present the rest....</p>

<p>Princeton - 73.4%
Yale - 67.2%
Penn - 63.1%
Columbia - 61.6%
Brown - 58.4%
Dartmouth - 50.7%
Cornell - 49.5%</p>

<p>as far as I know... Harvard's yield rate is among the highest in the nation, usually just below 80%</p>

<p>wow thanks a lot for the statistics!</p>

<p>My pleasure...it was much more fun than writing an essay on democratization in the ROK</p>

<p>The numbers given above are for the Class of 2007 - NOT the Class of 2008.</p>

<p>For the Class of 2008, the yield rate at Harvard was 78%, at Yale it was 66.8% and at Princeton and Stanford it was about 66.5%</p>

<p>Based on preliminary admit numbers, the schools project the following yield rates for the Class of 2009:</p>

<p>Harvard: 79%; Yale, 69.4%; Stanford 68%; Princeton 67.8%; Penn 61%.</p>

<p>These projected numbers will drop to the extent applicants are taken off the waitlist.</p>

<p>Byerly, do you think it is fair to compare the yield rate of schools such as Columbia, Penn and Princeton, which are ED, with the likes of Stanford, Harvard and Yale, which are EA?</p>

<p>Do you have any figures for RD yields only?</p>

<p>(Remember that these are projections based on April 1 and early admit numbers, and that the final numbers will almost always be lower.)</p>

<p>Harvard: 71%
Yale: 57.1%
Stanford: 55.7%
Princeton: 52%
Penn: 48.4%
Columbia: 46.8% ("College" only)
Brown: 46.3%
Dartmouth: 43%</p>

<hr>

<p>As for comparing overall yield rates between ED and SCEA schools, I don't think the differences are too substantial. At the 3 SCEA schools, the SCEA yield, last year, was 91% at Harvard and 88% at Stanford and Yale. </p>

<p>As a "reform", SCEA is something of a fraud. As long as you can only apply early to a single school, the SCEA schools have almost as much "protection" against competitors as ED schools do. This is because - </p>

<p>(1) only a minor fraction of SCEA applicants choose their school on a "tactical" basis - ie, where they think they have the best shot at admittance; and -</p>

<p>(2) for most SCEA admits, their chance of getting in RD elsewhere are quite low, because the SCEA admit rate is 3-4 times higher than the RD admit rate at the respective schools.</p>

<p>Thank you for the figures. I agree with the points that you have mentioned, but for a school such as Princeton which has a 100% early decision yield that fills half of its class, overall yield is skewed upward. This makes comparison slightly difficult because SCEA colleges such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford have lower early yields, even though the difference is not that significant from the figures you have cited. </p>

<p>Do you think that an open EA policy such as that of the University of Chicago is the best early admissions policy?</p>

<p>Do you know what MIT's yield is? I have the USNEWS rankings, but I can't find the yields in there.</p>

<p>Yes, I think open EA is the best early alternative. I was distressed when Harvard "retreated" from open EA to SCEA - primarily, I believe, to bail out Levin, who wanted to escape the limitations of binding ED, but wasn't prepared to take the yield hit he thought he'd have to face if he went all the way to EA. </p>

<p>As I have said, I believe that SCEA is essentially a fraudulant reform. SCEA admits have a greatly reduced opportunity to compare offers from rival elites - because the RD admit rate is so low everywhere.</p>

<p>Sufficient information has not been supplied to calculate MIT's yield for the Class of 2008. For the Class of 2007, it was something like 58.5% as I recall. </p>

<p>I think it will be higher for 2008 and 2009, because all the open EA schools which shared an early app pool with Harvard - including MIT, Georgetown and Chicago - saw the same phenomenon: ie, a big drop in the size of the early pool, but a concomitant rise in the EA yield rate. </p>

<p>(The people they "lost" apparently, were "true" EA applicants to Harvard, who were unlikely to choose the other schools, even if admitted.)</p>

<p>Did Harvard predict the same yield rate this year as last year? Wouldn't they assume that their new fin aid plans will attract more
students and therefore give them a greater yield? I would think with a fin aid change they would predict higher yields just in case and use their anxiously awaiting waitlisters to fill any gaps. Better to
undersubscribe and take happy waitlisters than oversubscribe and have angry students in triples!</p>

<p>They projected 79% vs, 78% last year. I think 78% is more likely, so that there will be between 35 and 60 taken from the WL</p>

<p>But don't you feel that with widespread adoption of an Open EA admissions policy, the regular admissions process will become almost obsolete since there will be a "race" to apply to many schools early as there has been a "race," over the past 8 years, for college applicants to apply to one early school. </p>

<p>Open EA is effectivley moving the admissions deadline back 2 months since it is not restrictive in anyway and so is exactly the same as applying regular decision.</p>

<p>Byerly, why no prediction of increase in yield rate with the new fin aid
policy?? It seems that even a 1% increase to 80% will put them in
trouble with the numbers they have admitted. Must not think the
plan was that attractive to many applicants.</p>

<p>I've been informed that there may, indeed, be a slightly higher yield rate among what might be called the marginal applicant group attracted by the new financial aid policy. But (in my cynical view) that new policy was adopted from a position of (relative) weakness to offset rising challenges from schools offering substantial tuition reductions styled "merit" aid to the top students that Harvard generally targets. </p>

<p>There are many schools now that are granting large awards to National Merit Scholars and the like irrespective of need. It requires something of a balancing act to retain Harvard's "normal" percentage of the (statistically) best students while also attempting to achieve greater economic diversity. </p>

<p>Clearly, HYPS have the resources to "buy" the best students - NY Yankee-style - if that's what they wanted to do. Likewise, HYP could "buy" top athletes with athletic scholarships (as Stanford does) if they wanted to.</p>

<p>Without awarding "merit" aid, and focussing recruiting more broadly on those entitled to receive "need-based" aid, the end result will be, I expect, a wash when it comes to the overall yield rate.</p>

<p>The traditional April 1 admit date that most elites have utilized is increasingly being honored in the breach - and the tendency to fill classes with as many early pool applicants as possible is only one culprit.</p>

<p>We are headed - IMHO - towards a defacto "rolling admissions" status among the Ivies and other elites, as competition gets fiercer for the top applicants. Variations on the "likely letter" and "early write" options are spreading like wildfire. </p>

<p>Its all about trying to gain an edge on other schools by tying up recruits as early as possible. Once this phenomenon was limited to athletes - now it has spread to other "desirables" such as URMs, top students academically, and to any applicants who may help meet racial, economic, geographic, gender and other diversity goals.</p>

<p>^ Byerly, I agree with you most of the time when you stick with the analytical aspect. </p>

<p>One good outcome would be that combination of merit aid + other recruitment strategies may break the monopolies of HYPSM.</p>