Yield rates

I am sure @eyemgh will love this data :slight_smile: Did a few college visits last week with my younger daughter and at one private SoCal college the admissions counselor mentioned there is a tectonic shift in the admissions process over the last 5 years, where kids apply to ever more colleges, and she quoted about 15 on average. Since in the past, with paper applications the process was laborious that automatically limited the number of colleges kids could apply to.

Now with applications all electronic, no paper required, and common apps, UC, CSU multiple applications, etc. it is so easy to apply to so many more colleges, with very few limiting factors. The net result is that colleges proudly publish their ever increasing applications numbers, but are very silent about yield :slight_smile:

Case in point, Cal Poly had suffered a very notable downward trend in yields, with the yield to ~30% from ~38% in 4 years. The trend is similar even in areas such as engineering. It is interesting that their engineering selection rate stayed constant over the last 3 years, but their yields decreased markedly. An interesting trend to follow.

http://ir.calpoly.edu/ceng-admissions-profile

Yeah that’s true, students definitely apply to more schools on average now so they end up also turning down more schools. If you don’t mind a personal story, my mom applied to two colleges and I applied to 15.

It’s an interesting turn about from schools, mostly privates like Vandy, Rice and WashU, who solicited lots of applications so they could reject more, increasing their selectivity to rise in the rankings.