Is It Unusual for Colleges to Reach Out Re: Unsent Applications?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand this because high apps but very low yield doesn't look good.

Yes, it does. In the college admissions world anyway. It makes them look more selective. "We received 100,000 apps but only admitted 1,000 people. We have a 1% acceptance rate. Look at how competitive we are! We're such a hard school to get into. And look at how many kids want to attend our school!"

Fair enough, PP, but if only 100 of the 1,000 admits actually enroll, that is a low yield and it looks bad. It means most of the people who applied didn't really want to go there or had better options elsewhere. It is interesting to look at lists of school with the highest yield. They are often niche schools to which a limited number of people would ever be interested in applying--such as military academies, all women's colleges, or very conservative or religious colleges. For those that want to go there, they are great schools, hence high yield, but most people would not ever apply. Am I missing something?

You are missing ED and waitlists. Colleges with high ED numbers are going to have high yield since the yield on ED is 100%. And some schools use the waitlist to admit fewer but have a pool available if yield is lower than expected. Your waitlist yield will typically be high because the spot will really only be released if the student says they would take it.

[Anonymous]

Re: yield: Schools will reject super strong applicants thinking they'll get in somewhere more selective.

I never got the emphasis on yield. Why should anyone care about yield?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Re: yield: Schools will reject super strong applicants thinking they'll get in somewhere more selective.

I never got the emphasis on yield. Why should anyone care about yield?

Yes, we've seen that this cycle with some of DCs friends. Have seen several schools on naviance who have wait listed the strongest applicants. I guess they figure if that kid needs the safety they'll let the school know.

One of my DCs paid a lot of attention to yield numbers. It gave DC a sense of how many kids really wanted to go to the school.