Class of 2012 has highest yield rate ever at Stanford

72 percent of profros accept admissionMay 15, 2008
By Devin Banerjee

1,727 students have accepted Stanford’s offer of admission to the Class of 2012, placing the yield rate for this admission cycle at a University record high of 72 percent, the Office of Undergraduate Admission told The Daily yesterday. These numbers are likely to change, however, because many of Stanford’s peer institutions have recently announced they will be accepting waitlisted applicants.
“72 percent is, in fact, a Stanford record,” said Director of Admission Shawn Abbott in an email to The Daily. “But again, that figure might be premature, as we may lose students to other universities who go to their waitlists.”
Last year the University’s yield rate stood at approximately 70.8 percent, while the previous year’s rate hovered around 69 percent.
In an admission cycle that saw both a record-high 25,298 admission offers and a record-low 9.5 percent acceptance rate, Abbott noted that a high yield is not necessarily a plus.
“Unfortunately, our record yield had at least one negative consequence,” he said. “It necessitated that we reduce the number of admission offers to transfer students from 40 to 20.”
In addition to the cut in admitted transfers, the Office of Admission also has to handle potential over-enrollment — a problem that surfaced during the last admission cycle when 1,745 students enrolled in the Class of 2011.
Dean of Admission Richard Shaw told The Daily in a March email that his office had been cautious to avoid over-enrollment, although Abbott confirmed that the problem is now a real possibility.

“Clearly, we needed to be very aware [that] we could not have another year where our incoming class is too large,” Shaw said in March. “We would rather be slightly short of enrollment target and go to waitlist than be over.”
But Abbott told The Daily yesterday that the target class size is 1,670 — almost 60 less than the 1,727 who are now prospective freshmen.
“We are hoping to enroll as close to 1,670 freshmen as possible,” he said.
Abbott said approximately six percent of applicants were originally waitlisted in March, and just over 100 remain on the list now. As of yesterday, however, the towering yield is preventing the admission office from accepting any waitlisted applicants, although Abbott emphasized that the decision remains open until students who accepted Stanford’s offer but remain waitlisted at other schools make their final decisions.
“[It is still] too early to tell whether or not we will be able to admit anyone from the waitlist,” Abbott said.
“We only admit students from the waitlist if there is space available at Stanford,” he added. “Since there is [currently] no space available, it simply isn’t possible to admit anyone from the waitlist [as of now].”
Most of Stanford’s peer institutions, on the other hand, have recently announced that they will be accepting waitlisted applicants.
Harvard, with a 7.1 percent acceptance rate and a projected 76 percent yield, announced that it will offer admission to more than 200 waitlisted students, while Yale, which had an 8.3 percent admit rate and approximately 69 percent yield, made an initial round of 45 admission offers to waitlisted applicants last week. Princeton also offered admission to 86 waitlisted students last week, and MIT said it expects to send offers to approximately 35 students.