Tuesday, May 8, 2012

MIT Accepts No Students from Waitlist for Class of 2016

For the first time in seven years, no students will be admitted off the waitlist for the incoming freshman class. By last Tuesday, 1,130 prospective students, or 70 percent of admitted students, confirmed their enrollment at MIT for the coming fall — MIT’s highest yield ever.
According to Dean of Admissions Stuart Schmill ’86, 100 fewer students were admitted this year relative to last year, to create the same size class as the 2015s. The admissions office chose to lessen the number of students admitted because early admissions was reinstated at Harvard and Princeton last year; since applicants who were interested in those schools might have already been admitted during the early admissions cycle, those applying to MIT were more likely to say yes.
“Students who applied early to one of those schools and were admitted may not have applied to us,” Schmill wrote in an email to The Tech, “where in the past they might have [applied to MIT].” To estimate just how many students to accept — such that the class size would work out right — admissions checked yield numbers from when Harvard and Princeton previously had early admission programs.
“[We] thought the yield would go up about 2 percentage points — not the 4 points it actually went up,” Schmill said.
The admissions office was “fully expecting” to take students from the waitlist this year and were “disappointed not to be able to offer admission to some really excellent students who were on the waitlist.” These students have been informed that the class is full.
“Rather than have them wait, we wanted to tell them as soon as possible,” Schmill explained.
Schmill credits the high yield of the class of 2016 to a spectacular CPW.
“CPW was outstanding because of the welcoming spirit of the entire campus,” he said, “We had a higher percentage of our admitted students attend than ever before, and they gave us great reviews on their follow up surveys.”
The class of 2016 boasts a higher percentage of women (46 percent) and underrepresented minorities (24 percent) than any other class, while 13 percent are first generation students. The SAT scores were the “highest ever” according to Schmill, with a math mean/median of 764/780 and verbal mean/median of 716/730.
The holistic (“arguably more important”) measures of the class, Schmill said, are “still as strong as ever.”
In addition, 25 transfer students, mostly sophomores, have accepted their offer of admission at MIT.

http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N24/admissions.html

10 comments:

justwondering said...

Any ideas what the yield for Stanford, Harvard and Yale are?

Mathacle said...

Stanford has a 73.4%.

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/05/04/facsen-talks-breadth-requirements/

NYCFan said...

Here's the Harvard story: 81% yield


Harvard Yield for Class of 2016 Soars to 81%
By ELIZABETH S. AURITT, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Published: Thursday, May 10, 2012

In the first year of Harvard’s renewed early admissions program, the yield for the class of 2016 soared to nearly 81 percent, a significant increase from last year’s rate of 77 percent, the University announced on Thursday.

This year’s yield, which measures the percentage of accepted students who choose to enroll at Harvard, marks the first time this number has reached 80 percent since the class of 1975 was admitted.

"It is a major jump," Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said.

In December, Harvard admitted 772 students under its early action program. Another 1,260 acceptances were extended in March. Overall, 1,641 of those admitted to the Class of 2016 accepted their offer of admission from Harvard.

Due to this high yield a very small number of students will be taken off the waitlist, approximately 25, Fitzsimmons said. The admissions office began reviewing waitlisted applications on Thursday, he added.

Though this year’s yield is not the highest the College has ever seen, Fitzsimmons said it is certainly the highest in the modern era of highly competitive college admissions, especially at the most selective institutions.

"It was a very different world. Harvard and our peer institutions were not anywhere near the national and international institutions they are today. It’s really almost like apples and oranges," he said.

Fitzsimmons said he attributes this significant increase in the yield to three factors—the return of early action, the continuing poor economic climate, and an increase in awareness of new programs at the College.

Fitzsimmons said that the renewed early action program was expected to have a significant influence on the yield. According to Fitzsimmons, students who apply early typically have a stronger interest in Harvard than those who apply regular decision, and are thus less likely to apply elsewhere when admitted early and are more likely to attend.

Fitzsimmons added that the College’s financial aid program continues to encourage students to matriculate.

"The financial aid program continues to be paramount in people’s decisions, even the people who might not be on financial aid, but who see what might happen to them and to their own jobs and their own financial situations," he said.

In addition, Fitzsimmons named the increased public profile of a number of newly introduced programs at the College—including new engineering programs at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences—as factors in students’ decision to matriculate.

Of the other Ivy League universities, only Dartmouth has released its yield rate of 49.5 percent. Harvard’s yield is typically the highest among peer institutions.

mlkphd83 said...

That Stanford number was preliminary and it was 81% in the end. They have to add another freshman dorm as it was higher than anticipated!

NYCFan said...

To Unknown:

If, as you say, the Stanford yield rate was not 73.4%, as Mathacle reports, but "81% in the end", then the Freshman class will be 1,966 rather than the record 1,781 it was last year! They'll probably need to build TWO new freshman dorms!

NYCFan said...

Today, Stanford estimated that the final matriculation number will be around 1,766, with no admits from the wait list.

This would translate to a yield rate of about 72.8%

Mathacle said...

You may want to be consistent with the numbers: when you mentioned H's number, it was the number without "summer melt", but when you mentioned S's number, it was after "summer melt". I know how much you want to say about H, but more objective earns you more respect.

NYCFan said...

In both cases, I took the estimate of the respective Admissions Directors for the eventual class size, including wait list action.

justwondering said...

NYC fan, 1766 is the estimated number, considering summer melt. The actual number of admitted students who accepted their offer of admission to Stanford is 1786 - 73.6%

Again, whether the class will drop by 20 kids is unknown.

NYCFan said...

Similarly, the 25 estimated WL admits for Harvard is intended to cover all slots open prior to the start of classes in the fall.