How Yield Can Impact Your College Application

They like you, but do you like them? Colleges want to swipe right on the students they think will swipe right back. They use your level of demonstrated interest to gauge their potential yield.

A university’s yield is the percentage of students offered admission who choose to enroll. It's a simple equation: the number of students who accept the university's offer of admission divided by the number of students who were offered admission.

1,500 applicants accepted the offer 2,000 applicants were offered admission

Yield = 75%

Colleges accept more students than they can accommodate because not every student will say yes. Even Harvard’s yield rate was not 100%. (It was 85% last year.)

Managing the yield is especially important because if more students accept than anticipated there may not be enough dorm rooms or seats in classrooms. On the other hand, if fewer students accept a school’s offer, then anxious students on the waitlist have a chance!

Getting that number right is called yield management, an essential tool for colleges. They use this information to know how much tuition revenue they will generate to set budgets, house new students, and plan professors’ course loads.

Yield is one reason that colleges encourage students to apply in the Early Decision (ED) or Early Action (EA) rounds. This enables them to better predict how many students will attend their school because ED is a binding contract. The college knows that the student is going to accept the offer.

Schools can be protective of their yield because it’s a component in some college rankings. Many colleges use demonstrated interest in their acceptance calculation. Admissions wants to extend offers to students who will be they would be most likely to “yield,” i.e., students who will accept their offer.

To learn how The Application Coach can help you plan your college application strategy, schedule a free 30-minute Discovery Call.