\u00a0working paper<\/a>\u00a0by the National Bureau of Economic Research, \u201cWhy Don\u2019t Elite Colleges Expand Supply?\u201d finds that\u00a0top colleges care more about prestige as measured against their peers than any other factor<\/i>\u00a0when it comes to setting their enrollment numbers.<\/p>\nThe four colleges that appear at the top of the annual U.S. News rankings\u2014Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Yale (HPSY)\u2014increased their enrollment by only 7% even as their applications skyrocketed, especially as the schools have gone \u2018test optional\u2019 during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Over the past 40 years, the freshman class at Yale has increased by only 14 seats; however, the number of applications has increased 300%, from 9,331 in 1979 to 30,932 in 2015.\u00a0For the Class of 2021,\u00a032,900 students<\/b>\u00a0applied to Yale.<\/p>\n
This is not unique to Yale. In fact, the top 20 schools have found ways to increase their number of applicants while at the same time keeping enrollment constant over the years. This is how prestigious schools lower their yields, thus making the school seem more prestigious. The lower the yield, the higher the school sits on some of the most well-known ranking lists.<\/p>\n
What does this mean for your student?<\/p>\n
We like to say that the top 20 schools are \u2018lottery\u2019 schools. Even if Naviance indicates that, based on your child\u2019s test scores and GPA, they are plotted on the Naviance scattergram into Harvard or UChicago, the likelihood of admittance is extremely low.<\/p>\n
Scattergrams give data points for each student from a specific high school who has applied to a particular college in the\u00a0past\u00a0<\/em>few<\/i>\u00a0years. The data points represent the students\u2019 standardized test scores and GPAs based on your school\u2019s scale. The points also indicate whether the student was admitted, waitlisted, or denied at a particular school.<\/p>\nThe key words here are \u201cdata points\u201d. This data is collected from the school over the course of several years, therefore making the data old.<\/p>\n
Another point to consider is that if 43 students from your child\u2019s school apply to a lottery school, from the school\u2019s perspective, only a very small percentage from the school will be admitted, assuming that they even qualify, because the university wants a well-rounded freshman class.<\/p>\n
We always suggest a variety of schools since not every top tier college is well-suited for a particular student. We want to ensure that a student will find their course of study at a school that is a \u2018just right fit\u2019 for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We at A Starting Line love data, and we analyze all kinds of data to help our clients be strategic in college planning. But, it is very important that we are selective in what data we take into account and how we incorporate it into our strategy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo23.mikotech.vn\/thuytien\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo23.mikotech.vn\/thuytien\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo23.mikotech.vn\/thuytien\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo23.mikotech.vn\/thuytien\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo23.mikotech.vn\/thuytien\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo23.mikotech.vn\/thuytien\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2548,"href":"https:\/\/demo23.mikotech.vn\/thuytien\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546\/revisions\/2548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo23.mikotech.vn\/thuytien\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo23.mikotech.vn\/thuytien\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo23.mikotech.vn\/thuytien\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo23.mikotech.vn\/thuytien\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}