{"id":1044,"date":"2003-07-22T22:01:27","date_gmt":"2003-07-23T02:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/yield-rate\/"},"modified":"2003-07-22T22:01:27","modified_gmt":"2003-07-23T02:01:27","slug":"yield-rate","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/yield-rate\/","title":{"rendered":"Yield Rate"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

College Rating by U.S. News Will Now Skip a Key Factor <\/p>\n

By JACQUES STEINBERG

\n NT Times<\/p>\n

As it prepares to release its annual rankings, U.S. News & World Report,
\n which conducts the survey, has dropped from its formula a statistic known as
\n the yield rate. That figure is the percentage of applicants accepted by a university
\n who later enroll at that institution.<\/p>\n

U.S. News had placed little weight on the yield rate; the figure represented
\n less than 2 percent of a college’s overall score, the magazine said. But the
\n institutions, eager to do anything that might raise their scores, had considered
\n the rate, and its potential impact on rankings, important enough to admit more
\n students under "binding early decision" programs than they have in
\nthe past. <\/p>\n

Students who are accepted under such programs commit in advance to enroll at
\n a college, so the practice automatically improves an institution’s yield rate.<\/p>\n

In recent years, some Ivy League and other highly selective colleges have come
\n to admit more than 40 percent of their freshman classes through such programs,
\n before most applicants have even applied.<\/p>\n

Mindful that the use of the yield rate in the rankings formula had drawn them
\n into the debate about early admissions, the editors of U. S. News decided to
\n omit the figure this year, Sara Sklaroff, the magazine’s education editor,
\n said yesterday. <\/p>\n

"
\n What we’ve been told is that schools felt they could manipulate their ranking
\n by manipulating the yield number," she said. "We were basically in
\n a position where this tiny number was muddying the waters of a pretty important
\n debate."<\/p>\n

Among the most heavily weighted factors in the magazine’s rankings formula,
\n Mr. Morse said, are the assessments of a college by administrators of other,
\n similar institutions, 25 percent of the overall score; the resources of its
\n faculty, including the percentage with top degrees, 20 percent; its graduation
\n and retention rates, 20 percent; and its "admissions selectivity" [?
\n figure that had included yield rates as well as the percentage of applicants
\n that a college accepts — 15 percent. <\/p>\n

Christopher Avery, a professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School
\n of Government at Harvard and a co-author of "The Early Admissions Game" (Harvard
\n University Press), said that, in interviews for the book, admissions officers
\n at several top colleges had cited the rankings as a factor in the decisions
\n to accept more students early.<\/p>\n

Still, Mr. Avery said, he did not expect the U.S. News decision to lead to
\n the end of such programs. Colleges have other incentives to keep them going,
\n not least because such applicants are often from the wealthiest families in
\n an applicant pool and are passionate enough about an institution to choose
\n it above all others. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

College Rating by U.S. News Will Now Skip a Key Factor By JACQUES STEINBERG NT Times As it prepares to release its annual rankings, U.S. News & World Report, which conducts the survey, has dropped from its formula a statistic … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1044","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}