And isn't it the rule of thumb that colleges adopting the so-called "common-application" in recent years have all "enjoyed" huge increases in applications almost overnight?
Dean Brenzel didn't mention this key factor in burnishing the admit rate.
Harvard accepted the common application in 1999 and applications jumped 17%. Cornell adopted the common application in 2004 and applications jumped 17%. Princeton adopted the common application in 2005 and applications jumped 16%; Yale adopted the common application in 2006 and applications jumped 9%; Stanford adopted the common application in 2007 and applications jumped 20%.
The admissions deans will all piously declare that they only want to make applying easier for persons of modest means. Perhaps ... but they are all striving mightily to raise the application totals and lower the admit rate as well.
As the Chronicle of Higher Education observed in a 2007 article, "more-competitive colleges tend to benefit from the fact that increases in applications (resulting from adoption of the common application) lower their acceptance rates, enhancing their “perceived selectivity.”
How could you possibly report on admissions trends over the past 15 years or so without even MENTIONING the key factor affecting the yield rate,and, by extension,the admit rate:
THE EARLY ADMISSIONS PROGRAM!!
Yale fills more than half the class from the high-yield pool of early applicants. They aren't "forced" to do this, they CHOOSE to do it, in order to reduce the number of people they have to admit in order to fill the class, raise the apparent yield rate, and limit the number of applicants who may be enticed away by "rival" schools.
If Yale eliminated its early admissions program, as Princeton and Harvard have done, its yield rate would fall and its admit rate would rise.
Conservatively estimated (based on the historic 6-7% boost to the yield rate enjoyed when Yale adopted early admissions in 1996, which Ray Carleson failed to acknowledge) Yale would have had to admit an extra 150 people to fill the class this year without the early admissions boost.
The admit rate, under these circumstances, would have been a very impressive 8.1%, but nothing to be posting on YouTube.