Tue 20 May 2008
My fellow EphBlogger JG wants a source for this claim:
In the competition between Williams and Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford, 90% of students cross-admitted, choose one of HYPS over Williams.
A fair request! Unfortunately, I am having trouble coming up with a reference. Can readers point to one? I have made this claim before and have always understood it to be public knowledge. I am almost certain that I have heard/read it being said/written by senior Williams administrators (Morty? Nesbitt?). Yet I can’t find a specific citation although we did discuss related academic work four years ago. You can see an updated version of that paper here. Table 3 on page 28, although not directly on point and based on a statistical model, suggests that, at best, Williams gets 10 out of 100 cross-admits. But, again, I am almost certain I have seen this claim made in print by a Williams official.
UPDATE: Just found this from 2004.
The College admitted 43 fewer students this year than it did last year, aiming for a class of 528 students. “The intent is to come up somewhere short of that 528 number, and then be able to go to the waitlist,” Nesbitt said. Anticipating “summer melt,” (students who choose over the summer to take a year off or attend another college), the Admissions Office hopes to have 540 deposits by the end of May.
Thanks to a larger group of students admitted early, the Admissions Office was in a better position to reach for the most qualified students. Nesbitt would like to yield 35 to 38 percent of the regular decision pool. However, he cautioned that the strength of the admitted students could lead to a low yield as the College will compete with extremely prestigious institutions for them.
“The biggest overlap of admitted students is with Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Amherst and Dartmouth – the usual suspects,” he said. “Going head-to-head with places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, if we get 15 percent of those kids, we are actually doing pretty well. Whereas with Dartmouth and Amherst, we are doing well if we split students 50-50.”
I think that there are more quotes available, but I can’t find them just now.
May 20th, 2008 at 10:22 am
I bet that HYPS are not so insecure as to worry about (much less keep track statistically of) those ctoss-admits which they lose to the likes of insignificant Willie - they treat the losses as mere crumbs of the process.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Harvard probably sends out press releases telling the media how they are the prefered choice.
To the extent that Williams wins yield battles over the mass market brand name universities, the victories come in Early Decision.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
hwc–I’m pretty sure that ED doesn’t factor into Williams’ cross-admit numbers. While some students apply ED and EA, most students do not (and I’m not convinced that Williams counts a student who gets into Williams ED and Carleton EA as a “cross-admit”).
May 20th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
On an individual level, not entirely (there are regular decision admitees who opt for Williams over the Ivies), but it is true that many of the Early Decision admitees have deliberately chosen Williams over the Ivies and would have gotten into an Ivy (where I’ve seen that again and again has been with non-tipped but very good female athletes who were also recruited by Ivies and had letters offered; there are plenty of others, I’m sure, but this is the one place where we know the candidates would have actually been accepted, due to the letters).
I also sense that quite a few of the legacies would have been admitted to Ivies if they hadn’t chosen Williams Early Decision — that is based on knowing their stats and comparing them with those of their classmates and teammates who were accepted by Ivies. Not all legacies are stellar but a lot of them are, and happen to know and love Williams because of their alumni parents; I’ve always thought that, if many of their Ivy-targeting classmates and teammates and their parents knew Williams as well, they would be jamming the server with their applications.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Clarification of the above: their stats were far too strong for them to be tips.
And I should note that a goodly portion of those young women were/are legacies. I’ve often thought that, if non-Williams alumni parents knew Williams better and treasured Williams the way Williams alumni parents do, Williams would be getting significantly more of these cross-admits/Early Decision applicants.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
The question was not “the Ivies”. The question was Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I don’t know if you have been through the college thing with a child yet. It’s been my experience, and I know that it’s a common experience, that trying to sell mom or dad’s school isn’t a trivial endeavor, even when Biffy/Buffy is well aware of the impact legacy status can play in the admissions game.
It’s tricky business. Teenagers can be stubborn little devils.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
I don’t think ED figures into cross-admit data significantly. Many, if not most, ED students do not apply to more than 1-2 EA schools (if that), so the pool of ED/EA Williams-Yale or Williams-Princeton cross-admits will be insignificant when compared to the pool of Williams-Yale RD cross-admits.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
hwc,
i think it probably works in the opposite. not that legacy parents have a particularly strong ability to make their child reconsider, but that non-legacy parents can give strong incentive not to go to that random college in nowheresville (their opinion, obviously not mine) when you could go to harvard, princeton, or yale.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
current eph - I know. I was looking for a proxy (because, if one applies to Williams ED and gets in, by definition there can’t be a cross-admit choice situation).
rory - agreed for many families (although the point was also that the alumni parents aren’t likely to put the pressure on their kids NOT to choose Williams)
hwc -
As to #6, my sample size isn’t huge so I had to include all the Ivies. My point holds for HYP based on the students I know but I’m now talking about too few examples for me to trust the significance of my data (my pool has mostly Yale and a few Harvards proffers in it, with very few interested in Princeton for some reason).
May 20th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Hell - such “strong” incentives from time to time extend to threats by parents to refuse the providing of any financial assistance to their children who should pick Williams over any Ivy - at which point, if the threats be believed by the children, the outcomes become beyond doubt.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Aside from revealed preference?