Yield For Class of ’11 Reaches 69 Percent
Percentage of Admits Enrolling Sets Record
As of yesterday, a total of 1,053 students of the 1,533 who were admitted to the Class of 2011 had chosen to enroll, giving MIT a record 69 percent yield, Interim Director of Admissions Stuart Schmill said in an e-mail. According to Schmill, a more final yield number will be available next week. “There are still some outstanding offers out there,” Schmill said.
With a target class size of 1,070 students, Schmill said it is likely that Admissions will be able to admit a small number of applicants off the waitlist. According to Schmill, just under 500 students were placed on the waitlist, with most of them choosing to remain on the list.
Yield, or the percentage of admitted students who choose to enroll, has steadily increased in the past few years up to 67 percent for the Class of 2010 and 69 percent for the Class of 2011. Yield for the Class of 2007 was approximately 59 percent.
“The increase in yield is likely attributable to our doing a better job getting our applicants to see what MIT is all about,” Schmill said in the e-mail. “Through the Web site, through campus visits, and through personal connections, … more students are seeing the excitement of the campus and the opportunities that they’ll have here.”
Schmill also pointed to the record number of students that attended this year’s Campus Preview Weekend. Approximately 80 percent of those who attended CPW chose to enroll, he wrote.
Schmill said he does not believe that the resignation of former Dean of Admissions Marilee Jones affected the yield this year. Jones was forced to resign in late April after it was discovered that she misrepresented her academic credentials.
“For the most part, parents and students were respectful of Marilee and our process, recognizing that the whole affair was unfortunate,” Schmill said in the e-mail. “On the whole, people we heard from retained confidence in our process and know and appreciate that we are moving forward.”
Last year, MIT accepted 40 students off the waitlist for the Class of 2010, marking the first time MIT has gone to the waitlist since 2002. Higher-than-expected yields and MIT’s pledge to eliminate crowding in dormitories prevented MIT from accepting students off the waitlist in those intervening years.
According to Schmill, there is a very high matriculation rate for students admitted off the waitlist.
Schmill said in his e-mail that planning to admit students off the waitlist is important, because it is the only way to control class size given how difficult it is to accurately predict yield. In March, Jones said that the Admissions Office was anticipating a yield similar to that of the Class of 2010, approximately 67 percent. Jones said in March that the target size for the freshman class was 1,020. The number of students who have chosen to enroll so far is already higher than that number.
There were a total of 12,443 applicants to the Class of 2011 with a total of 1,533, or a record-low 12.3 percent, admitted. The admit rate has steadily decreased from 16.4 percent for the Class of 2007 to 13.3 percent for the Class of 2010. This year’s admitted students spanned 50 states and 66 countries, with 48 percent women and 24 percent underrepresented minorities. Demographic information for the matriculating students will be available at a later date.
According to Schmill, of the accepted students who chose not to enroll, more of them chose to attend Harvard University than any other school. Exact numbers will also be available at a later date, Schmill said.