What is Yield/Yield Management ?
For families, admissions decisions can feel deeply personal: your student’s hard work, grades, and character are being evaluated. But inside admissions offices, another factor looms large: yield.
What Is Yield?
Yield is the percentage of admitted students who actually choose to enroll. For example, if a school admits 1,000 students and 400 say yes, its yield is 40%. On paper, this looks simple. In reality, it drives almost every decision a college makes.
Why Yield Matters to Colleges
Rankings Pressure: Publications like U.S. News & World Report treat yield as a sign of desirability. A higher yield signals that the school is a “first choice.”
Financial Stability: Tuition is the lifeblood of most institutions. Predicting how many students will show up in August is critical for budgeting.
Prestige and Perception: A low yield can make a school look like a “backup option,” even if that’s not true.
How Colleges Manage Yield
Deferrals and Waitlists: Deferring strong students or holding them on a waitlist allows schools to see how the numbers shape up before committing.
Institutional Priorities: Schools track demonstrated interest closely (visits, virtual events, email engagement) to identify which applicants are likely to enroll.
Data Modeling: Colleges don’t just consider your child’s profile — they look at patterns. “Students from this high school with these test scores historically enroll 65% of the time.”
Insider Perspective: At the University of Chicago, yield tracking was almost like watching the stock market. Daily dashboards showed how many admits were depositing, broken down by major, state, even sending school. Those numbers informed real-time adjustments to waitlist activity.
What Families Should Know
If your student was deferred, yield is often part of the story. Schools may hesitate to admit strong applicants early because they’re not confident those students will enroll. That’s why the steps I outlined in my last post — sending a LOCI, keeping grades strong, and showing genuine interest — matter so much.
This isn’t just about qualifications. It’s about convincing the school your student is serious. In other words, deferral season is not the time to step back — it’s the time to lean in.
