Preliminary yield drops to 63 percent

The preliminary yield rate for the class of 2012 fell to 63 percent, leading the admissions office to utilize its waitlist more extensively this year.

The percentage of students accepted before May 1 who decided to enroll is down from the 66-percent yield at this time last year.

As a result, interim Dean of Admissions Eric Kaplan said Penn plans to accept about 90 students off the waitlist this year, roughly 4 percent of the class.

The waitlist has slightly more than 1,000 students on it.

By comparison, 65 students were accepted off last year's waitlist, which had 900 students.

Kaplan wrote in an e-mail that the admissions office expected to take more students off the waitlist this year because it was unsure how to deal with Harvard and Princeton universities' decisions to eliminate their early-acceptance policies.

Because students who previously would have been accepted at Harvard or Princeton early now had to apply to a greater number of schools, they may have applied to and been accepted at Penn.

This could have led to the decline in the yield, according to Kaplan.

Sally Rubenstone, a counselor with College Confidential, also attributed the more extensive waitlist use to a changing landscape.

"The large senior class, coupled with the change in early-action and early-decision policies at some schools, made for some murky waters," she said.

Kaplan added that the admissions office decided to take students off the waitlist rather than accept more right away because the waitlist makes it easier to control class size.

"Managing class size by using the waitlist is an ideal scenario," he wrote.

Penn's peer institutions will also accept a large number of students off their waitlists.

Like Penn, Princeton plans to accept around 90 students off its waitlist and Harvard plans on accepting 150 to 175 waitlisted students.

The size of other universities' waitlists is also larger this year. There are 1,052 students on Yale University's waitlist, up 22 percent from last year. The number of students on Princeton's waitlist increased by 93 percent.

College consultant Michelle Hernandez said Harvard's decision to take a large number of students off its waitlist will create a "trickle-down effect," leading other schools to accept students from waitlists later in the cycle.

Second- and third-tier colleges, she added, might still be taking students off their waitlists well into the summer.

"It messes up the system for everyone," Hernandez said.

Steven Goodman, an education consultant based in Washington, D.C., said colleges' increased use of their waitlists can be both beneficial and harmful to students.

While it helps students because it allows those who are patient to still have a chance at getting accepted at one of their top choices, "it hurts students a little bit because it prevents them from having closure," he said.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.