Penn’s 63 percent yield rate for the class of 2014 is within the range of other Ivy Leagues.
This year’s yield rate —the percentage of students admitted to the school who enroll at that college — is exactly the same as the yield rate for the class of 2013, according to Dean of Admissions Eric Furda.
Yale’s yield rate was 67 percent, down slightly from 68.7 percent and Harvard’s yield rate was 76 percent, about the same as last year, according to their admissions offices.
Of the Ivy League schools, Penn’s yield rate for the class of 2014 is only lower than Harvard and Yale’s, according to the New York Times.
Outside the Ivy League, Stanford had a yield rate of 72 percent and Massachusetts Institute of Technology 64 percent, according to the New York Times.
“Given the 17 percent increase in the applicant pool, it is a positive sign that [Penn’s] yield remained steady,” Furda wrote in an e-mail. “You could expect that with such a large applicant pool increase, some of the applicants may not be as interested when it comes time to make the final choice.”
This year, Penn received 26,938 undergraduate applications, its highest number to date.
In addition to the rise in the applicant pool was a fall in the acceptance rate of 14.2 percent, a drop from last year’s 17.1 percent acceptance rate and a record low for the University.
This corresponds with a general trend of falling acceptance rates across Ivy League universities .
Independent education consultant Joan Koven was impressed by Penn’s yield rate.
“That’s amazing,” she said. “That is really high.”
Koven, founder and director of Havertown, Pa.-based Academic Access, attributes Penn’s high yield rate to the admissions office’s ability to a “really figure out who’s interested” in coming to Penn and admitting the students who they expect will matriculate.
“Penn is doing a really good job at picking out the right kid who is a match” for the school, she said.
Koven believes Harvard and Yale have higher yield rates because of the two schools’ slightly better reputation.
“Harvard and Yale don’t really need to match,” she said.
Koven pointed to non-Ivy schools Swarthmore and Amherst, who, according to her, had considerably lower yield rates of 38 percent and 39 percent respectively.
