Yield falls to 56.9 percent for Class of 2014

The year’s initial yield of 55.4 percent is almost 3 percentage points lower than the initial yield for the Class of 2013, which was 58.3 percent. Rapelye attributed the decrease to this year’s current 8.71 percent acceptance rate — the lowest ever in the University’s history — and “one of the strongest classes ever as measured by grades and test scores.”

“When the admit rate goes down, the yield is often affected,” Rapelye explained. “We are really happy to be admitting these students off the waitlist.”

While there are still 867 students currently on the waitlist, Rapelye said she is unsure whether the University will offer admission to any more of them. Last year, the Office of Admission offered places in the incoming class to waitlisted students in two rounds. This year, it will close the waitlist on June 30.

“In the last five years, [the University has] taken as many as 148 students off the waitlist,” Rapelye said, adding that waitlist acceptances for a given year are determined by national admission trends. “It really depends on what other schools are doing, and whether the students on our waitlist have accepted other schools’ offers of admission.”

Applications to the Class of 2014 increased by 19.5 percent compared with last year. The University initially admitted 8.18 percent of the 26,247 applicants to the Class of 2014, making this year's admission process the most selective in University history.