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Re NYTimes: U.C. Irvine Rescinds Acceptances for Hundreds of Applicants
From: "Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2017 08:33:47 +0000
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Geoff Kuenning <geoff () cs hmc edu> Date: Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 3:30 AM Subject: Re: [IP] Re NYTimes: U.C. Irvine Rescinds Acceptances for Hundreds of Applicants To: <dave () farber net> Dave, What your reader is missing is the way the numbers work. Waiting lists are only practical when the number of "declines" is small. The typical high-status college or university has a (VERY roughly) 30% yield. In other words, if you accept 10,000 students, you'll wind up with 3000 who actually enroll. If your goal is to have 3000 new students this fall and you therefore only accept 3000, you'll run into two problems: first, many of the remaining 7000 will go away immediately and permanently (since their alternate choices are often highly desirable), and second, when one of the 3000 turns you down, you lose time reaching out to the waiting list. Since everything has to be finished by a deadline (the first day of classes), you can't afford much time loss. The other fun thing is "summer melt": people who commit and pay their deposits, but then don't show up. That, too, needs to be accounted for. My memory is that it runs in the 3-5% range. So *everybody* plays a statistical game. The standard approach is that if you want 3000 students and expect a 30% yield and 5% melt, you send out about 10,000 acceptances. If your statistical predictions are right, you'll wind up with 3000 commitments and then you can go to the wait list for another 150 to compensate for the melt. Every once in a while something happens to screw up the statistics. Maybe your school gets some good press in between when you send out acceptances and when deposits are due. Or maybe one of your competitors becomes undesirable. Or the melt is low. Sometimes even politics messes up the predictions, as in this year when the number of overseas students is down for obvious reasons (although in this year's case, at least the admissions folks knew about that before they sent acceptances out). Admissions people don't get gray hairs worrying about whether they've accepted a bad student or rejected a future Nobel Prize winner. Their real stress is almost entirely about yield and melt.
Begin forwarded message:From: "Synthesis:Law and Technology" <synthesis.law.and.technology () gmail com> Date: July 30, 2017 at 5:15:39 PM EDT To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: Re: [IP] NYTimes: U.C. Irvine Rescinds Acceptances for Hundreds of Applicants Dave, I must be missing something here. The stated reason is too many people accepted the offers. So why offer too many? What's wrong with waiting lists? What criteria were used, I refuse to believe that all successful applicants exactly made it to the same degree. Waiting lists for acceptance have been around since...well... before my time at least. I was on the wait list for my chosen med school but law was most excited to have me. By the time med school recognized my inherent " superiority" and offered me a place, I was already reading up for first term. I can guarantee they found someone further on the list to replace. And this was all done without massive computer systems. Someone accepts an offer? "Boop" someone at the end is no longer on the wait list. Or left there just in case. It's really trivial at that point. And scalable. You do a manual override to accept more than the quota for history? The overall number gets decreased in the faculty. There just seems no need for this.
-- Geoff Kuenning geoff () cs hmc edu http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/ McDonald's, which does not wait on your table, does not cook your food to order, and does not clear your table, came up with the slogan ``We Do It All For You.'' -- Dave Barry ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/18849915-ae8fa580 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-aa268125 Unsubscribe Now: https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-32545cb4&post_id=20170731043405:016A2450-75CB-11E7-8D8A-B2E19B5EC4A2 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- Re NYTimes: U.C. Irvine Rescinds Acceptances for Hundreds of Applicants Dave Farber (Jul 30)
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- Re NYTimes: U.C. Irvine Rescinds Acceptances for Hundreds of Applicants Dave Farber (Jul 31)