MIT announces yield %
Nearly the same as last year
Around 64 percent of prospective freshmen chose to accept their offers of admissions to MIT, roughly the same fraction as did last year, according to Dean of Admissions Stuart Schmill ’86.
This percentage, known as the “yield rate” in college admissions lingo, also stayed roughly constant at many of the schools with which MIT competes for freshmen: Harvard’s remained at 76 percent, Yale’s dropped to 67 from 69 percent last year, and Stanford’s rose to 73 percent from 71 percent last year.
In total, 1,070 students will enroll, which is the same number as last year and the number the admissions office had set as its target. In terms of race, gender, and schooling, the enrolled class is also very similar to the class of 2013.
In all, MIT admitted 1,676 students, including 65 students off the wait list. The overall admission rate was 10.1 percent, which includes 590 early action admits.
Sixteen percent of enrolled students are part of the first generation in their families to attend college. Forty-four percent are valedictorians, and 93 percent graduated in the top 5 percent of their high school class.
MIT continued to partner with QuestBridge, a non-profit that recruits low-income students to apply to top-tier schools, for the second year. This year, MIT accepted 87 of 903 students to apply through QuestBridge, and 49 of them have enrolled. Last year, only 800 students applied through QuestBridge.
While the admissions office has not yet conducted a survey of the academic interests in the enrolled class, Schmill noted an increase in the number of applicants interested in studying subjects related to energy and the environment. “This is a trend we’ve seen in the last few years, my presumption is that this is an area of increased interest on the part of young people generally, and specifically the MIT Energy Initiative has attracted students as well,” Schmill wrote in an e-mail.