Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Education:

Report indicates UNLV is no ‘safety school’

UNLV Dorms

Leila Navidi

The Dayton Complex for freshman students on the campus of UNLV in Las Vegas on Wednesday, August 22, 2012.

For the second year in a row, UNLV has made the top 25 on the U.S. News and World Report list of schools with the highest percentage of accepted students who choose to enroll.

The measure is known in education circles as “yield.”

“Yield is an important indicator of what students think about their college choice. A high yield means that students greatly value being admitted to a school, while a low yield may mean that the school was considered a “safety” and may not have been those students’ first choice,” the publication wrote in releasing the data.

UNLV finished 12th, cracking the top 20 after coming in at 25th in 2011.

“UNLV is pleased to once again rank as one of the most popular universities in the nation,” UNLV President Neal Smatresk said in a statement. “UNLV’s national and international reputation continues to grow as evidenced by the fact that more students than ever are making UNLV their first choice.”

Out of 4,746 students accepted at UNLV in fall 2011, 2,870 enrolled, a yield of 60.5 percent. For the 266 schools included in the U.S. News and World Report list, the average yield was 36 percent.

The schools ahead of UNLV this year are Brigham Young University — Provo, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Nebraska — Lincoln, Yeshiva University, University of Alaska — Fairbanks, Georgia Southern University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, University of Pennsylvania and University of North Dakota.

The National Association for College Admissions Counseling reported in Nov. 2012 that the average number of schools to which students apply has risen dramatically in the last few years and average yield has decreased.

“Average yield rates, or the percent of accepted students who enroll, at four-year colleges declined significantly over the past decade, from 49 percent in 2002 to 38 percent in 2011,” the association said in a press release. “Declining rates signaled greatly increased uncertainty for colleges, upending traditional methods of predicting the share of accepted students a college would enroll.”

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