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Emory accepted more than 4,000 students into Emory University’s Class of 2019 on Tuesday.
This year’s applications saw a more than 15 percent increase from last year, but the University accepted roughly the same number of students, according to Assistant Vice Provost for Undergraduate Enrollment and Dean of Admission John Latting.
This year, 20,519 students applied to the College, while last year, the College received 17,818 applications, according to data released by the Office of Admissions. For the past four years, until this year, application numbers remained in the 17,000s, according to data from the Office of Admissions. The number of admitted students only increased by one — 4,796 students were accepted this year and 4,795 were accepted last year.
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Latting said that he predicts the enrollment numbers at the College to be about the same as last year’s enrollment of 1,365 students.
The acceptance rate fell from 27 percent last year to 23 percent this year, he said.
Oxford College also saw an increase in applications. It received 9,736 applications and admitted 3,715 students — a 38 percent acceptance rate, according to data from the Office of Admissions. Last year, Oxford received 7,409 applications.
Latting said there are two reasons for the increase in application numbers.
First, Emory’s general operations have increasingly been spotlighted in the news.
“It’s everything from some sports thing to medical research,” Latting said. “Emory’s really been in the news a lot in the last year and for good things, and that has raised the profile of the University.”
The second reason, Latting said, is the Admissions Office’s recruitment efforts.
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[padding type=”medium_left_right”][quote_box name=””]“We try to be the very best sounding board that we can be for the University”[/quote_box][/padding]
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He noted that while the Admissions Office certainly wants the applicant pool to grow, increasing the size of the applicant pool each year is not a goal “in and of itself.”
“We don’t try to recruit students just to get them to apply,” Latting said. “Instead, we figure out what kind of students we’d like to have in our applicant pool, and we target those students.”
Although the Admissions Office continues to reach out to students by meeting with school counselors, visiting high schools and providing tours for prospective and accepted students, Latting said that the Office’s use of technology and information to spread the word about Emory is changing the most. Latting noted that the “relatively new” communications team within the Office of Admissions has been utilizing email campaigns and social media to reach out to students.
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However, Latting said the Admissions Office is not the only office helping to recruit new students.
“I think everyone at Emory should feel like he or she has a hand in the recruiting effort,” Latting said.
Latting noted that academic metrics get stronger each year. He also noted that “we don’t admit by SAT score, but academic preparation is the most important factor in the selection.”
The mean high school GPA of admitted students this year is 3.86, while the mean SAT scores for Verbal and Math was 1430, according to Latting. The average class rank of admitted students was 98th percentile. The average SAT and class rank of admitted students are the same as last year, but this year’s GPA rose by .01.
While Latting said that one of the themes of the admitted class is greater diversity, 11 percent of the admitted students are African-American while 9 percent are Hispanic — a only one and two percent increase respectively. Out of all the students, 31 percent are white.
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[padding type=”large_left”][columnChart vaxis=”{title: ”}” haxis=”{title: ”}” title=”College Acceptance Rates Across the Country”][‘School’, ‘Applications’, ‘Admits’],[‘Emory’, 20519, 4796],[‘Georgetown’, 19481, 3202],[‘GW’, 19780, 9000],[‘NYU’, 42242, 13731],[‘Yale’, 30237, 1962]
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International students make up 14 percent of accepted students and are citizens of 71 different countries.
The top 14 countries in order from most to least accepted students are China, India, Korea, Canada, Turkey, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Spain, France, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore and Thailand.
The gender distribution is very similar from previous years, with 57 percent female and 43 percent male admittees.
One dynamic admissions factor, according to Latting, is the geography of the admitted class. Latting said that increasing numbers of students come from outside the Southeast each year.
While 28 percent of admitted students are from the southeast this year, 30 percent were from the southeast last year, and 35 percent were from the southeast three years ago.
— By Annie McGrew
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My brother works in admissions at Vandy. Everyone seems to be up in applications-it’s easy to apply and students are applying to more schools. The statistic that counts is the percentage of admitted students who enroll. How does Emory compare with Vandy, Wash U.,
Northwestern and other competitors?
Interesting as Vandy is an interesting case study and to understand yield and student choice you have to think pretty deeply and I can only relay what I notice seems to play out: I don’t know if yield matters but so much as it can reflect many different thing and can be manipulated by using the waitlist excessively and/or rejecting more people each year for the sake of lowering the admit rate and increasing the yield…all of these are tactics. Vandy is always swimming in applications. it’s application does not have a supplemental essay anymore and hell-a-spams students (like WashU). Emory still has a supplemental essay and then even offers optional essays so it is still somewhat challenging to apply (though the Scholarship program has become easier due to the loss of the nomination requirement). Vandy’s yield is the best among us with Emory being most comparable in yield to WashU, NU (I think we’re all in the high 20’s or somewhere in the 30% range for yield whereas Vandy has always been pretty high, now in the low 40’s, but even when it was less selective, it yielded in the high 30’s), and places like that. Vanderbilt has successfully sold its social environment whereas students tend to apply to the other schools with specific academic programs in mind. It is very different and I honestly do not think that Emory or WashU, or even NU should be competing with Vandy as the latter’s academic and social environment is a bit different (programmatic strengths and offerings also differ a bit….Emory and WashU have strong BBA programs for example). I have never understood other students’ views on the similarity of schools. If one takes a closer look, often the most similar thing is the overall reputation which is also misleading because often that is not based on strength of undergraduate programs more so than prestige (which can come from influence on academia or strength of graduate and professional programs) or selectivity.
I can tell you that Emory has a bigger chance of winning over a cross-applicant between itself and WashU or JHU than it does Vanderbilt because most students applying to Vanderbilt are looking for the type of campus life and social scene they offer. You rarely hear them saying something like: “I came for this specific program or set of programs” (I will not count HOD/Peabody because the motivations pursuing that major are still unclear-hint hint), you hear: “It is very beautiful and everyone seems very happy. It just seemed so balanced and fun”. You don’t hear that about the other schools you mention which have more academically oriented student bodies that, as I already said, may be looking more for programmatic strengths. There are more schools that fit the profiles of those schools than schools that fit the profile of schools like Vanderbilt, Duke (I would say this is the most academically intense of the 3 in several programs-so they also get a huge chunk more serious about programmatic strength which makes sense because they have become a force to be reckoned in math, statistics, economics, biology, and policy/political science undergraduate programs…the rigor of their programs has moved in accordance to the increasing reputation of the school), or Notre Dame with this profile being: strong academically but having a social scene that is more sports or Greek life infused, thus offering more of the “standard” college experience while also offering great academics (even if, unlike Duke or Stanford, not necessarily known for more than a couple of unusually strong/signature undergraduate programs). It is like having the stereotypical and vibrant “state school” environment celebrated or highlighted in the media while also having some chance at a great classroom environment. Only a handful of medium sized private schools (the ones I named) have that feel and they have a very dedicated base of students that would not take a second look at the more “academic” (which they view as less vibrant or happy) environments if admitted to those institutions. Again, that base really wants a particular type of social environment limited to those schools.
The point is, students are not always choosing based on perceived strengths of certain programs but more so the overall “atmosphere”. Some students are willing to take “good academics” for granted and fall back on the social vibe to make a decision. These applicants don’t care as much about differences in academics between schools and perceive the differences as subtle. Some differences are indeed subtle, but many are not (departmental strengths even among elites vary a lot unless you are HYPS and perfect in most things lol). Like, if I were seriously considering academic quality for something like chemistry, biology, or neuroscience, I would choose Emory or WashU in a heartbeat over Vandy (I’ve seen the course materials, Vandy doesn’t compete well…plus both Emory and WashU seem to just try harder at undergraduate science education, especially in the natural science and it shows. Both schools have a Center for Science Education for example) because the teaching, courses, and programmatic offerings for undergraduates in these departments are generally stronger at the former 2. However, if you’re Emory or WashU, you can’t sell that to students who can care less about that sort of thing and have a more rosy view on elite college academics. They are the type that would perhaps say: “the academics at Vandy and WashU are the same, but Vandy is funner or less stressful so I should go there” (as in they just need a school where their area of interest is done better than average-once that threshold is met, no hairs will be split over academics)…Part of that just isn’t true. They could be going off of ranking or reputation without even bothering to visit classes or even look at academic offerings at each-like if I’m pre-med, I would visit an intro or intermediate chemistry or biology course as all pre-healths must take them- WashU is much different in terms of the curriculum (Emory is a bit different in terms of section size and teaching methods and the chemistry courses will soon be different curriculum wise) for those courses. WashU is more stressful because the academics in particular areas is known to be more intense than many supposedly similar schools. The same can be said for Emory and many of Vandy’s peers that are known to be more “academic”. The types of students who would still seriously consider Emory or WashU even after cross-applying to a place like Vanderbilt are more likely to be thinking deeper about or splitting hairs over the differences in academic opportunities and would try harder to gauge them. As in, the difference in vibe is not enough to swing these students completely. However, I bet that this class of cross-applicants is not as common as the other. Either way, student matriculation among these has many considerations that may be beyond explanation and often have little to do with academics or even reputation. Another major consideration is financial aid. Non-Ivies are notorious for buying the best students (a practice I agree with as long as they are the best based on meaningful criteria which I will discuss).
Vandy has been really strong at offering great financial aid packages, both need based and merit, so it now yields much more students who may otherwise go elsewhere if it were for academic considerations. Students and parents often just follow the money (and should). Emory has not been competing well here lately. I know many who were in that less common class of cross-applicants I spoke of that seriously considered Emory over them, but then had to rule out Emory because the financial aid offered was underwhelming in comparison. You can’t expect to increase yield unless the student that would have seriously considered the school is indeed able to afford it. It is time for Emory to get more merit and need-based funds and then see if it can make an improvement. Even then, I think we shouldn’t admit like Vanderbilt which seems to be more heavily using SAT and ACT scores than most of its peers….its scores are higher than many schools with more intense academic environments including schools like Stanford. It isn’t like these other schools could not cherrypick high scores like they do at this point, they simply choose not to. For some reason, Vandy takes this route. One interesting thing I noticed about Vandy is that when it comes to enrolled students, the bottom quartile drops (vs. admits) much more than the top 75%. To me, this suggests that many on the lower end of the distribution go elsewhere if fortunate enough to be admitted. Usually this is the case with the top quartile….but it is also possible that many students in their top quartile are actually denied or wait-listed by schools whose admissions are not as score sensitive. This would suggest that the other schools are looking for a different type of student that is not necessarily perfect at bubbling answers on a weekend! All of this points to my conclusion that I wouldn’t want Emory or any other school to adopt Vanderbilt’s admissions scheme despite their great yield. Clearly Emory is doing something right as we typically tie or beat them in Fulbright production. In the past cycle we beat them badly: http://us.fulbrightonline.org/top-producing-institutions (see doctoral/research intensive) and also tied them in things like Goldwater Winner Production (we both produced only 1 past cycle) for example. Duke has been surpassed by their scores (for maybe 3-5 years now, As in, the changes should be showing up in the graduating classes and their accomplishments if the score increase was ultra beneficial) and is still cleaning both our clocks (especially theirs). Given this, one could maybe say that the higher scores are not that beneficial (their scores are MUCH higher than ours and marginally higher than some other elites…which also outperform it in such metrics) OR that the environment there is different and isn’t as conducive to the same sort of success in said areas as schools with comparable stats. This could be because students lack interest (with Fulbright, this isn’t the case. Emory had 36 applicants last cycle and got 12 winners and they had 41 and got 4) or again, the programmatic options and support apparatuses for success in such areas is not as strong as it should be given the caliber of students they have. The only place they beat us badly is NSF grad fellowship grant winners (I’ll limit it to undergrads) and this is largely because of the presence of their engineering school (schools with engineering entities do extremely well with NSF awards) as NSF is for basic sciences (as in as soon as you slightly hint at a biomedical application, they will likely deny you). Emory doesn’t have engineering and the research done by most undergrads is thus biased toward the health sciences. The few UG’s that do get it tend to come from the chemistry department.