Why do so many schools care about yield protection?

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DISCLAIMER: I am only going off the posts that I see here on SDN. I don't know much about the admissions process AT ALL. I would appreciate helpful explanations rather than sarcastic comments about my lack of knowledge about the admissions process, which I am admitting to anyway.

So I've heard that low tier MD schools and DO schools reject students with a high MCAT or GPA automatically. Why exactly do they do this? And what is so wrong about having a safety school? Why would a school let go of the 1% chance that the applicant will decide to go to that school (due to location or other reasons) because it feels insulted that they applicant chose it as a last resort? Furthermore, what materialistic benefit does a school get having a high yield? The way I see it, a school that worries about that kind of thing is already in the low ranks, so it might as well give the person an acceptance (after evaluation of other factors and completion of a successful interview, of course) on the off chance that the applicant decides to attend.
 
My school does not practice resource protection.

But t other schools, it costs money and time to interview people, and you want the best bang for the buck in trying to recruit people when you can only interview so many.

Also, pay VERY careful attention to Mimelim's post.

LoveBeingHuman:) said:
DISCLAIMER: I am only going off the posts that I see here on SDN. I don't know much about the admissions process AT ALL. I would appreciate helpful explanations rather than sarcastic comments about my lack of knowledge about the admissions process, which I am admitting to anyway.

So I've heard that low tier MD schools and DO schools reject students with a high MCAT or GPA automatically. Why exactly do they do this? And what is so wrong about having a safety school? Why would a school let go of the 1% chance that the applicant will decide to go to that school (due to location or other reasons) because it feels insulted that they applicant chose it as a last resort? Furthermore, what materialistic benefit does a school get having a high yield? The way I see it, a school that worries about that kind of thing is already in the low ranks, so it might as well give the person an acceptance (after evaluation of other factors and completion of a successful interview, of course) on the off chance that the applicant decides to attend.
Click to expand...
 
LoveBeingHuman:) said:
Why would a school let go of the 1% chance that the applicant will decide to go to that school (due to location or other reasons) because it feels insulted that they applicant chose it as a last resort?
Click to expand...
Would you like to interview 100 applicants to get one?
Would you like to burn out your interviewers for nothing?
Would you like to waste your students' tuition dollars buying lunches for 99 people who will not attend? How about the salary and benefits of the extra employee required to manage all this?

This has nothing to do with insult. It's a matter of using resources wisely (something we need to do better, frankly).
 
Last edited by a moderator:
gyngyn said:
Would you like to interview 100 applicants to get one?
Would you like to burn out your interviewers for nothing?
Would you like to waste your students' tuition dollars buying lunches for 99 people who will not attend? How about the salary and benefits of the extra employee required to manage all this?

This has nothing to do with insult. It's a matter of using resources wisely (something we need to do better, frankly).
Click to expand...
Well this wouldn't be a problem if applicants had a cap on how many schools they can apply to?

But AMCAS makes money of each app so I guess that'd never happen
 
kb1900 said:
Well this wouldn't be a problem if applicants had a cap on how many schools they can apply to?

But AMCAS makes money of each app so I guess that'd never happen
Click to expand...

What other recruiting processes function/run this way? I can't think of a single job or school application process where someone is limited by the number places that they can apply to. Not a huge fan of adding in extra regulation to this process. While it is far from perfect and not exactly efficient, it is largely effective. If nothing else, the system helps suss out which marginal applicants schools would prefer and makes things less random.
 
mimelim said:
What other recruiting processes function/run this way? I can't think of a single job or school application process where someone is limited by the number places that they can apply to. Not a huge fan of adding in extra regulation to this process. While it is far from perfect and not exactly efficient, it is largely effective. If nothing else, the system helps suss out which marginal applicants schools would prefer and makes things less random.
Click to expand...

I agree - I think adding more regulation to the system would likely have unintended consequences and possibly more inefficiency.

But as of now, looking at the new msar data, it seems like such an astonishingly large amount of applicants at most schools have no reason to be applying to these schools with their numbers. Obviously premed advising is an issue. It's just saddening to think about all the money sucked up by AAMC when many applicants, even with FAP, will struggle to be able to apply broadly.
 
Proposal: Anybody applying with a <500 MCAT has to get specific permission/notification or something along those lines from each school to approve such an application. Schools only approve such applications if there are specific guidelines established that make it clear such an applicant could have some kind of shot at that school. Obviously, there are many many details that need to be hashed out here but if this general theory worked itd save many thousands of applications. You could do a similar thing I guess for a <3.0 GPA.

Now in an ideal world for each school you would have such cutoffs. The new MSAR in particular just highlights how many applicants apply to each individual schol each year who have absolutely no business doing so.

As an example the median MCAT at WashU for an applicant this year was a 30: 30 for a school with a 10th percentile MCAT of 34 and median of 38. You could basically discard say 75% of the applicant pool within 2-3 minutes here. Obviously we are ways away from this happening with one major reason being schools profit nicely from such applicants, but it would save everybody alot of time. Emory this year actually published on their site they have a 27 cut off to be considered. And even this was somewhat controversial from what Ive been told. Nonetheless, this is the type of thing you hope gains traction in coming years.
 
mimelim said:
What other recruiting processes function/run this way? I can't think of a single job or school application process where someone is limited by the number places that they can apply to. Not a huge fan of adding in extra regulation to this process. While it is far from perfect and not exactly efficient, it is largely effective. If nothing else, the system helps suss out which marginal applicants schools would prefer and makes things less random.
Click to expand...

Just because a certain mechanism is not used anywhere else does not mean it would not be a good idea for use in medical school admission. Where else do we see people applying to jobs through a matching system similar to the NRMP? Nowhere. And yet the NRMP is widely recognized as a far more efficient mechanism than its free-market antecedent. The best argument against allowing unlimited applications is that it puts poor applicants at a disadvantage.
 
The Most Important Reason:

One criterion used by US News and World Report to rank med schools is the percentage of those who were offered acceptance who then attended. If schools want to increase their rank, one way is to avoid offering acceptances to those they know, or expect, will not attend.
 
bc65 said:
The Most Important Reason:

One criterion used by US News and World Report to rank med schools is the percentage of those who were offered acceptance who then attended. If schools want to increase their rank, one way is to avoid offering acceptances to those they know, or expect, will not attend.
Click to expand...

Although this is probably an important reason, I would state that (from what I understand) in the period between May-July, schools will call candidates and offer them admission. Apparently, these offers may or may not be recorded as acceptance offers to the AAMC. Furthermore, the US News & World Report puts together their rankings based on self-reported data, which is unreliable.

In any case, this is probably mostly irrelevant because yield is one of the least influential factors in school rankings.
 
I could be wrong but if I had to guess, med schools ultimately want to select students who would actually attend. It would be a logistical headache to have over-accepted a lot of candidates who would not attend but wait until the last minute before making a decision. This is probably especially important during the summer months right before matriculation, when the school needs to have all its seats filled. This is probably one of the most important aspects of student selection, which might appear to be about protecting yield but is actually intended more as a mechanism to smoothly and reliably form a complete med school class.
 
Pantaloooons said:
I could be wrong but if I had to guess, med schools ultimately want to select students who would actually attend. It would be a logistical headache to have over-accepted a lot of candidates who would not attend but wait until the last minute before making a decision. This is probably especially important during the summer months right before matriculation, when the school needs to have all its seats filled. This is probably one of the most important aspects of student selection, which might appear to be about protecting yield but is actually intended more as a mechanism to smoothly and reliably form a complete med school class.
Click to expand...

This pretty much sums it up.
 
So are you guys saying that once you are offered an interview there's no chance you'll be "yield protected" away?

After they've spent these resources on you they might as well just hope you'll accept, right?
 
EODguy said:
If one were worried about this yield protection business, could you send a letter of intent or whatever to the school explaining why you want to be there? That was my loose plan for the future. Maybe it would help to assuage their fears, maybe it wouldn't.

But If I wrote a compelling letter about how the quality of doggy-day-cares in proximity to campus is my number one factor, I don't know how they could say no...
Click to expand...
Some schools kinda ask in their secondaries, otherwise most don't bother, every premed applying will swear that the particular school is perfect for them in every way and they couldn't imagine themselves training anywhere else... and then they will send the same letter off to the other 20+ schools they are applying to.
 
EODguy said:
If one were worried about this yield protection business, could you send a letter of intent or whatever to the school explaining why you want to be there? That was my loose plan for the future. Maybe it would help to assuage their fears, maybe it wouldn't.

But If I wrote a compelling letter about how the quality of doggy-day-cares in proximity to campus is my number one factor, I don't know how they could say no...
Click to expand...

You should answer this in the secondary since the adcom is way more likely to read that than some random letter.

An update letter (if you have new and useful info) could be helpful though when combined with a line about your continued interest in their program
 
EODguy said:
If one were worried about this yield protection business, could you send a letter of intent or whatever to the school explaining why you want to be there?
Click to expand...

That's called your application. Please, for the love of all that is holy, do not send a pre-interview LOI.
 
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