We were pretty sure it was true when they reported a record-breaking number of applicants (20,504) and a record-low admit rate (18 percent), but this new number makes it official: Johns Hopkins is a hot commodity.
Yield is the percentage of admitted students who end up attending a particular institution — and colleges care about it because it’s essentially a rough measure of their popularity. First-choice schools like Harvard have a ridiculously high yield (81 percent this year!), while traditional “safety schools” see a much lower percentage of accepted students enroll. In 2010, for example, only around 20 percent of admitted students opted to attend schools like American University and Northeastern — both quality schools. That’s because a school can be quite competitive and still have a low yield, if admits find other competitive schools more compelling; again, yield measures popularity, not selectivity. (That’s how Florida A&M can have a higher yield than Brown.)
Back to Baltimore: for many years, Johns Hopkins was one of those highly competitive, not-that-popular schools, perhaps because it had the reputation of catering more to its graduate student population. More recently, the school has been making a push to appeal more to undergraduates, hosting on-campus events and overnight programs aimed to give admitted students a taste of Hopkins life. And that work seems to have paid off: As of June 1, 37.5 percent of the 3,632 students offered admission have accepted, the school’s highest yield ever. Kudos to the Blue Jays — and keep up the good work!
