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When you’ve worked in college admissions for two decades, you’ve heard it all! Oh, the stories I could share. Someone leaves a pocketknife in their backpack after a weekend on the trails: suspended

Post “Operation Varsity Blues,” nothing is sacred. “Saturday Night Live” took on the college admissions game on March 31, 2019 during their weekly show

Don’t accept that college admission offer quite so fast — at least not if you’re interested in making sure you’re doing everything you can to maximize your scholarship potential! They’re nervous they won’t “make their class,” as it’s called, and they’d prefer to not use the waitlist because nothing publicly screams “we didn’t hit our target” like going to the waitlist (sorry, waitlist students! ) They’d rather reach that magical yield target behind the scenes, without having to extend additional offers to students on the waitlist. You don’t know if your school is one that’s running ahead of their target or behind their target as they approach national college decision day.

Here’s some insider info: The admissions office lives for one point between April 1st and May 1st, and that magical time is called “yield. For example, if Dreamschool University wants to enroll 500 freshmen in August, there’s a solid chance they extended an offer of admission to at least 1000 students who applied. Trust me, colleges have years of historical data to help inform the math behind exactly how many offers of admission to make in order to end up with (hopefully) something close to the 500 students they want to enroll. Smart College Visit’s college admissions expert Kelly Rawlings has over 20 years experience in higher ed admissions for both small private colleges and large public universities.