Though still a long way from Harvard’s 80 percent, Stanford’s yield rate increased to a respectable 69 percent this year, up from 67 percent last year, according to Richard Shaw, dean of admission and financial aid. The number increased to approximately 88 percent for students who attended Admit Weekend or applied under the single-choice early action program.

The yield rate is the percentage of Stanford’s 2,430 admits that chose to join the University’s Class of 2010. The admission rate this year was the lowest ever, with less than eleven percent of applicants admitted. The yield rate is also among Stanford’s highest, surpassing Shaw’s expected 68 percent.

Shaw characterized this year’s yield rate as “very high and probably among the top five yields in the country for selective private universities.” Yale’s yield rate is expected to be 73 percent, while Princeton’s is 69 percent.

Two years ago, the Office of Undergraduate Admission released statistics showing that 28 percent of students that declined Stanford chose Harvard instead, followed by 20 percent choosing Yale, 13 percent choosing MIT and 8 percent choosing Princeton; 31 percent of students chose other schools. Similar statistics for the Class of 2010 are not yet available, Shaw said.

With about one-third of Stanford acceptees declining their admission offers, these numbers beg the question: Why would students reject the sunny, happy, well-rounded institution? At a Faculty Senate meeting last month, Shaw said that the two primary reasons students did not attend Stanford after being accepted were financial cost and geographic location.

Stanford’s new financial aid policy is aimed at reducing the first constraint on students’ decisions. The University is eliminating parental contributions for families with total annual incomes of less than $45,000 and reducing parental contributions from families with total incomes between $45,000 and $60,000.

The second complaint, concerning the location of the University, will likely be harder to solve. In the post-admissions survey given to admits last year, non-enrolling admits wrote that they viewed Stanford as an environment as selective, challenging, intellectual, fun and impersonal — a wide range of perspectives on location.

At the Faculty Senate meeting, Shaw spoke about his plans to increase marketing to augment Stanford’s appeal across the country. He proposed using national and international Alumni Association groups to conduct interviews and outreach around the globe and to increase recruitment travel tenfold by joining the “Exploring College Options” consortium with Duke, Georgetown, Harvard and Penn, which travels to 300 cities in the fall of 2006 and spring of 2007.

At the meeting, Economics Prof. Roger Noll, an elected member of the Faculty Senate, raised a point about the inconsistency between the reasons why students are not choosing Stanford after being admitted and Shaw’s plans for improving the process through more global outreach.

“We might have better yield if we increased the financial aid budget by the proposed increase in the marketing budget,” Noll wrote in an email to The Daily. “The issue is whether we should deal with a relatively low acceptance rate from [the South and East] by trying to increase applications (a low acceptance rate times a greater number of applicants) or by trying to raise the acceptance rate by offering more financial aid.”

At the meeting, Noll asked Shaw why spending an extra $100,000 would be more productively spent on marketing than on giving 100 students $1,000 more in financial aid, especially given budget constraints that could preclude spending money on both options.

“What I’m trying to accomplish is to bring a very diverse perspective from across the nation to Stanford,” Shaw responded. “I’m not interested in receiving more applications. I’m interested in reaching out to kids that really are not on our wavelengths. Quite frankly, the schools we compete with do it ten times as much as we do it. In other words, the representation in their student bodies is much broader and deeper.”

While Shaw’s proposals may or may not increase Stanford’s yield rate, it is still important to understand why students might go elsewhere. On http://www.collegeconfidential.com, a popular college admissions Web site, there are 17 pages of posts under the heading “Stanford or Harvard.” Jason Wong, a high school senior from San Francisco, chose Harvard over Stanford, even though Stanford offered him $100,000 more in financial aid than Harvard over four years.

“In terms of recruitment, I appreciated Stanford’s packet over Harvard’s because it was more celebratory and recognized the work of every admitted student; Harvard’s was more imposing,” Wong said. “Stanford offered me a way better financial aid package, which I had the hardest time letting go.

“But I guess Harvard’s location, history, and different location won me over,” he reflected. “I really want to experience the East Coast, for at least four years of my life. I also wanted to be in the Boston area, where I could potentially tap the resources and meet other students at other top colleges and universities in the area. I wanted something different, and I guess that was something that Stanford, although able to give me everything else, and maybe even more, couldn’t offer me.”

Chris Bennett, a high school senior from Arizona chose Stanford over Harvard because of its location, positive Admit Weekend experience and academic and social opportunities.

“I liked my future classmates and the people I met at Stanford more than the people at Harvard, having attended both admit weekends for a bit,” Bennett said. “People at Stanford seemed far more socially adept and relaxed, and people at Harvard seemed, well, frazzled. Finally, the Stanford campus is beyond amazing and blows Harvard’s out of the water, dorms and food seemed to be a bit better at Stanford and I’m from the Southwest so I figured that if I went out east in the cold, I might literally die.”

In trying to increase its yield rate, one initiative that the Stanford Admission Office instituted this year and will expand next year is the Likely Admit Program, which reaches out to the “most extraordinary” students early, before the regular review mailing date. These students received a letter in January and follow-up calls from Stanford faculty. This year, there were 61 “Super-star Academic Likelies” and 60 “Multicultural Likelies.”

These 121 students were expected to be admitted to every competitive institution in the country. Stanford tried to connect with them early to convince them of the University’s appeal as their best prospect. Shaw said that he was still analyzing the yield rates for these students, but the results “looked good.”

In terms of how to increase overall yield rates, Shaw said he wants to “make sure students know as much as possible about this place when making the decision. We want their decision to be based on the facts of the place and we attempt to make their introduction to Stanford very personal.”