Yield

Yield is the share of admitted MBA students who enroll. If a school admits 800 people to fill 400 seats and 400 deposit, yield is 50%.

Schools live and die by this number. It is how they avoid a 90-person section one year and a 50-person section the next. Applicants feel it as waitlist movement, ding-from-hold, and last-minute scholarship reshuffles.

How it is measured

Yield = enrolled students ÷ admitted students, for a given entering class. Some schools quote yield on offers after deposits; ask which definition they are using. Cross-admits wreck simple forecasts. A school that overlaps heavily with two peers will see yield swing when those peers move their scholarship budget.

Merit scholarships are a yield tool. Buying down the price for a student who also holds a peer offer is how a school protects the class without admitting 1,200 people and hoping.

Example: target class 400. Historical yield 50%, so the committee admits 800. This year a peer jumps in the U.S. News MBA ranking and raises fellowships. Yield falls to 44%. 800 × 0.44 = 352. The school pulls 48 people off the waitlist in May and reopens a small R3 scholarship pool. The waitlist was never about your worth. It was about 48 empty chairs.

How it differs

Acceptance rate is admits ÷ applications. Yield is enrolls ÷ admits. Class profile is who showed up, which is the yield result, not the offer pool. A high acceptance rate and a high yield can coexist at a regional part-time program that only locals apply to.

Common errors

Reading a low acceptance rate as the only quality signal. Assuming a waitlist is personal failure rather than yield math. Treating a binding deposit elsewhere as compatible with sitting on a second waitlist forever.