The US Corn Crop Crushes Penn Admissions in Yield Rate

Penn is a great institution but pales in comparison to corn.

Penn Admissions has been seeing record stats over the past few years. Last year, the class of 2020 had set a record-low admissions rate (before being broken by the class of 2021) of 9.4% and a record high yield rate of 68-69%. As impressive as this may seem, Penn is still falling way behind. Not behind Harvard or Princeton, but behind Penn's main rival, the US national production of corn. 

Sure, Penn's yield rate of 68-69% is a record high, but we are still getting crushed by corn. According to a report by the US Department of Agriculture, the 2016 projected yield rate of the national corn crop is 175.1 bushels per acre, also a record high.

175.1 bushels per acre. That's insane.

At UTB, we know very little about corn, but even our loose grasp of the concept of corn allows us to realize how amazingly impressive that number is and how we are getting absolutely killed. The somewhat imprecise 68-69% yield that Penn is pulling is equivalent to somewhere between some and many bushels of freshman per acre, probably not even coming close to 175.1 bushels of corn per acre. 

We reached out to Penn Admissions to ask them how they plan to address the disparity. They did not respond for comment, leaving us to wonder how Penn will modify its admissions strategies moving forward.