Two numbers, eighteen schools worth of context. A collegedata.fyi recipe.
CDS-verified school (2024-25 or 2025-26)Dot size = enrolled first-year class
Three seed rows (Harvard, Dartmouth, Harvey Mudd) come from hand-audited ground-truth fixtures in tools/extraction-validator/ground_truth/. The remaining fifteen are pulled directly from the collegedata.fyi public API (C.116/C.117/C.118 on the latest extracted CDS for each school). The XLSX starter includes the exact query to extend to all 700+ schools.
How to read this chart. The x-axis is how selective a school looks on paper (acceptance rate). The y-axis is how selective it actually is in practice (yield, i.e. the share of admitted students who enroll). Low acceptance + high yield is the top-left quadrant: schools that turn most applicants away and still capture most of the students they admit. Low acceptance + low yield is the bottom-left: schools that look selective but lose most of their admits to competitors.
Top-left: selective and desiredLow acceptance, high yield. These schools are both hard to get into and hard to turn down.
Top-right: loved despite opennessHigher acceptance but strong yield. Often regional flagships or niche-fit schools.
Bottom-left: selective but second-choiceHard to get into, but most admits choose somewhere else. Often cross-admit peers of top-left schools.
Bottom-right: accessible and optionalAdmits freely, captures a smaller share. Common among safety-school territory.