By Daniel Rothberg

The school’s yield decreased this year to about 81 percent from 84 percent last year, allowing the school to admit about 20 students off the waitlist, Associate Director of Admissions Davin Bergquist said. The school used a more conservative model to determine how many acceptances to send out this year after a higher than expected percentage of admitted students accepted Harvard-Westlake’s invitation to enroll last year.

“Last year we predicted a certain amount and it was actually much much higher,” Bergquist said. “This year we were just extraordinarily conservative and we did go to the waitlist.”

Last year, no students were taken off of the waitlist due to the high yield, Bergquist told The Chronicle in August. Bergquist said that the school generally waitlists about 100 students. 

“The Middle School has an enrollment cap and that’s a finite number,” he said. “We can’t go over that number or we get in really big trouble with the city. That necessitates having a very large waitlist.”

About 44 percent of the newly enrolled students are students of color, Bergquist said.

“That’s really diverse and that continues to get larger every year,” he said. “Last year, it was 42 percent.”

In addition, newly enrolled students represent 94 different zip codes, 60 neighborhoods in Los Angeles and 102 different sending schools, Bergquist said.

Bergquist also said that several students will be moving to the United States to attend Harvard-Westlake. Two students will be moving from Canada, one will be moving from India and another student will be moving from Japan.