More academic stars among fewer applicants

Though admissions applications for the Class of 2008 are down 14 percent, the academic quality of the overall applicant pool has actually increased, Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye reported.

There were 13,659 applicants for regular decision this year, compared with 15,725 regular applicants for the Class of 2007.

However, Rapelye said the absence of weaker candidates accounted for the decrease in applicants.

"Based on the quality of the reads that we've done so far, it appears that we have fewer students at the bottom of the pool," Rapelye said. "And so, we haven't lost quality, but it does appear that we have fewer students who won't be competitive this year."

Moreover, not only has the number of weaker applicants decreased, the number of "academic 1's" — students who received the highest possible rank on the admission office's scale that rates the academic quality of candidates — has actually increased.

"I can honestly tell you that we have more academic 1's in the pool than we had last year," said Rapelye. "This group coming through, the academic quality is superb and we'll have a very hard time choosing among these candidates."

College counselors at prestigious schools that regularly send several students to Princeton confirmed Rapelye's assertion.

"I don't sense a change in the quality, absolutely not," said Stephen Singer, director of college counseling at Horace Mann School in New York City. "The numbers are strong, the quality of the applications was strong, [and] the early decisions were tough decisions."

Singer's colleagues at other schools agreed.

"Our total pool is 12 [applicants] out of class of 54 [seniors], and only one other school received more applications," said Bruce Brimer, director of college counseling at the Collegiate School in New York. "Clearly it's not an issue here."

"If Princeton is down among all the kids with B-minus averages and 1100's on the SATs . . . I'm not sure if — for Princeton's academic purposes — that's a problem," said Singer.

And that's "exactly" what happened, said Rapelye. Weaker students were less inclined to apply to Princeton, though she can only speculate as to why this was the case.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

"I do think that the [new] early action single-choice programs that Yale and Stanford started this year encouraged more students to think about how they might apply," Rapelye said.

"It does seem to be the shifting of students between the four schools," she added, referring to the possibility that applicants, who might have otherwise applied to Princeton or Harvard, applied instead to Stanford or Yale, because of those schools' new single-choice early action policies.

Harvard, which switched from a multi-choice to a single-choice early action program this year, lost 49 percent of its early applicants this year over last. Princeton, by comparison, lost 23 percent.

But Rapelye cautioned that this year's stronger early and regular pools do not necessarily mean the question of early decision at Princeton is settled.

"We need to evaluate this annually now, because the world outside of Princeton's gates is shifting," she said. "Does that mean we will always have early decision? I don't know."

Rapelye to cast wider net

Though more than satisfied with the quality of the applicant pool, Rapelye also spoke in detail of her plans to draw more applicants to Princeton. "We will get a superb class [in the Class of 2008], but in the future, do we want to build this pool and broaden it and deepen it? Yes," she said.

One of the plans to increase the size of the applicant pool include sending "search letters" — letters that indicate a university's interest in a particular applicant — to high-school juniors and sophomores based on their SAT and PSAT scores.

"We are going to be sending those letters to juniors and sophomores this spring, because that's when our colleagues are sending those letters, and that's when students are expecting to hear from colleges," Rapelye said.

Asked whether contacting students as young as high-school sophomores was perhaps a step too far, Rapelye said she understood potential concerns, but that the University had to face reality.

"That is absolutely a concern, and we want to make sure that we are helping students focus on their high school experience," she said, "However, the strongest testers are receiving mail from our competition in their sophomore year."

Additional plans for increasing the size of future applicant pools include sending admissions officers to new destinations, redesigning the admission office's website and engaging in more direct communication with prospective students.

Rapelye emphasized that more effective enrollment can only be achieved through a dual-track approach, ensuring more qualified students apply and, once admitted, more students accept the University's offer of admission.

Rapelye added that her efforts included enlisting alumni to host parties for admitted students and current students to participate "phonathons" of prospective or admitted students.

Financial aid review

Rapelye also noted that improving the socioeconomic diversity of the applicant pool and spreading the word about the University's no-loan financial aid program are top priorities over the next three years. "It's part of the reason I came to Princeton," she said. "[The financial aid program] ensures that we can admit the very best students."

The University is reviewing its own financial aid policy, Rapelye said, in light of rival Harvard's announcement that it would not require families earning less than $40,000 a year to contribute towards the cost of their child's education.

"We're doing some research right now as to see what Harvard's policy would look like if we implemented the same thing here, and asking ourselves do we have the same needs within our own applicant pool," Rapelye said.

But she noted that Princeton may not need to change any of its existing financial aid policies. "It's possible that students who would have gotten that financial aid package at Harvard would have gotten the same package here," she said. "They've said it, but we may be doing it."