Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye announced Tuesday that the University had received a record number of undergraduate applications this year. It was a heartening sign, as the 16,290 applicants who said they wanted to go to Princeton this year represent a 19 percent increase over last year's low numbers.
In a news release, the university attributed the strong turnout to a combination of "enhanced recruiting efforts" and new application options, which included an online form and the ubiquitous common application.
The new recruiting efforts are a great step forward for the University. The admissions office can and should make a concerted effort to recruit potential undergraduates from as wide a variety of backgrounds as possible. Doing so ensures a class diverse in both experience and talent while maintaining the highest academic standards. We hope Dean Rapelye will continue to expand her recruiting efforts in the future, and we join her in recognizing the positive results these efforts have had already.
However, changes to the application process are less welcome. Both the Princeton application itself and the Princeton supplement to the common application make for a far more generic experience than students have encountered in the past. Prior to Rapelye's arrival, the application experience here was as unique as the education earned by successfully completing it. While the familiar "hodgepodge" section thankfully remains in this year's application, the essay topics that once challenged applicants to think about specific issues have been broadened almost to the point of absurdity. Two of the revised prompts now read, "Tell us about yourself in such a way that we will have a good sense of who you are" and "Write on any other topic of your choice or design."
We hope this isn't indicative of a trend in which the University begins to sacrifice its essential personality and spirit simply to attract larger applicant pools. In 2007, the University will begin accepting an additional 125 students per class, and it will need to find a way to attract enough qualified applicants to make this expansion feasible.
We encourage the administration to balance this need for expansion, however, with a desire to maintain the University's unique personality for years to come.
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