Apps up eight percent for Class of 2011

The Admission Office received an all-time record number of undergraduate applications for the third year in a row, with 18,891 students choosing to apply for the Class of 2011. This represents an 8 percent jump from last year's number of 17,478.

"The increased number indicates that we have more people applying from new areas," Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said, also citing the University's financial aid packet as a key reason for the boost in applications.

In addition to the 2,286 applicants from Early Decision, there were 16,605 Regular Decision applications. Rapelye anticipates accepting a total of 1,245 students into the Class of 2011, slightly more than last year, due to the University's plan to gradually expand each class' size.

Since 597 students were admitted early, there are roughly 650 places remaining for regular decision applicants. Overall acceptance rates are likely to drop below the 10.2 percent figure from last year when final decisions are made in April.

Widespread knowledge of Princeton's generous, need-based financial aid policy likely attracted more applicants this year, Rapelye said. Last year, 55 percent of the incoming class received some form of financial aid, but Rapelye said that it was too early to determine how many students would receive University funding in the Class of 2011.

She also acknowledged that the University's number-one ranking in U.S. News & World Report also might have encouraged some students to apply. "I think that some high school students do pay attention to it but certainly not all," she said.

"The application pool has grown 28 percent over the past four years," Rapelye said. Only 13,690 students applied for the Class of 2008, which was the first class Rapelye admitted upon becoming dean of admission, but the number has steadily increased every year since.

"This year, we were more deliberate in choosing which countries, states and cities to visit," Rapelye said, adding that expanding international visibility had been a major aim for the admissions board. "We looked at our past history, and we tried to visit new areas."

There are no statistics available yet for the number of international applicants. "Some applications are still coming in, so we don't yet know how many international students have applied in total," Rapelye explained. In 2006, there was a 6 percent increase in the number of international applicants.

A total of 87 percent of applicants applied online using either the Common Application or the Princeton application. That figure has grown from the 80 percent who applied online for the Class of 2010.

Only 22 percent applied using the Princeton application in both online and paper formats, Rapelye said. This is almost the same as last year. "There truly is no difference between the two applications," Rapelye explained. "Students are choosing the Common Application on their own."

Rapelye said that both applications are evaluated in the same manner by the Admission Office. Yet, the common application has quickly become popular since it was first offered three years ago. "When we introduced the Common Application, we didn't expect it to become this popular," she said.

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In contrast to most Ivy League institutions, which reported significant gains in the number of applications received, Yale saw a decline of almost 10 percent. The Yale Daily News reported that the university received 19,060 applications this year, down from last year's 21,101.

"It's possibly because of the fact that our selectivity rate kept getting lower and lower," Yale president Richard Levin said, according to the Associate Press. "People are not applying because the odds are small."

Brown received a total of 18,951 applications, which is a rise of 3.8 percent. Columbia totaled 21,303 applications, a 7.3 percent increase, while Cornell's applicant pool grew by 7.5 percent to 30,191. Penn received a total of 22,500, which was a 10 percent increase. Harvard has not released its numbers yet.