Admissions decisions to be online

Though the big acceptance envelopes and small rejection letters for the Class of 2011 won't be mailed until Friday, applicants will bombard an Admission Office website today at 5 p.m. to see if they have been offered a spot in next year's freshman class.

This year's applicants will be the first to find out their admissions fate with the click of a mouse. Though Harvard, Yale and most other peer institutions have offered online notification for several years, Princeton has been slow to digitize its undergraduate admissions process.

The University's notification system requires that prospective students create an account while applying. They must register with a PIN number and log in with a self-assigned username and password to ensure the privacy of the accounts.

More than three years ago — in February 2004 — Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye told The Daily Princetonian that "security [would] be our highest priority" in creating an online notification system. Rapelye was unavailable for comment for this article.

But a scandal two years earlier had attracted widespread media attention and slowed the office's move to online notification for half a decade.

Princeton admissions officers logged into a restricted website for Yale applicants to check their status, entering the names, birthdates and social security numbers of 11 Princeton applicants who they thought would have also applied to Yale. One was Lauren Bush '06, the niece of President Bush and granddaughter of former President George H.W. Bush, two of Yale's most prominent alumni.

Yale filed a complaint with the FBI in July 2002, though the University never offered an official explanation of why it contacted the FBI.

President Tilghman and the Admission Office apologized for what Tilghman called "violations of basic ethical principles of privacy and confidentiality," explaining that the admissions officers were motivated not by a desire to see if those applicants had been admitted but solely by concerns about the privacy and security of the applicants.

"It was really an innocent way for us to check out the security," Associate Dean and Director of Admission Stephen LeMenager told the Yale Daily News in July 2002, after the paper broke the story of Princeton's unauthorized access. "That was our main concern of having an online notification system, that it would be susceptible to people who had that information — parents, guidance counselors and admissions officers at other schools."

In the scandal's aftermath, LeMenager was transferred from admissions to the development office, where he is now director of development relations. Fred Hargadon, then the dean of admission, retired in June 2003.

But now, hopeful applicants will finally get to learn about their admissions online.

Melissa Dzenis, an applicant from Pelham, N.Y., said she is glad to find out online. "To be locked in limbo is truly frustrating," she said, echoing the woes of countless teenagers.

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Dzenis will be on spring break next week and will not be home to check the mail on a daily basis. "I wouldn't receive news of my acceptance or rejection until I got home," she said. "[That] would make for a rather un-relaxed vacation."

Jennifer Lee '09 said that she would have liked to have learned about her acceptance online. "I think it would be great," Lee said. "It was agonizing for me not knowing for sure."

Another student, Jessica Lanney '10, said she was notified online by other colleges that she applied to. "It was so much better than worrying for the mail," she said. "There was a specified time for the email so I was able to sit and open it with my family."

Despite the convenience of the system, some students feel like the traditional method is better.

"I liked the feeling of anticipation and waiting," Kristin Clarke '07 said. "I think online is a lot less personal."