Admissions decisions go live on website

Correction appended

After months of breathless anticipation, eager applicants logged online yesterday evening to find out if they had been granted a spot in the Class of 2012. Next year’s freshman class will be the first that did not have the option of applying Early Decision to the University.

The target size for the Class of 2012 is between 1,240 to 1,250 students, Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said in January, and admitted students were selected out of a record pool of 21,262 applicants.

The overall yield for the Class of 2011 was 68 percent which represented both the early decision and regular decision pools. In past years nearly half of the class has been accepted as part of early decision, which required those accepted to matriculate. The regular decision pool had a yield rate of 51.9 percent for that class. If the University expected this rate to remain the same, they will admit about 2390 students to the Class of 2012 for a 11.9 percent acceptance rate to achieve the targeted class size.

Last year, the overall acceptance rate was 9.5 percent. Currently, it is unknown what the University anticipates for yield in regular decision for the Class of 2012.

Rapelye acknowledged in an interview with The Daily Princetonian last November that the University would be conservative in the number of students admitted this year, though the elimination of Early Decision could mean lower yields than in previous years. Last year, 68 percent of the students admitted decided to enroll at the University.

Rapelye anticipates drawing more heavily from the wait list this year than in past years to increase yield.

The decision to eliminate Early Decision was “made with recognition that selectivity ratios and yield percentages may change, but that the underlying moral obligation to equalize the admissions process is more important,” Young Alumni Trustee Matt Margolin ’05 said after the September 2006 announcement of policy change.

Rapelye acknowledged the possibility that Princeton may lose its No. 1 U.S. News and World Report ranking, as well as lose potential applicants to other schools that promise better chances of admission with their early-admissions policies.

“We’re in a position of strength, and it takes courage, but it’s the right thing to do,” she added.

Though applicants can opt to find out their admission decisions online, they can also choose to wait for paper letters to arrive in their mailboxes all over the country over the course of the week.

Correction:

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The original version of this story did not take into account yield statistics and incorrectly assumed that the University would only extend 1,240 to 1,250 offers. The story also had a figure of 20,118 applicants, which was taken from an earlier University release and did not reflect updated numbers. The Daily Princetonian regrets these errors.