Yield will drop from past years

Eighty-six students were taken off the University’s waitlist last week,

This year, 1,526 students were initially placed on the waitlist, more than 300 more than in typical years, Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said.

Rapelye was unable to confirm an official yield for those offered admission in regular decision, though she explained that a lower yield was an inevitable consequence of eliminating early decision.

“We knew when we made the change away from early decision that we weren’t going to get half the class enrolling at 100 percent yield,” Rapelye explained.

Last year, 68 percent of those invited to join the Class of 2011 accepted the University’s offer, down from 69.2 percent for the Class of 2010.

Rapelye also was unable to say how the University’s decrease in yield this year compared to competitor schools’ figures.

“Of course we’re paying attention to the yield, but we don’t know where that is coming in yet,” she said.

Harvard, which also eliminated its early admissions program this year, had a yield of 76 percent, down slightly from about 80 percent last year.This year, it will be taking more than 200 people off its waitlist.

Yale, which held onto its early action program this year, had a yield of 68.9 percent, slightly down from 69.4 percent last year. It will take about 45 individuals off its waitlist, The Yale Daily News reported.

“We have no idea right now if any of the students who are already in the class were taken off of the waitlist at one of our competitors and they might want to go there,” Rapelye added.

Rapelye emphasized, however, that yield was not the only thing that matters.

“What we’ve found so far is that the academic quality of this group is as strong, or stronger than, past groups’,” she said. “The yield is secondary to the quality of the class, and the quality of the class is superb.”

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Rapelye anticipates that more students will probably be taken off the waitlist after the first group notifies her of its decisions this Friday.

“We don’t know right now how many of those will accept us,” she said. “They’ll be letting us know by the end of the week.”

The number of people to be taken off the waitlist after Friday remains unclear. Accepting this many students from the waitlist is a departure from most recent years but was intentional, Rapelye said.

“This is exactly where we intended to be right now,” Rapelye explained, adding that the Admission Office had planned to use the waitlist to augment a lower regular decision yield. The target class size is 1,240, she said.

Financial aid is a major concern for many students on the waitlist, and Princeton can offer the same financial aid packages to those accepted off the waitlist as it does to those accepted in March.

“This is an incredible privilege to be able to take students from the waitlist without looking at if they need financial aid or not,” Rapelye said. “We have a responsibility to find students who have great need.”

Rapelye also noted that the new admission policy was accompanied by unforeseen positive results.

Men and women were represented in almost equal proportions among applicants, accepted students and enrolling students.

“The balance between men and women is about a 50-50 split, and that’s the first time we’ve been able to achieve as many men as women,” Rapelye said. The split between men and women in engineering is also the closest it has ever been.

“That wasn’t intentional, that’s just one of the benefits of moving away from early decision for us,” Rapelye said.