Rapelye: Yield will be above 50 percent

“We are hoping to go to the waitlist, and we are expecting to do that in the next 10 days or so,” she said. “We do have a few more spots left in the class.”

The yield for the Class of 2013 has been in the “high 50 percent range,” Rapelye explained. In an interview with The Daily Princetonian on Tuesday, she declined to give more specific numbers since her office is “still waiting for postmarked [responses] to come in,” but she did say that she thinks the “early returns are quite solid.”

The University’s yield was 58.6 percent for the Class of 2012, the first class admitted after the elimination of Early Decision. In earlier years, 69.2 and 67.8 percent of admitted students matriculated into the classes of 2010 and 2011, respectively.

The University offered waitlist spots to 1,331 students in April for a class with a target size of 1,300. In past years, the University has taken anywhere from zero to 148 students off the waitlist.

At the CPUC meeting, Rapelye addressed concerns that the University’s waitlist was larger than those of peer institutions and that offering so many waitlist spots for so few openings was unfair to applicants.

“[It] might sound like a lot, but if we need a student who can play the oboe or can do a certain type of engineering, that’s about right,” she explained, noting that only about 800 students have elected to stay on the waitlist.

“It’s important to have a waitlist with some size and depth,” she added.

Rapelye also said that, because this year’s applicants were so qualified, there are many talented students who were not initially offered admission on the waitlist.

“This pool was as strong as we’ve ever seen,” she explained. “The students on the waitlist are just as strong as the students in the class. We just didn’t have room for them in first pass.”

She added that the well-attended Princeton Preview weekends in April helped to fill next year’s freshman class.

“More than 2,000 [prefrosh] came to campus on the two different weekends, and we’re very happy with the returns there,” she explained. “We think they got a very good taste of campus.”

The Class of 2013 is also expected to have a strong international contingent, with freshmen arriving on campus this September from countries such as Botswana, Chile, Israel and Mongolia, Rapelye said. The University received applications from 142 countries, and 55 of them are expected to be represented in the incoming class, Rapelye announced at the meeting.

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Rapelye attributed the global diversity of the class to the University’s generous financial aid policy, which doesn’t distinguish between students from the United States and those from other countries.

“One of the things that sets us apart from other schools is that we have financial aid for all of our international students,” she explained.

Rapelye also emphasized the unique challenges many of these international students face when they come to campus for the first time. “They arrive to this campus sight unseen … Often they come here never having come to this country before, never having seen Princeton before,” she said.

But most international students handle the transition very successfully, Rapelye added. “They adjust beautifully,” she said. “Once they get past the jet lag and realize that the food is very, very bland … they always do very well at the awards at the end of freshman year, and I think by the time we get to Commencement, we see that they’re some of the best students in the class.”

“This year’s valedictorian shows that,” she added.

Rapelye recalled asking one student who had recently arrived on campus from Africa what his first impressions of the University were: He replied, “It’s very grand.”

“I think we should all think that more often,” Rapelye said.