Yale early apps drop 5.2 percent

Yale remains the only university among Harvard, Yale and Princeton to offer an early application option following Harvard’s and Princeton’s decisions in 2006 to offer only regular application deadlines in January. In 2007, the first year in which Princeton and Harvard did not offer an early application option, Yale’s early applications increased 36 percent.

Brenzel told the Yale Daily News that, despite the dip in early applications this year, he expects that Yale’s early admission rate will not increase from last year’s record low of 13.4 percent. Yale’s overall admission rate was 7.5 percent last year, down from 8.3 percent the year before, while Princeton’s admission rate rose to 9.79 percent last year from 9.25 percent in the previous year.

Brendel told the News that the drop in early admission applications is one of the “small fluctuations” that occur from year to year. “I think that if you gave the [application] counts for 2012, 2013 and 2014 to a statistician, he or she would say that there’s no statistically significant difference in the counts,” he said.

President Tilghman told The Daily Princetonian in 2006 that Princeton’s decision to eliminate its binding Early Decision option “will make the admissions process far more fair and equitable,” adding that “Early Decision was advantaging those who were already advantaged.”

Princeton’s decision followed soon after Harvard’s announcement that it would eliminate its own non-binding early application option. Professors, administrators and outside educational experts lauded the institutions’ steps toward a more inclusive admission process.

Princeton’s admission rate continued to decrease in the first few years after it dropped its Early Decision option, but that rate rose last year, and for the first time since 2004. Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye attributed the higher acceptance rate to the planned expansion of the undergraduate student body as well as the new bridge year program.

This is the first year in which the number of early applications to Yale has dropped since Harvard and Princeton eliminated their early application options.

Brenzel declined to comment to the News on possible reasons for this year’s decline, though four of six guidance counselors and college consultants interviewed by the News said the economic downturn has caused high school students to take longer to decide where to apply.

Yale also received widespread national media coverage this fall after the murder of medical student Annie Le, whose body was found on Sept. 13 in the unfinished wall of a Yale research lab she had been working in. On Sept. 17, authorities arrested Raymond Clark, a technician in Le’s lab, in connection with her death. The murder shook Yale’s New Haven campus, which also recently saw the death of sophomore Andre Narcisse, whose body was found in his room on Nov. 1. The cause of Narcisse’s death has not been released.