Stanford admits 753 in restrictive early action program

Stanford has a “restrictive early action” process in which students may not apply early to any other schools but have until May 1 to decide whether they will accept Stanford’s offer, if admitted.

On Friday, the applicants were notified by e-mail about whether they had been accepted, rejected or deferred.

The 753 admitted students represent nearly 33 percent of the roughly 2,300 total students the university expects to admit by April to fill a freshman class of roughly 1,700.

“We continue to attract an exceptional number of highly competitive candidates, and we are honored by the interest they have shown in Stanford,” Stanford Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Richard H. Shaw said in a statement.

While Stanford saw a record number of early applications this year, Yale saw a 5.2 percent drop in early applications from last year, from 5,556 applications in 2008 to 5,265 this fall.

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.

Jeff Brenzel, Yale’s dean of undergraduate admissions, 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 previous year, while Stanford’s acceptance rate was 7.6 percent, down from 9.5 percent the year before. Princeton’s admission rate rose to 9.79 percent last year from 9.25 percent in the previous year.