Wilson School admits 90 of 162 applicants

The Wilson School accepted 90 sophomores on Thursday out of 162 who applied, Wilson School spokeswoman Rebecca Anderson, said in an e-mail to The Daily Princetonian. Of the 90 accepted, six applied to be certificate students.

This year’s admission rate for the University’s only selective major is in line with last year’s, when the Wilson School accepted 90 out of around 160 students. In 2008, the Wilson School accepted 90 out of 154 applicants.

Anderson said that the Wilson School will perform an analysis of the composition of its class once admission offers are accepted.

Anderson also declined to reveal the size of this year’s waiting list. In 2009, “three or four people” were placed on a waiting list, Stan Katz, a former chair of the Wilson’s School’s Undergraduate Program Committee, said in an interview last year.

The Wilson School, which was founded in 1930, has accepted 90 students every year since 1995. The application consists of a transcript, letter of recommendation, 300-word essay and 150-word statement outlining an intended plan of study.

An-Ting Liu ’12, an accepted student who plans to focus on education policy, said that she was “always really interested” in the Wilson School, but that she “wouldn’t have been too disappointed if [she] didn’t get in.”

Liu had planned to major in the politics department if she had not been accepted, but prefers the interdisciplinary approach of the Wilson School.

Jay Parikh ’12, an accepted student who plans to pursue East Asian security studies with a focus on information technology policy, said he was pleased that his study of politics and international relations in the past two years has paid off.

“It’s nice to see that my course of study has been validated,” he said, adding, “I’ve known that I’ve wanted to go into public service since I was a youngster, and I think that the Woodrow Wilson School is undoubtedly the best public policy school in the nation.”

Similarly, Kelly Roache ’12, an accepted student who plans to study crisis diplomacy in Southeast Asia, said she believes the Wilson School will provide her with the interdisciplinary knowledge and pragmatism necessary for a career in public service.

“I’m very excited, because I’m not sure that I belonged anywhere else academically,” she said. “I bounced around between a wide range of departments all the way from religion to politics, but the Wilson School will allow me to take classes in all these departments.”

Yet despite her recent acceptance, the Wilson School has forced her to make some big decisions about her future. “I’ve already had to sit down and make a schedule of what I plan to take for the next two years,” she said. “It’s tough making all these choices already, like how I’m going to fulfill all my requirements.”

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Facing even more requirements will be Yu-Sung Huang ’12, an operations research and financial engineering major who will earn a Wilson School certificate. Huang said that he didn’t expect to be accepted, but that getting into the program “is a relief.”

Huang said that he had “one or two moments of hesitation” because of the amount of work entailed, but he explained that he will pursue the certificate in order to pursue his interests in both quantitative and qualitative problem solving.

Nan Hu contributed reporting.