Wilson School takes 90 of 180 applicants

The 50 percent acceptance rate represents an increase in selectivity over last year, when 162 students applied for the University’s only selective major.

The number of applicants is still lower than that of 2007, a particularly selective year when 190 sophomores applied. The Wilson School saw a slight drop of applicants in 2008, when 154 sophomores applied, but the number of applicants began climbing in 2009 with around 160 applicants. The school has accepted 90 students every year since 1995.

“The students who I knew and thought were terrific got in,” said Katz, who sits on the school’s admissions committee. While Katz was out of town when the discussions took place, he said that the process did not change at all this year, despite the larger number of applicants.

“It’s always a very similar process,” Katz said. “We got slightly more applications this year — they usually run between 155 and 185. This is towards the upper end of the distribution.”

The application — which was due for sophomores on Feb. 15 — consisted of a 300-word personal statement, a list of extracurricular activities and foreign languages and a required recommendation from a Princeton faculty member. In addition, students were asked to specify whether they were applying to be a concentrator or certificate student. Students also listed their intended course of study for the next four semesters, and concentrators were asked to specify their substantive concentration within the school.

A little over one-tenth of each undergraduate class applies for admission to the school each year, and the steadily increasing class size may be partly responsible for the larger number of applicants. The Class of 2013, at 1,300 members, is 53 students larger than the Class of 2012. Nevertheless, Katz said that neither he nor his colleagues could identify a reason for the increase in applications.

“We can never tell what causes it,” Katz said. “It’s not a great swing, and out of all the students in the class, the difference between 25 applications more or less isn’t that great.”

The school has kept a very small waiting list over the past few years in the event that accepted students decline the offer of admission.

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Katz told the ‘Prince’ in 2009 that there were “three or four” students on the list. He did not provide the exact number of students on the list this year, but said that it did not increase significantly, despite the larger number of applicants.

“Every year we use the waiting list, but it’s a very small number of individuals,” Katz said.

While the Wilson School has been selective since its inception in 1930, its admission policy is currently under review. A report will be released later this spring evaluating many aspects of the undergraduate program, and there is a possibility that the report will include a recommendation to change the school’s admissions process.

“There has been a committee looking at the whole undergraduate program,” Katz said. “The report has been drafted and is in the final stages of discussion.”