Demographics hold steady

This year’s all-time low acceptance rate has been part of a decreasing trend. The University’s 7.86 percent acceptance rate this year follows an 8.39 percent rate in 2011, 8.18 percent in 2010 and 9.79 percent in 2009.

Regular decision admission was four times as competitive as early action admission — 21.08 percent of the first-round applicant pool was accepted, while only 5.45 percent of the regular decision pool was admitted.

Changes in selectivity varied across the Ivy League. Harvard, which also reinstated early admission beginning with this year, accepted 5.9 percent of applicants, a decrease from its 6.2 acceptance rate one year prior. Yale’s admittance rate decreased to 6.8 percent, Dartmouth’s to 9.4 percent and Cornell’s to 16.2 percent of the total applicant pool.

Other schools in the Ancient Eight, though, admitted higher percentages of students compared to the previous year. Columbia admitted 7.4 percent of applicants and Brown admitted 9.6 percent, both increases. Penn’s admittance rate remained the same as last year at 12.3 percent.

Private college counselors interviewed said that the rates were significant primarily because of the high selectivity.

“What I’ve discovered is that trying to read too much into these stats is like trying to read tea leaves,” College Confidential Senior Adviser Sally Rubenstone said. “I tend to prefer to avoid splitting hairs over Princeton application and acceptance figures.”

Rubenstone said that the final take-away from acceptance rates, regardless of year-to-year changes, is that there are “far more qualified applicants than there are places for them” at Princeton and its peer institutions.

Michele Hernandez, president of Hernandez College Consulting and co-founder of Application Boot Camp, explained that admission rates are so low because universities are “guilty of over recruiting.”

“Look at where admissions offices visit — all over the United States to China, India, and then they take one kid from China, one from India, but a ton apply,” Hernandez said in an email. “The colleges are unwilling to admit that they don’t need to recruit so hard and encourage so many to apply.”

The result is an inflated applicant pool and numbers that look increasingly selective every year, she said.

Rubenstone described it as a “vicious cycle” where the number of qualified students getting rejected lure additional applicants the next year, which makes the process seem even more selective.

Hernandez added that application numbers are rising because in a poor economy, more students assume that going to a “brand-name college” will help them in the job market.

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There was previously some concern over whether early action would put underrepresented minorities or students of low socioeconomic status at a disadvantage.

In February 2011, when the University announced that early admission would be reinstated, Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said that the University chose to adopt early action rather than early decision in order to sustain its advances in improving racial and socioeconomic diversity. The University offered an early action program from 1977 to 1995 and then switched to early decision admission until 2006.

Compared to last year, though, this year saw little change in the racial and ethnic background of the admitted students.

The percentage of students identifying as black or African American remained the same as last year at 9.1 percent. Students identifying as Hispanic or Latino decreased from 9.8 percent to 8.8 percent. The percentage of those identifying as Asian increased from 22.0 to 24.4.

This year, less than 1 percent of admitted students identify as Native American, and 4.4 percent belong to two or more races.

The Office of Admission expects that 60 percent of the accepted class will be eligible to receive financial aid. This is the same as what it projected for the enrolled Class of 2015. In 2006, the last year that early admission was offered, 51 percent of all admitted applicants were offered aid.

Early decision requires admitted students to accept enrollment before they can compare financial aid offers from the University and from other schools.

Early action, rather than early decision, is supposed to allow admitted students to have the option of not rushing into final decisions, as Rapelye explained. However, some suggest that this only works in theory.

“Single-choice early action is somewhat of a de facto early decision without the commitment because a student who applies single choice early action to Princeton can therefore not apply early action in any way to a competitor school,” Rubenstone said.

Rubenstone added that middle-class students are particularly disadvantaged by single-choice early action.

Because these families feel that their expected family contributions during early admission are not realistic, they find it necessary to apply for full-tuition scholarships at less selective schools during the early action application round. This forces them to apply to Princeton through the regular decision program, where percentage chances of admission are lower.

Stanford currently allows their single choice early action candidates pursuing scholarships to apply early action to the scholarship colleges that require it in addition to Stanford.

“I think that Princeton should do that too,” Rubenstone said, “because in claiming that early action, unlike early decision, is beneficial to less advantaged students, I think Princeton is boxing out some of these middle-class students who really need to consider the possibility of getting full tuition or big-money scholarships [at other schools.]”