Princeton admitted its first pool of applicants in the 2021–22 application cycle on Thursday, Dec. 16 at 7 p.m. In a departure from previous years, the University will not announce application statistics.
The University will not release this year’s Early Action admissions rate, number of applicants, demographics of accepted students, or statistics like average SAT score and GPA of admits.
“We know this information raises the anxiety level of prospective students and their families and, unfortunately, may discourage some prospective students from applying,” the University wrote in an online statement.
According to the statement, the University will not release acceptance rates for the Regular Decision cycle or transfer admissions cycle either — and “in recent years,” has declined to release the “annual admission rate.”
“We believe this decision will help us keep students central to our work and tamp down the anxiety of applicants,” the University added.
Instead, the University will release an announcement “that focuses on the enrolled students” in 2022, after Regular Decision results are released.
This is the first Single Choice Early Action pool that has been admitted since the 2019-2020 application cycle, as the University suspended the practice in the last cycle in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Harvard and Yale, the other two Ivy League institutions with Single Choice Early Action admissions, admitted 7.9 percent and 10.9 percent of early applicants respectively this year. Columbia, Dartmouth, UPenn, and Brown also released early decision statistics.
Cornell does not announce decisions until Dec. 17 but has previously said it would not announce acceptance rates while admissions are ongoing. Cornell does, however, report detailed undergraduate admissions data including the number of students who applied, were admitted, and matriculated through each admissions cycle.
In last year’s regular admissions cycle, Princeton admitted a record-low 1,498 students out of 37,601 applicants for an acceptance rate of 3.98 percent — a steep drop from the 5.6 percent acceptance rate for the Class of 2024. An additional 149 students had deferred admission or were admitted off the waitlist for a total acceptance rate of 4.38 percent.
In a post on the Admissions blog, Dean Karen Richardson ’93 reiterated the Admissions Committee’s commitment to the holistic review of applications.
“I and my colleagues worked thoughtfully over the past several weeks to understand each applicant in the context of their home and school,” she wrote. “We tried our best to balance out those challenges and to see what each individual applicant was able to do in and outside of the classroom despite those challenges.”
Honor Johnson, an accepted student from Washington, D.C. who will join Princeton’s fencing team, wrote to The Daily Princetonian about her acceptance.
“Acceptance to Princeton is surreal … the best economics program and women’s saber fencing team in the country!” Johnson told the ‘Prince.’ “Doesn’t get any better than that! Honestly, I can’t imagine going anywhere else. I know that my life will be forever changed by the next four years at Princeton!”
Regular Decision results for the Class of 2026 are set to be released in April.
Aidan Iacobucci is a news contributor for the ‘Prince.’ He can be reached at iacobucci@princeton.edu or @aidaniaco on Instagram.
This story previously stated 1,498 students were admitted last year. 1,647 students were admitted in total including deferrals and those accepted from the waitlist. This story was also updated to include more information on Cornell, and the subheadline was adjusted for clarity based on this information. The ‘Prince’ regrets these errors.
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