In the third year of an expanded undergraduate class, the University offered admission to the Class of 2028 this past Thursday, March 28. March 28 was this year’s ‘Ivy Day,’ the day that most Ivy League schools release their regular decision results and is traditionally the day in which Princeton accepts the majority of the next year’s class.
Data for the accepted Class of 2028 has not yet been published. In December 2021, the University announced that it would no longer release admission data during admission cycles, but a more detailed report of the class would follow later in the year.
The Daily Princetonian spoke with some students who were accepted to Princeton’s Class of 2028 on Thursday.
This year’s admissions round was a historic first in the absence of affirmative action, which the United States Supreme Court struck down in June 2023. This is the first admissions cycle at the University without formal consideration of racial diversity since 1963.
“Personally, I have no idea how affirmative action affected my application — I would have to see the demographic shifts in the incoming class to see if I was given an advantage or disadvantage based on the court ruling,” said Ryan Li of Naperville, Ill., who hopes to pursue his interests in computer science and join a dance group on campus.
Evan Carpenter of Owasso, Okla., who plans on majoring in neuroscience, said, “I definitely really feel for everyone who was affected negatively by it because that must be really difficult. It’s definitely just a really hard situation.”
Helin (Helîn) Taskesen, who currently lives in Seattle, Wash., but is originally from Diyarbakır, Turkey, explained that she “was the first in [her] family to go to high school and survive the college application process in the United States … This acceptance means a lot to [her] community back in Diyarbakır.”
Taskesen is interested in majoring in Operations Research and Financial Engineering with certificates in computational mathematics or optimization and quantitative decision science.
“I would like to say that I am not in support of its overturning, and that I believe equity should be pursued on every college campus, as higher education shouldn’t be blocked off based on socioeconomic hullabaloo, which is, factually, deeply correlated with racial privilege,” Li explained.
In light of the affirmative action ruling, the University has updated its application process so that applicants “reflect on how your lived experiences will impact the conversations you will have in the classroom, the dining hall or other campus spaces.”
Taskesen told the ‘Prince’ that she still talked about her ethnicity and gender in her application. She expressed that she fears “that may be why [she] got in or that people might think [she] got in through that.”
“I started my application for Princeton pretty early after Princeton released their prompts,” said Steve Ta, who currently lives in Wichita, Kan., but moved from Vietnam three years ago.
“Even though it took me a long time to craft the best essays to present myself well, Princeton prompts brought to me a sense of appreciation in allowing me to fully express myself and reflect on the long life journey that I have been through in both countries I have lived in: Vietnam and the US.”
Prospective physics major Vedant Aryan from Wallingford, Conn. said that he applied to the University “ironically.” “As I studied the history of physics breakthroughs, Princeton kept coming up.”
Ta, a prospective computer science BSE major, said “the independent study nature of Princeton mostly attracted me here. It creates an aspiration for me to further delve into my realm of knowledge and present a senior thesis in the topic that I will be a professional in for my future career.”
Admitted students also explained how visits to campus convinced them to apply. Aryan explained, “I also hung out with my close friend during my campus visit, and she seemed extremely happy and super excited, so that’s when I knew I definitely wanted the chance to join Princeton’s community.”
Kweku Akese from Auburn, Mass. told the ‘Prince,’ “I applied to Princeton because two friends of mine go there and really like it, and I also had heard about how undergrad focused they were, which I thought was super cool.”
After getting through this application round, most members of the prospective Class of 2028 are excited for a future at Princeton.
Ta told the ‘Prince,’ “I was in my shift of my tutoring job, and I was sneaking to use my phone to check the result. I screamed out when I saw the acceptance letter, which captured the attention of the students in the class. I put my phone away after that and held in myself a triumph of victory. ‘Finally the American Dream came true,’ I thought.”
“I went through a period of so much rejection and waitlisting that I got super discouraged about how everything would turn out. Little did I know I just had to wait a bit longer,” Akese said. “I’m the first person in my family to get accepted into an Ivy, so it’s not only super cool, but an honor to have the opportunity to hopefully encourage more to hope for the same.”
Akese plans on majoring in molecular biology on a pre-medical track and is excited to get involved with a cappella groups on campus.
Regular decision is the last in the University’s organized decision rounds for first-year admissions. Early decision and QuestBridge match results were released in December 2023. Transfer decisions will be released in mid-May.
Meghana Veldhuis is an assistant News editor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that regular decision is the last round of decisions in this admissions cycle, when in fact transfer decisions are the final round. The ‘Prince’ regrets this error.
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