<p>Some Penn admission tidbits from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:</p>
<p>Concluding one of the most brutal admission seasons ever, college officials say they are accepting an unusually low percentage of applicants.</p>
<p>Elite colleges including Brown University, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania say they have accepted a smaller percentage of applicants than ever before.</p>
<p>The University of Pennsylvania admitted 17.7% of the record 20,479 applicants – down from around 21% last year. A surge in applications – coupled with an expected increase in the number of students who will enroll if admitted – has meant a stingier year in admissions, says Dean of Admissions Lee Stetson.</p>
<p>In turn, colleges are becoming stingier with their admissions, with some leaning more on “wait lists” of students neither accepted nor rejected, as it becomes harder to know who will accept an offer of admission. Mr. Stetson at Penn, for one, says he expects about 800 students to end up on such a list, compared with 500 last year, to better able “control the class size.”</p>
<p>It’s not just the sheer number of applicants that makes schools competitive. The colleges indicate that they are also seeing large numbers of highly qualified students. The University of Pennsylvania turned away 394 of the 1,045 valedictorians that applied. Also, about 70% of applicants who got near-perfect scores in the math and critical-reading sections of the SAT were turned away, says Mr. Stetson.</p>
<p>Wow. That's 300 more people on the waiting list. I hope Penn uses plenty of its waitlist, though I doubt it. Good luck waitlistees, from a rejectee :p</p>
<p>one of several ways penn cooks numbers</p>
<p>also interesting that while this article sites the number of valedictorians turned down as a seemingly impressive statistic (approximately 1/3), peer schools like brown typically turn down about 2/3
<a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/gettoknowus/factsandfigures.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/gettoknowus/factsandfigures.html</a></p>
<p>i really hope penn's yield rate is less than they expect.. and they REALLY depend on their waitlist.... pls UPenn!</p>
<p>Dcircle sounds a bit bitter.</p>
<p>Lee Stetson invented strategic admissions, and it has paid great dividends for Penn. God bless 'im</p>
<p>JohnnyK - What are "Strategic Admissions", when were they invented, and how are they different?</p>
<p>Strategic admissions any policy that is designed to lower acceptance rates and boost yield.</p>
<p>Stetson led Penn in creating the ED system we know today, applying early and committing to go (thus not only boosting yield, but improving campus morale by filling Penn with students whose first choice was Penn--as opposed to kids who were there because it was their safety).</p>
<p>He also began aggressive efforts to lower acceptance rates and boost yield by guessing which kids had the credentials to get into HYP and would thus be unlikely to come to Penn if accepted. This let Penn send out more rejections (yay lower acceptance rate), and improved yield by eliminating kids who wouldn't have picked Penn. This is why you hear stories of kids getting rejected from Penn but accepted at Yale.</p>
<p>Penn knows how valuable Lee Stetson is...they have a very large insurance policy on him should he die.</p>
<p>I can't believe that around 63% of all valedictorians were accepted. Sort of makes me sick...</p>
<p>Is it just me, or does that percentage sound REALLY REALLY high?</p>
<p>Well, it's not like they accepted ONLY valedictorians. According to the DP, they accepted 3,622 applicants. So the valedictorians are a little more than 10% of the admitted students. That means almost 90% of the accepted students were not valedictorians. Not so high now, is it?</p>