Admit rate increases to 16.4% for Class of 2012

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
1

<p>From today's Daily Pennsylvanian:</p>

<p>
[quote]
**Admit rate increases to 16.4 percent</p>

<p>Penn only Ivy thus far to not set a record-low acceptance rate, admits 3,769 students</p>

<p>By: Naomi Jagoda</p>

<p>Posted: 4/2/08**</p>

<p>In contrast to the other Ivy League schools, Penn's overall acceptance rate increased to 16.4 percent for the class of 2012. </p>

<p>Penn is the only Ivy League school thus far that has not reported a record-low acceptance rate.</p>

<p>This admissions cycle, Penn admitted a total of 3,769 of 22,922 applications. Last year, 22,646 students applied and 3,628 were accepted - a rate of 16 percent.</p>

<p>The number of regular decision applicants accepted also increased, from 2,450 to 2,622. The regular-decision acceptance rate was 13.9 percent this year, up from 11 percent last year.</p>

<p>Interim Dean of Admissions Eric Kaplan said the office accepted more students this year because it is unable to predict what percentage of the admitted students will decide to attend Penn in the fall. Last year, 66 percent of admitted students chose to attend Penn.</p>

<p>Kaplan said he expects this year's yield rate to drop.</p>

<p>Difficulties in predicting the yield are due to recent changes in early-acceptance and financial-aid policies at a number of colleges nationwide.</p>

<p>"All of our historical data about yield went out the window this year because Harvard and Princeton eliminated their early policies," Kaplan said.</p>

<p>Average SAT scores increased this year from 2137 to 2153 out of a possible 2400.</p>

<p>Kaplan said he thinks it is possible that this year's applicant pool, which likely includes students who in past years would have applied early to Harvard and Princeton, might have led to the higher scores. </p>

<p>More minority students were accepted this year. </p>

<p>The number of black students admitted went up from 422 to 432, the number of Latino students accepted increased from 311 to 355 and the number of Asian-American applicants accepted increased from 769 to 851.</p>

<p>There was a decrease in the number of Native-American students admitted, down from 20 last year to 15 this year.</p>

<p>The number of international students accepted increased to 471 for the class of 2012.</p>

<p>The year before, the University accepted 454.</p>

<p>Like last year, students were accepted from all 50 states.</p>

<p>Despite the higher acceptance rate, Kaplan said he is happy with the quality of the accepted students.</p>

<p>"Everyone in the office continues to be really impressed by the pool and in awe of their accomplishments," he said.</p>

<p>Accepted students are glad they received good news from Penn.</p>

<p>"I'm very excited," said Abby Denburg, a senior at The Dalton School in New York City. "I applied early and got deferred, so I've been in love with Penn for a long time."</p>

<p>*This article has been corrected as of 7:27 a.m. on Wednesday, April 2. We incorrectly stated that the total number of applicants this year was 22, 292.

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</p>

<p>Admit</a> rate increases to 16.4 percent - News</p>

2

<p>Heheh we're smarter</p>

<p>-Class of 2011</p>

3

<p>Heheh, maybe not:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Average SAT scores increased this year from 2137 to 2153 out of a possible 2400.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Although we'll know for sure when we see who actually enrolls. :)</p>

4

<p>Suck it, 2012.</p>

<p>To the above poster:
Increase in SAT score doesn't necessarily mean you're smarter -- For all we know, average high school rank could have decreased.</p>

<p>Indisputable, though:
2011 is the most selective class in Penn's history.</p>

<p>You all have Harvard and Princeton to thank for that. :)</p>

<p>2nd place isn't so bad, though.</p>

5

<p>Uhm..............</p>

6

<p>

True.</p>

<p>But as a future alum, you should always want the most recent class to be that. :D</p>

7

<p>
[Quote]
But as a future alum, you should always want the most recent class to be that.

[/Quote]
</p>

<p>I'm too selfish for that... I'd just rather be known as the best.</p>

8

<p>with<em>one</em>voice wrote:
Indisputable, though:
2011 is the most selective class in Penn's history.</p>

<p>Not entirely true. Penn Early Decision Acceptance for 2012 tied the record for lowest acceptance and it and wasn't with 2011.</p>

<p>I applied ED for 2012 and was accepted so I feel like my admissions round was the most selective at Penn. </p>

<p>And, yes, you could argue that statistically ED acceptance rate is higher than RD acceptance rate, but ED is known to have a stronger, tougher applicant pool due to its somewhat self-selective nature.</p>

9

<p>
[quote]
Not entirely true. Penn Early Decision Acceptance for 2012 tied the record for lowest acceptance and it and wasn't with 2011.</p>

<p>I applied ED for 2012 and was accepted so I feel like my admissions round was the most selective at Penn. </p>

<p>And, yes, you could argue that statistically ED acceptance rate is higher than RD acceptance rate, but ED is known to have a stronger, tougher applicant pool due to its somewhat self-selective nature.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>For one thing, you're ignoring the majority of the class of 2012 - those who were accepted RD. This acceptance rate was 3% greater than the RD acceptance rate for the class of 2011.</p>

<p>When discussing selectivity of a class as a whole, you need to look at the overall acceptance rate (not only ED or RD). Sure, 2012 had a lower ED admit rate than 2011 (28% vs 29%), but this was offset by its disproportionately greater RD admit rate (14% vs 11%).</p>

<p>And although the last sentence of your post is largely irrelevant, I just wanted to say that no where is it shown that ED applicants are "stronger" or "tougher" than RD applicants, and in fact, many would contend the contrary.</p>

10

<p>

On that very subject, you may find of interest the following statement made by then-Admissions Dean Stetson to the Trustees regarding the Class of 2011:</p>

<p>
[quote]
About 48% of the class was admitted during early decision, and for the first time the early decision pool of admitted and enrolled students was stronger than the regular decision pool of admitted and enrolled students.

[/quote]
</p>

<p><a href="http://www.archives.upenn.edu/primdocs/upa/upa1_1/2000to09/20070615tr.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.archives.upenn.edu/primdocs/upa/upa1_1/2000to09/20070615tr.pdf&lt;/a> (see pages 5-6)</p>

11

<p>
[Quote]
About 48% of the class was admitted during early decision, and for the first time the early decision pool of admitted and enrolled students was stronger than the regular decision pool of admitted and enrolled students.

[/Quote]
</p>

<p>I was an ED applicant last year... Yay!</p>

12

<p>

Don't let it go to your head. :p</p>

<p>And remember, you want classes subsequent to yours to have progressively better stats than yours, not worse--it makes your having gotten into Penn look more and more impressive over time. :D</p>

13

<p>On average, students were ranked in the top 2% of their high school graduating classes. </p>

<p>This is the quote from Lee Stetson on the link posted above? Is being in the top 10% of a very competitive private school not cut it for rank? If school doesn't rank, then does it hurt the kid?</p>

14

<p>@ lovemom - Rank in schools helps the kid, but if the school doesn't rank, it doesn't hurt them. And top 10% doesn't help as much as top 5% would.</p>

15

<p>with<em>one</em>voice</p>

<p>Yes, if you want to compare the selectivity of a school it is most appropriate to compare the overall admit rate of the school. I was just pointing out an interesting difference between the ED and RD admit rates of 2011 and 2012.</p>

<p>However, you applied ED in the 2011. Therefore, it would be fair to compare your admission cycle (ED 2011) and my admission cycle (ED 2012). The Early Decision admit rate for 2012 was lower than the Early Decision admit for 2011. Thus, my admission was more selective than yours.</p>

<p>I'm not trying to make this a competition, but you brought it up: "Suck it, 2012."</p>

16

<p>People... seriously... my future fellow classmates (I assume you're all going to Penn, 2012 people, since you're so protective of your acceptance prestige)... it doesn't matter... we're all going to dominate the other Ivy grads and everyone else for that matter... that's all that really matters ;-)</p>

17

<p>Thanks Barbara!</p>

<p>GO QUAKERS! GO PENN 2012!</p>

18

<p>Neviar - my D school ranks by decile, so top 10% is the best ranking that they are going to give. The reason for doing this they say is that the difference among the top 10% is very marginal. I don't know if the CC unofficial can say that a student is closer to the top 5% or give an indication of where they stand in that range. </p>

<p>It looks like most of the Accepted students at Penn are in the top 2% even for this year.</p>

19

<p>What a lot may not realize is that many of the ivys that kept their acceptance rate down, did so by waitlisting and extremely large number of appicants. because they could not predict yield. Princeton for example accepted about 1900 or so applicants to get a class size of around 1200, but they waitlisted 1,500 applicants. If they are wrong about yield, they can always pull from the waitlist. If they call ahead to those on the waitlist and ask if they will come if accepted, they can count those as accepted students, because the applicant will not have to reject them.
Penn had a pretty good idea what their yield would be. It might vary a little because there might be some they take who will come if they find out regulard decision they did not get into Harvard, Yale ect. Hoever, Penn has a freshman class size of about 2400. They accepted many more, projecting their yield, and waitlisted just 900.
They could have accepted less and waitlisted more. Because they did not does not mean their selectivity is much lower.</p>

20

<p>Collegebound is correct. Penn may be the only ivy that isn't trying to "game the numbers" this year...</p>