<p>The</a> Daily Pennsylvanian :: Applications to Penn drop by nearly 2 percent</p>
<p>The article mulls over the tiny drop in apps a bit too much. From what I can tell, Penn seems on target to admit another strong class.</p>
<p>Penn’s applications also dropped a bit 4 years ago, before they began a 3-year increase of about 40%.</p>
<p>Additionally, with the newly reinstated early admissions programs at Harvard and Princeton, Penn actually may have a higher Regular Decision yield this year, allowing for an acceptance rate as low as or lower than last year’s.</p>
<p>45percenter,</p>
<p>I think the updated article from the DP summarizes the situation pretty well:</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://thedp.com/index.php/article/2012/01/admissions_office_not_concerned_with_decline_in_applicants]ACK![/url”>Application dip prompts competing explanations | The Daily Pennsylvanian]ACK![/url</a>]</p>
<p>I think Furda is being reasonable about this - he predicts that, for the next few years, apps may stay in the 30-35,000 range, which is perfectly acceptable. If Penn keeps around a 12% accept rate for the next few years, that’s a very healthy rate.</p>
<p>Furda also stated that the accept rate may increase slightly for the Class of 2016 which, again, isn’t a big deal. If last year Penn accepted 12.4% and this year it’s 13%, that’s hardly news. </p>
<p>In fact, I’d hope that in the next few years, acceptance rates stabilize at all the top schools. Otherwise, the sheer difficulty of getting into a top school begins to outweigh the actual benefits derived from attending the school.</p>
<p>Put another way, if unfortunately Harvard becomes increasingly more selective, and for the Class of 2021, the school boasts a 3% accept rate, and other great schools, such as Williams, keep around a 20% accept rate, does going to harvard really offer a 6X better degree of success than attending Williams?</p>
<p>Cue7,</p>
<p>Furda said in the article that the regular decision acceptance rate might go up a bit, but keep in mind that the early decision acceptance rate actually dropped a bit this year. If memory serves, Furda also said in an earlier DP article that he anticipated that the regular decision yield rate might be a bit higher this year, because of the absence from the RD pool of many of the sucessful early applicants to Harvard and Princeton (who might have otherwise applied to Penn RD if not for the reinstatement of early admissions programs at H and P). So who knows? The overall acceptance rate at Penn this year might be quite close to what it was last year, but certainly not much higher (as you acknowledge).</p>
<p>In any event, as you also pointed out, this is really much ado about nothing.</p>
<p>Did you see this, by the way:</p>
<p>[Applications</a> at Elite Colleges Slow - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>Puts it in a broader perspective (including Columbia’s 9% drop in applications this year).</p>
<p>And what’s up with the “ACK!”? :)</p>
<p>Hah! I can’t figure out why the article link says “Ack!”</p>
<p>Also, yep, I saw the Bloomberg article, and I hope that’s good news for future classes. I think it’s good for colleges to be selective, but unless the top colleges increase in size, I don’t think it’s useful for schools to need much more than ~30k apps to fill their classes.</p>
<p>The whole trend was getting a bit too crazy. I’m hoping everything stabilizes soon.</p>
<p>Cue7, in case you’re interested, I found the earlier DP article containing Dean Furda’s prediction of a higher regular decision yield this year:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[The</a> Daily Pennsylvanian :: Admissions prepares to read early applications](<a href=“http://thedp.com/index.php/article/2011/1/admissions_prepares_to_read_early_decisions_applications]The”>http://thedp.com/index.php/article/2011/1/admissions_prepares_to_read_early_decisions_applications)</p>
<p>That article was published in October, and so far, he’s been proven right. :)</p>