<p>With the selection process now complete for the Class of 2013, the University has announced an admit rate of 19.1 percent for early and regular decision. This represents a 1.3 percent decrease since last year, bringing the admit rate below 20 percent for the first time in the history of Cornell.
Related:</p>
<p>The University received 34,381 applications, the largest amount ever, and a 4 percent increase over last year. The admissions office received 33,073 applicants for the Class of 2012, 30,382 for the Class of 2011 and 28,097 for the Class of 2010.</p>
<p>For this admissions cycle, 3,311 students were waitlisted, while 22,434 were outright denied admission.</p>
<p>Harvard admitted a record low 7 percent of students, according to the Harvard Crimson, while Yale admitted 7.5 percent, the Yale Daily News reported. The University of Pennsylvania's admit rate rose to 17.1 percent this year, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian, while the Brown Daily News released that Brown admitted 10.8 percent. Dartmouth admitted 12 percent, according to The Dartmouth. Columbia College and its School of Engineering and Applied Science admitted 9.82 percent, according to the Columbia Spectator. Princeton's admit rate rose to 9.79 percent, according to the Daily Princetonian, higher than the last two years.</p>
<p>The slight decrease in acceptance rate was bound to happen.
Think about it. Limited amount of space that is fixed, jumped about 100 seats more for this class and future. Applications increased 4%. Space increased by I dunno 1~2%. Net lost 1~2%. My math is rusty considering I skipped math this year, but all things considering, inundating Cornell with a couple 100 seats is going to drive the acceptance rate down.
In my opinion, I think all the admission people say in people all equally qualified people, probably all fit in their programs down the line, and because of some limit in space, they were forced to let go equally same people to other schools.
It was probably impossible to be selective with the final group of candidates.</p>
<p>A surge in population, a surge in students pursuing college, and a surge in students applying to as many colleges as possible to hedge their bets increases applicants. Logically, all the schools (except Penn) are going to deny more than before.</p>
<p>In the end, it really doesn’t mean much - especially for schools with such specialization that only attracts specialized people like so many Cornell colleges, Cal Tech, or UChicago. </p>
<p>But, whatever. For the petty perhaps Cornell will have fewer nasty threads.</p>
<p>Caltech and UChicago both have acceptance rates close to or higher than Cornell; does that make them equally selective? Of course not. Acceptance rate =/= selectivity.</p>
<p>Adding more seats will increase the acceptance rate since they have to accept more students to fill the new seats. However, there was a big enough increase in applications that the acceptance rate still declined.</p>