<p>IRJunkie, your 3 reasons are absolutely valid. I, however, would like to add a fourth: there are so many applicants that solely applied for financial reasons. Penn is one of the best schools when it comes to financial grants. I know of a couple applicants who applied early just to optimize there chances of going to an Ivy for a relatively cheap price.</p>
<p>There is good news and bad news to the six percent increase:</p>
<p>THE BAD:</p>
<p>Penn plans to matriculate about 2500 freshmen each year (i believe last year it was 2430). They also want to accept 45% of the class from the ED pool. So Penn is planning on accepting around 1100 students Dec 11, more or less. That means the acceptance rate for ED is only going to be around 29% (prob a little less because they DP article mentioned more applicants coming from Questbridge). Don’t quote me on this, but usually the acceptance rate is around 33% (4% higher than my expected rate this year).</p>
<p>THE GOOD NEWS:</p>
<p>For Penn:
-the increase in applicants is going to result in a decrease of acceptances. Penn will become a more selective school. </p>
<p>For 2014 hopefuls:
-the DP article said the amount of applicants increased mostly in mass. and florida. I know penn does not have official quotas but I am sure those regions are going to be drastically more selective than they usually are. Although there is too little information to draw conclusions, there is a decent chance that other states/region’s acceptance rate will not be affected by the increase in applicants. We don’t know if NJ, PA, CA, or NY saw an increase in applicants. There is a chance, however slim, that those regions saw a decrease. Just a thought to preserve some optimism for non-mass or non-florida applicants.</p>