<p>Application numbers hit all-time high with Class of 2009</p>
<p>Chanakya Sethi
Princetonian Senior Writer</p>
<pre><code>Applications for undergraduate admission hit an all-time high this year, increasing 17 percent from last year's unusually low figure and two percent from the previous record.
"Frankly, it's a step that came more quickly than I thought it would," Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said in an interview yesterday. "The fact that we got this far is extraordinary."
As of Tuesday, 16,077 students had applied for a spot in the Class of 2009, compared with 13,690 applicants last year. The previous record was held by the 15,725 applicants to the Class of 2007.
Rapelye attributed this year's increase to careful strategizing.
"We did much more outreach to high schools, we did more evening programs in cities, we held more on-campus sessions, both with students and guidance counselors [and] we did more international travel," she said. "We put in place a recruitment strategy where we're expecting this to be a threeto five-year building process."
The increase in applicant numbers accompanies the University's decision to accept the Common Application used by Harvard, Yale and more than 250 other colleges in addition to its own. To increase accessibility, Rapelye also introduced the option of applying online, using either the Common Application or the Princeton application.
The increase in applicants is particularly important, Rapyelye noted, as the University plans to welcome an additional 125 students in each class starting in the fall of 2007.
"We know that if we're expanding the student body we have a responsibility to be expanding our applicant pool," Rapelye said.
This year's rise in applicants will also improve the University's selectivity rating. Assuming a yield similar to last year's, 6 percent of the 14,038 Regular Decision applicants can expect an offer of admission.
"The outside world has been judging that [kind of selectivity] as a strength," Rapelye said. "[But] we measure our success in the quality of the admits, and not necessarily the actual numbers as we go into this."
Application numbers were mixed at some of the University's peer institutions. Harvard University also set a new record for applications after a slight decline last year. In total, 22,717 would-be Crimsons applied this year, according to figures that will appear in Thursday's Harvard Gazette a 15 percent rise over last year's figures.
Yale University has counted approximately 19,430 applications one percent short of the 19,674 applications received for their Class of 2008. Yale admissions dean Richard Shaw cautioned that his office is still processing applications and that the number may rise.
Applications to Brown University rose 10 percent to 16,800, according to the Brown Daily Herald. Figures from other Ivy League schools were not available yesterday.
The number of applicants for financial aid is unknown, said Don Betterton, director of undergraduate financial aid, because the University does not track aid applications until students are admitted. When asked about any effect of the Common Application on aid applicants, he noted that it was not introduced with the specific intention of recruiting more students from lower socioeconomic groups.
Rather, Rapelye has been employing a variety of other strategies to lure such applicants. "Our effort to reach out to students on lower socialize background is about travel, whom we invite to campus and how we get them here, [and] how [we] work with alumni in identifying high schools where we might recruit," she said.
Betterton estimated that 52 percent of the Class of 2009 will receive offers of financial aid. The figure has grown steadily from 48 percent of the Class of 2005, stabilizing at 52 percent of the Class of 2007. Before the University introduced its "no loan" policy with the Class of 2001, the figure hovered around 40 percent.
"Our best guess is that we will see somewhat more than 50 [percent] on aid for a while," Betterton said in an email, adding that among the Ivy Group Princeton continues to have the highest percentage of students on aid, though Harvard may begin to move closer with the introduction of a new financial aid initiative.
While there still exists a small financial aid gap between students who apply Early Decision and those who apply Regular Decision 48 percent of Class of 2008 early admits received aid compared to 54 percent of regular admits "**ecause of the quality of our aid program is well known," Betterton said, "students have a general understanding that their aid award will be the same whether they are admitted under ED or RD."
Rapelye dismissed the idea that students who opted to use the Common Application might be less committed to the possibility of attending Princeton compared to those students who completed the University's own one.
"The Common Application was designed to have exactly the same questions as our Princeton application so that students had to make a considerable effort in filling out the [additional Princeton] supplement because it had extra essay questions," Rapelye said, noting that traditional elements from Princeton's application, including questions about applicants' favorite mementos and favorite sources of news, were part of the Common Application supplement.
Though exact figures about the popularity of the Common Application compared with Princeton's own application were unavailable, Rapelye said that roughly half of all applicants used each the Common Application and the University's own. She added that the online option proved more popular than the Admission Office had anticipated.
In line with previous announcements, Rapelye said no decision has been made with regards to whether the University will continue to use its Early Decision program, or whether it will adopt an Early Action program like Harvard, Yale and Stanford. While admission under Early Decision programs is binding, those under Early Action are not and students are free to apply to other schools in the Regular Decision round.
"We have not yet made any decisions about our early program and I think we are doing an annual assessment of what's the right next step," Rapelye said. "We're taking a thoughtful approach to each year."
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