<p>That's what I've heard.</p>
<p>Yeah, right. Princeton got 4,000 fewer applications than Harvard, and offered admission to the same number of people – so a big 1.2% more of its applicants got admitted. And, it got 500 more applications than Yale, but admitted 200 more people – so its admission rate was 0.6% higher than Yale’s. Of course, that was last year, and the numbers are all so close that there’s no guarantee everything won’t be the other way around this year.</p>
<p>In other words, unless you believe that somehow the Princeton applicant pool is meaningfully dumber than the Harvard or Yale pools – and if you believe that, you are wrong – there is no significant difference in the ease of admission among those colleges. All of them are ridiculously tough to get into.</p>
<p>According to the revealed preference ranking
[SSRN-A</a> Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities by Christopher Avery, Mark Glickman, Caroline Hoxby, Andrew Metrick](<a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105]SSRN-A”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105)</p>
<p>Princeton loses the cross admit battle against Harvard Caltech Yale MIT Stanford.
Princeton’s yeild shows that about half of admitted students choose to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>Princeton admission is alot easier than HCYMS.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>First of all, the data in the “revealed preference study” is more than a decade out of date. If memory serves, they used 1999 admissions season results. The world of college reputation changes pretty slowly, but that was a very different era, in which it was much easier to get into ANY college.</p></li>
<li><p>And because of the study design it was never terribly accurate in the first place as a gauge of actual preferences. </p></li>
<li><p>As applied to Princeton, it was especially inaccurate, because Princeton accepted a much higher proportion of its class ED at the time, compared to Harvard and Yale (and almost everyone else back then). People who were accepted ED at any of the colleges were effectively excluded from the data, since they never chose between any pair of schools – they were only ever accepted at one college. So because Princeton had accepted more of its really committed fans ED, that hurt its yield for RD admittees. Overall, Princeton always had a slightly better yield than Harvard or Yale back then, but its RD yield was noticeably lower, and that’s what the revealed preference study reflected (to the extent it reflected anything real, which is debatable). That didn’t mean that Princeton was really less popular or less competitive for admission.</p></li>
<li><p>Princeton and Yale are almost exactly the same size in terms of undergraduate enrollment, and (last year at least) got almost exactly the same number of applications, and Princeton had to accept a slightly higher number of applicants to fill its class. (It had about a 58% yield, by the way, not 50%.) So Princeton must be a little less popular than Yale, right? Um, not so clear, because Yale has EA and Princeton doesn’t. And though Yale’s EA isn’t binding like ED, a student accepted EA has the option to treat it as though it were ED, and not apply to any more colleges. And lots of Yale EA acceptees do just that. No one in the outside world knows exactly what the yield difference is between EA and RD acceptees at Yale, but I think it’s safe to say that Yale’s RD yield is almost certainly a little lower than Princeton’s. For the same reason that the revealed preference study understated Princeton’s appeal: a big chunk of Yale’s biggest fans among admitted students aren’t in the RD pool, while ALL of Princeton’s biggest fans are.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I don’t even want to know what the jomjom tally is at this point…You start to pity the guy after a while.</p>
<p>And no, I don’t believe Princeton to be easier to get into than Harvard or Yale. At some point in selectivity the admissions process becomes not necessarily arbitrary, but really hard to predict and it’s driven to such nuances that I don’t think you are going to find meaningful distinctions between a school with a 7.something acceptance rate and a school with an 8.something acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Yield doesn’t equal admit rate last time I checked.</p>
<p>Who gives a ----? Princeton is Princeton, and the marginal difference between its admit rate and other top schools makes ABSOLUTELY NO difference. People need to stop being so shallow…</p>
<p>Says overachiever. But yah, there is not enough empirical data to support any conclusion atm.</p>
<p>^ That statement makes absolutely no sense, being an overachiever has nothing to do with being shallow… FAIL</p>
<p>Yea Princeton is MUCH easier to get in to. It’s practically a safety!</p>
<p>[New</a> Haven zone change paves way for Yale dorm expansion- The New Haven Register - Serving New Haven, Connecticut](<a href=“http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2011/01/04/news/new_haven/aa3neyalecolleges010311.txt?viewmode=default]New”>http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2011/01/04/news/new_haven/aa3neyalecolleges010311.txt?viewmode=default)</p>
<p>Yale expands accepting another 800 undergraduate students.
This means more students will choose Yale over Princeton.
and Princeton’s yield will plummet to below 50%.</p>
<p>this is such a stupid question ,they are all insanely difficult to get into, u cant really say which of the HYP will be the most difficult, as many get rejected and accepted from either or</p>
<p>I was accepted at Princeton and deferred and then rejected at Yale (and waitlisted and then rejected at Harvard), but I know others with all of the other different permutations of those results. Don’t know the overall stats, but it seems pretty random to me.</p>
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</p>
<p>This is pretty ironic haha. I would venture to say that Princeton’s applicant pool is slightly more self-selective than that of Harvard and possibly even Yale.</p>
<p>While I don’t have concrete evidence, Princeton does seem friendlier in terms of admissions. They take like 5 from my HS each year while H and Y only take like 1 every other year.</p>
<p>Cornetking…do you by chance live in the town of Princeton?</p>
<p>
And in my school, Harvard tends to take 1-2 unhooked kids a year, Yale takes 3-4, and Princeton takes 0 (every Princeton kid the last few years has been an athlete, including yours truly). Oh, and Stanford’s even harder to get into than HYP, or as it would seem from the anecdotal data (one URM and one development case over the last five years).</p>
<p>Basically what I’m saying is that random examples as arguments fail.</p>
<p>I agree that any difference among the 3, HYP, is so small as to be meaningless.</p>
<p>Furthermore, don’t you suppose that any important difference would be undone in short order? If word got around that Princeton (or Harvard or Yale) was easier to get into than the other two, the next year it would be flooded with applications from eager beavers who thought they’d found a way to game the system, and the acceptance rate would plummet.</p>
<p>Even if it were possible to give a meaningful answer to this question (and I doubt that it is), I think it would be pointless to do so, because the answer would change in no time.</p>
<p>another anecdotal fact: I was accepted at both Yale and harvard but rejected from Princeton</p>
<p>Two of my daughter’s classmates were both accepted at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and MIT, among other places, and rejected at Princeton.</p>