Penn may accept a greater number of applicants this year.

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
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**Fear the waitlist? You could still have a shot</p>

<p>By: Naomi Jagoda Posted: 2/21/08**</p>

<p>Penn may accept a greater number of applicants regular decision and from the waiting list this year, largely in response to Harvard and Princeton Universities' decisions to eliminate their early-acceptance programs, interim Dean of Admissions Eric Kaplan said.</p>

<p>Kaplan said he thinks Penn's applicant pool likely includes students who, in past years, would have been accepted early at Harvard or Princeton and who are now are now applying to a greater number of schools. This could lead to fewer students deciding to enroll at Penn.</p>

<p>As a result, Penn may have a higher regular-decision acceptance rate than it has seen in recent years, and Penn and other universities are preparing to utilize their waitlists more extensively than in the past. </p>

<p>Stanford University does not plan to admit a greater number of applicants than it has in previous years but might admit more students from its waitlist if necessary, according to Shawn Abbott, Stanford's director of admissions.</p>

<p>"Using our waitlists more actively this year is certainly an option in the event the number of students who accept our offer of admission isn't as high as we expect," Abbott wrote in an a-mail.</p>

<p>Washington, D.C.-based college consultant Steven Goodman said he believes it is a smart idea for universities to be prepared to go to their waitlists, because the lists can "serve as an insurance policy" if the schools still have room in their classes after accepted students make their decisions.</p>

<p>It is difficult for selective universities to predict yield rates because they do not ask applicants where else they applied until after the students are accepted, Abbott wrote.</p>

<p>However, it will take a few years to determine the effects of Harvard's and Princeton's moves away from early decision, Kaplan said. For now, he is not worried about the caliber of Penn's class of 2012, even if more students than usual are accepted from the waiting list.</p>

<p>"I'm optimistic that the class of 2012 will be Penn's finest," he said.</p>

<p>Experts also agree that admitting waitlisted students doesn't dilute the quality of the incoming class.</p>

<p>"A lot of students end up on the waitlist who are perfectly qualified," said Nadine Warner, a counselor with the firm AdmissionsConsultants.</p>

<p>This year, Penn saw an increase of only 225 regular-decision applications from the 2006-2007 admissions cycle, while other Ivy League universities saw larger increases.</p>

<p>However, rising application numbers are not necessarily the result of Harvard and Princeton dropping their early-acceptance programs, Warner said.</p>

<p>"I think that more students are applying to more schools regardless," Warner said. "It's not a single factor at play."</p>

<p>Penn's early-decision acceptance rate matched the school's lowest-ever percentage at 28 percent.

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<p>Fear</a> the waitlist? You could still have a shot - News</p>

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<p>Excellent. =)</p>

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<p>Thank you so much for this great news.</p>

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<p>really, my guess is that they won't take many more regularly. Most likely they'll pull an MIT/WashU and abuse the hell out of the waitlist</p>

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<p>lol w/e wharton is still a crapshoot</p>

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<p>Too bad I was deferred =(
That means no waitlist for me right?</p>

<p>It's RD or nothing..hope they don't send a joke acceptance my way on April 1st</p>

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<p>C'mooon waitlist abuse.</p>

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<p>haha yea bring it on!</p>

<p>eh feikuai. why does deferred mean no waitlist??? can't you get deferred and then subsequently waitlisted?! eee</p>

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<p>yea i was deferred too, does that mean its RD or nothing??</p>

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<p>if you are deferred, you cannot be waitlisted. you either rejected or accepted in april. best of luck.</p>

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<p>tybball08 how do you know that? does the website or any other source say that? if so please post a link ...thanks</p>

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<p>hmm I remember reading someone who said he got deferred THEN waitlisted and finally accepted..</p>

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<p>You can definitely be waitlisted after getting deferred.</p>

<p>The difference there is that a reasonable number of deferrees get offered admission. The waitlist is a game where they put a boatload of people on it and take an innertube-full off.</p>

<p>General piece of advice: consider waitlistings to be rejections. Don't get your hopes up about a waitlist, at any school.</p>

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<p>so did you guys do RD and get any info back yet?</p>

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<p>OK thanks mattwonder. I had read somewhere that deferees would not be waitlisted..though I suppose I'd rather take a rejection than the false hope of a waitlist</p>

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<p>AFAIK, there's no rule that deferred are never waitlisted - when you are deferred they throw you into the RD pool the same as any other RD.</p>

<p>AFA waitlist being equal to rejection, that's not 100% true. Keep in mind they know that a lot of WL people will decline if they are called so they have to put more on than they actually expect to take. The WL is their "safety cushion" so they don't end up with too few people if the yield goes against expectations. The absolute worst thing from their POV is to end up with too few enrolled and lose money. Now in recent years the yield has gone more or less as expected, so they haven't had any need to go very deep into the waitlist (though they do usually take a few - your WL chances are never ZERO, even if they are small). But maybe (just maybe) this year w/ no ED at some other top schools the yield will dip a little (because people who would have gotten in ED at some other school would have been out of the pool by RD time but now they are still waiting to hear from H, etc. and will pick H over Penn) and they'll have to go a bit deeper in the waitlist. I agree that the WL has been largely a "consolation prize" for the last few years but you (and the admissions people) never know when there will be a dip in yield so they protect themselves with a large waitlist. This is also better than overadmitting and ending up with not enough dorm beds. Once you understand that the admit process is for THEIR benefit and not yours it all makes sense. The general prob. I see here is that people look at the admit process egocentrically - it's not about YOU.</p>

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<p>Percy, you make some good points. However, I'd have to stress the numbers here. I hate to see students thinking they've got a realistic chance of getting off the waitlist - we're talking maybe 20 people (or less) out of 2000+ at most schools. People tend to see a waitlist and think they'll be the special one, but the numbers just aren't that favorable. You should never have a waitlist as your "first choice" when you make a decision May 1st (or whatever).</p>

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<p>Moreso to this whole topic is the issue of capacity. quality of most facilities such as the vanpelt library,wharton, cafes, houston hall would all greatly diminished if anything more than a few more dozen students were admitted this year.</p>

<p>We are already a huge ivy league school. Surely, we need more people like darthmouth needs more alcoholic/neoconservative related injuries.</p>

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<p>I don't think you have to worry about overcapacity - as I said before they have a pretty finely controlled system for doing this. They have it more or less down to a science - they admit slightly fewer people than they want based up historical yields. Usually the actual yield ends up very close to the predicted yield (somewhere around 2/3 overall, though it's made up of 100% yield ED and 50% yield RD). If all goes as expected, they take a couple of dozen from the waitlist. If the yield is more than expected, then they may not go to the waitlist at all. If it's low, they go as deep into the waitlist as necessary (as I said before they protect themselves amply by creating a huge waitlist). The only way it could go wrong is if the yield was so high that it overflowed their waitlist cushion. It's not the library or course enrollments that are the constraints as much as housing beds. This has happened sometimes at some schools and they have to scramble - turn doubles into triples or whatever. </p>

<p>A bigger question, despite your concerns about overcrowding, is "Why haven't undergrad enrollments at Penn been increased?". The population of the US has increased, the # of HS Seniors has increased, the number of applicants has increased but the # of seats at Penn has remained the same - this is what has led to the brutal admissions situation we have now where your chances of getting into Penn, even with sterling qualifications that once would have guaranteed you a seat, resemble the chances of winning Pick Six Lotto. If Penn operated like a business it would have tried to expand enrollment in the long run to accommodate the increased demand and this could have been done in a way that would not have reduced admissions standards or student comfort. It's true that Penn already has a large enrollment for an Ivy but that number should not be carved in stone forever. There are lots of non-Ivies (the big state U's ) whose enrollment dwarfs Penn and they function well - as long as the quantity of facilities is matched to the # of students there's no absolute limit on enrollment.</p>

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<p>Percy, the last time I checked, Penn's aspiration is to have a reputation more comparable to HYPS etc. (e.g., "excellence to eminence") than to larger public--or even private--universities. Increasing the size of the student body--and lowering selectivity--would be inconsistent with that.</p>