Increase of 3.9% from last year:
See the entire article here:
http://www.thedp.com/article/2015/01/penn-receives-record-high-applications-after-deadline-push
I wonder how many applications were finalized after the original deadline of 1/1/15. That figure isn’t in the article although I am sure Penn has it.
^ Because they announced the extension on December 29th (if memory serves), it’s probably difficult to determine exactly how many of those applicants who finalized after January 1st, would NOT have finalized by the original deadline if it had not been extended. I’d still be surprised if the resulting increase, assuming that it could be determined, were significant, given that the extension was announced only two days before the original deadline. How much could they really have done in that time to encourage more applications other than merely notifying potential applicants of the 4-day extension?
@45Percenter It could be more significant than you think since most college applications were due on Jan 1. Many students apply to 10-12 colleges and may have 15-20 essays to write. Near the end my kids priortized
^ Perhaps, but I still bet that this was more a reaction to other peer schools (Dartmouth, Chicago, Vanderbilt, etc.) having extended their deadlines, than simply an attempt by Dean Furda to goose the application numbers. Especially given that Penn had a 14.7% increase in total applications last year (the largest increase in the Ivy League that year), and a significant increase in Early Decision applications this past fall. And, as I’ve stated before, Dean Furda has indicated several times in the past that he’s not very concerned about relatively small changes in application numbers from year to year, especially after a year that saw an exceptionally large increase. The bottom line is that even with this year’s 3.9% increase in applications, the overall acceptance rate will remain at about 10% (give or take a few tenths of a percent), and as Dean Furda implies in the DP article, extending the deadline at the last minute will not be some sort of recurring strategy.
Penn, Dartmouth, and Chicago extended their deadlines to inflate numbers, so it will be difficult to compare to other top schools. A large chunk of applications come in at the deadline.
I’ve been saying that for weeks. UPenn first extends its deadline, then receives extra applications and, after that issues a press release that touts how the application pool has increased. Unabashedly shameful.
What press release? (Spoiler alert: there is none.)
And why is a Columbia grad so obsessed with Penn Admissions to the point of repeatedly coming into the Penn forum to criticize it (while not going into, e.g., the Dartmouth, Chicago, Duke, or Vanderbilt forums to criticize their deadline extensions)? It’s apparent that you have some sort of ax to grind with Penn.
I wonder how many people it takes to go through all those applications.
It looks like about 30:
45 Percenter: No ax to grind with Penn. Just have an ax to grind with an increasingly polluted process. And why are you so impulsively inclined to defend that process? Are you employed by Upenn admissions or something?
Again, I think you are all missing the boat. Even Princeton played around with app dates this year. The fact that so many schools doing it means that there is a near - universal problem, not that Penn is unpopular.
However, all of your posts about this on CC have been in the Penn forum, criticizing Penn Admissions based solely on this one 4-day deadline extension. And you have no posts in any other forum criticizing the other schools that also extended their deadlines. Why not spread the love? 
Nope, not employed by Penn Admissions, or any other part of Penn. Just calling it like I see it based on decades of observing Penn Admissions in particular, and selective college admissions in general.
Like the article says, it’s a win-win situation; it sucks that college apps are due so close to the Holidays.
I really don’t understand how giving high school students a few extra days to complete their applications create “… an increasingly polluted process?”
Any other school that wanted to extend their deadline had the same opportunity to do so. I don’t understand the problem.
Unless the schools all use the same dates, it artificially inflates application numbers and deflates admit rates. Penn, Dartmouth, Chicago, and Vanderbilt did it blatantly this year. Another trick to to count incomplete applications as “applicants.” Harvard and Penn are known to do this as well.
No, they aren’t.
I just saw it as an opportunity for students to complete their applications. Often the top candidates submit more applications because the admission rates are so low at most of the best schools. I don’t see anything wrong with giving them a few more days to finish up.
If the admissions offices just wanted to count incomplete applications as applications, as you suggest, they could do that without extending the deadline at all.