This is a 10% increase compared to last year.
Applications increased in all geographic regions. International applications increased by 5 percent, making up 16.5 percent of the pool. On the domestic front, applications from the Mid-Atlantic had the largest increase of 18 percent. Both the West coast and the Midwest also saw applications increase by a significant number of 17 percent.
http://www.thedp.com/article/2017/11/penn-ed-applicant-pool-record-high
Oh geez. I’m one of those in that 6731… What does this mean in terms of admissions?
It means the ED acceptance rate goes down.
Yale also saw a big increase in EA apps. +13%
What do you expect? Schools have made a clear indication that they want to use this enrollment management tactic, and applicants are responding. Honestly, why would you NOT apply early somewhere nowadays? (Well, I’ll leave out disadvantaged groups that can’t do this as easily, but, the logic holds - in today’s climate, if you are in a position to apply early, you must.)
I wonder how this will change the RD round?
I image Penn will still admit around 1360 people from the ED pool to fill 50+% of the class as they did in previous years, so the increase in ED applicant pool won’t affect RD applicants directly. But RD applicant pool will see a comparable increase, so they would have to worry about that. The overall acceptance rate is very likely going to be all time low.
@ayakobi26 I would guess that the overall acceptance rate will be just over 8%.
I think that Penn will actually accept more people in their early round, therefore leaving less spots for RD. Penn blatantly mentions that they love their ED applicants.
Last year Penn accepted 22% of their ED applicants. (For the last few years, it’s been decreasing by a percentage point each ED round.) This year they will probably accept about the same as last year, making the ED rate 20%. They most probably won’t significantly increase the ED acceptance number because they filled over half their class last year with ED and were criticized for doing so. For regular decision, it is going to depend how many applications are submitted; no way right now to accurately predict what the acceptance rate will be. Last year Penn’s RD acceptance was 7%, for an overall total acceptance rate of 9%. (ED plus RD.)
11 percent are first-generation college students, 40 percent self-identify as students of color, and 16 percent are legacies,
Lots of applicants with hooks, They did not mention other hooks, low income, Questbridge etc., recruits etc
For people with no hooks, or anti-hooks (Asian), not much advantage with ED.
High stats kids with a high EFC.
Noticed that 47% were female, which bucks the recent trend of having more female applicants than male ones. Perhaps this may provide a bit of an advantage (or lessen any disadvantages) for female applicants this year, since they’re relatively more scare in this round? Thoughts?
@FireLordAzula “Perhaps this may provide a bit of an advantage (or lessen any disadvantages) for female applicants this year, since they’re relatively more scare in this round?”
Possibly, but it is a slight advantage. It may also depend on how the female applicants are distributed. I would imagine that Penn wants to be sure that they have a solid percentage of women in SEAS and Wharton.
However, the applicant pool is so strong that I doubt that you could identify any advantage. Typically in SEAS, the admitted boys will have more engineering-related experience and the girls will have stronger overall academics. The ideal candidate would have both. However, they usually can’t find enough boys with spectacular academics or enough girls with years and years of coding and electronics experience.
“Penn Admissions (and my colleagues at other institutions) faces a difficult task: negotiating an increasingly large and well-qualified pool of students with a fixed number of Early Decision places in the class of 2022. This is, in some ways, a self-imposed restriction, as the general opinion is that there is too much pressure on students to apply early, and Penn already admits a higher percentage of the enrolled class under Early Decision (over the last few years, between 50%-54% of the target class) than many peer institutions”
http://www.page217.org/what-if-i-dont-get-in-early-decision-or-action/