<p>Princeton</a> University - Princeton receives near-record applications</p>
<p>Apps were down 1.93% from last year.</p>
<p>Perhaps, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the number of apps was near-record breaking. The only year that saw a higher number of applicants was last year. A 1.9% decrease is negligible.</p>
<p>Yeah, but the title of the Princeton U. article is highly misleading. Obviously applications are at the very least supposed to hold steady. Columbia’s application decline is a little more understandable since their application explosion over the last two years was too much to sustain as they had just switched over to the Common Application. Brown fared the worst among the Ivies this year IMHO.</p>
<p>Harvard and Princeton were in the same situation - apps set an all-time record last year, and declined 1.9% this year after the reintroduction of an early admissions program.</p>
<p>Yet the Harvard headline said “apps decline for first time in 5 years” and the Princeton headline says “Princeton receives near record applications”!</p>
<p>Different ways to spin perhaps, so as to soften the impact, but the Princeton headline strikes me as a little bit more of an effort to mask the bottom line.</p>
<p>Mhm I see your point. Princeton just decided to use a cup half-full approach. I also agree that the headline is somewhat misleading, although still truthful.</p>
<p>It looks like Harvard’s and Princeton’s applications each declined by about the number of EA acceptances the other handed out. I’m sure there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence like that, but it does highlight the fact that early admission programs, even nonbinding ones, do tend to reduce the overall number of applications.</p>
<p>… and the more people accepted early, the bigger the impact on the “regular” pool. The impact would be still larger if the interval between the announcement of the early admit number and the deadline for filing “regular” applications were longer.</p>
<p>The schools are quite aware of this factor, which is why they are at pains to stop short of the “Maginot Line” - avoiding the appearance that half the seats are gone before the “regulars” send in their apps.</p>
<p>Further, most schools decline to report how many “early pool deferreds” are taken later. When this group of “highly likely to enroll if admitted” people is added to the early admits, there are several elites where more than half the class IS filled from the early pool.</p>
<p>There are LOTS of colleges where more than half the class applied ED. Princeton used to accept half its class ED (and then a few more who had been deferred). Penn still does. Columbia, too. Dartmouth hangs back a little at around 45% in the ED round.</p>
<p>Besides the RD pool, there is really more of an impact on how the waiting list could be used, objectively and flexibly.</p>
<p>A few years ago, when I chanced to have access to the numbers, I was amazed to find that Harvard, Yale and Princeton ALL filled a virtually identical 53% of the class with early pool applicants.</p>
<p>And via what is disclosed in this year’s common data sets, Harvard discloses less about how they weigh academic and non-academic factors, for freshman applicants as well as not showing any data related to wait-lists. Yale and Princeton (and all other Ivies) provide more detail than Harvard. I guess it ultimately provides more flexibility and may ensure as holistic an admissions process as is possible.</p>