For those who were either deferred or rejected, do not be disheartened. Princeton SCEA admission, like its peers, is more about meeting the institutional needs than about your merit. Approximately 1600-1700 students who get admitted in the SCEA round each year are largely made up of those that Princeton needs while the RD round admittees consist of those that Princeton wants to round out the class.
The SCEA admittees, therefore, are largely made up of recruited athletes, QuestBridge and FLI (First-generation, Low-Income), development cases, top quality URM, geographic representatives, outstanding talent in arts, etc. These change over time, too. Legacy was a distinct advantage at one time; now it could be a disadvantage unless the legacy case is of those âhybridâ kind, say, legacy-athlete or legacy-development case. FLI was unheard of less than a decade ago. Now, itâs something that Princeton actively competes for with Harvard and Yale.
If you donât fit the profile of those that Princeton needs but could still want, then youâre deferred to the RD round. If youâre outright rejected, then itâs likely that youâre in the over-represented group for the class. Many students who get rejected from Princeton get into Yale, Harvard, Stanford and others that deem to fit their class. It has nothing to do with your merit or worth.
To say: picking applicants who meet institutional need is how pretty much all selective colleges operate. Not just Ivies and T-20s. Probably every college that admits less than half its applicants.
Rick Clark, of Georgia Tech reinforces this every year.
Hi!
As an interviewer,
My DD applied and originally put on her app that she wanted an interview. However she changed her mind. She emailed the interviewer back within the week to let the interviewer know she had respectfully declined. Is she now out of the running? Does the interview make a huge difference?
Few applicants would decline the opportunity for an interview, but apparently, most of the time the interview does not affect the outcome. So I would not think about it too much and just enjoy the holidays!
I see Princeton and many peer institutions are trying to take students from high schools that have not traditionally been a feeder to them. Coming from that HS in TX can actually help. Your son will love P and I hope he enjoys his 4 years there and become an active alum! Go Tigers!
From the data I see, itâs not â1600-1700â SCEA admits each year. Itâs much lower. If it was 1700 with a yield rate of 69%, then almost 1200 kids for a class of 1500 would be from SCEA. Itâs mid-to-high 700s. Well, unless the data has changed dramatically in the last couple of years.
Early Decision Acceptance for Class of 2022-2024
|2024|791|5,000|15.82%|
|2023|743|5,335|13.93%|
|2022|799|5,402|14.79%|
Good catch. I inadvertently used RD stats. It should have said between 700-800 SCEA accepted. The highest accepted was 799 for the class of 2022 while the lowest was 697 for the class of 2017 in the last decade.
Interesting to note, according to the Daily Princetonian, the university accepted 110 students this year through QuestBridge alone. I donât know how many recruited athletes are accepted SCEA, but considering there are approximately 1,000 recruited athletes at Princeton, Iâd venture to guess that the number of recruited athletes accepted SCEA to be roughly twice or more that of QuestBridge accepted. If these two cohorts comprise roughly half of all SCEA accepted, that leaves very little room for the rest to land a seat in the early round after other âhooksâ are also ushered in.
Excellent questionâŠconfused about how this all works from this point forwardâŠif they have extra items to add (like an award or a new club etcâŠ) do they just include that in the letter of continued interest? Or is there an update they upload? Also, when should that letter be submitted BY? Mine seems to work by deadlines lol âŠ
My impression is that it doesnât really matter, and I definitely agree with you that many students change interests while there and can easily switch back and forth between concentrations/majors.
IIRC the biggest difference on the application side is that BSE apps ask for an additional brief essay/statement. I really donât know how that impacts the evaluation process, if it does.