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We believe that Princeton's generous financial aid policy, which replaces loans with grants, is the best in the country
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<p>I can vouch for his trustworthiness: This girl in our hood got an eye-popping, fantastic scholarship from Princeton. And the girl's familiy's is not even a middle class !!! :p</p>
<p>These schools report those types of "ethnic" fractions differently. You can't make an accurate comparison between the numbers, especially when the differences are all statistically insigificant.</p>
<p>oh, so we should instead just blindly believe the blanket statements of a poster proven wrong more often than right?</p>
<p>Everyone knows posterx says nothing but **** when it comes to anything other than Yale ... </p>
<p>Maybe he might try to delude us into thinking Yale has a castle in the clouds :rolleyes:</p>
<p>EDIT: isn't it funny how any stat by posterx that favours Yale is "accurate" and "accepted" and every other stat that doesn't support yale is "flawed" and "statistically insignificant" ???</p>
<p>posterX: If you want to make a statement, you must show (valid) proof.</p>
<p>crimsonbulldog: Interesting article (although Princeton was mentioned briefly).</p>
<p>I'm visiting this page after a few days. My last post now seems rather ignorant, but then I've never been into research. Lately I've forced myself to go real nerdy though, the result being that I've decided on Princeton. The online chat helped a lot, plus digging out a countless number of alumni and current students and bombarding them with phonecalls. It's psychological, I've come to know; you have to get yourself all excited about going to a college, that makes dealing with the agony of not going to the other more bearable. Yale is really desirable as well, but come on, we're talking Princeton here! :) </p>
<p>First, I convinced myself that in terms of social interaction and opportunities to have fun, neither place could be half bad. After all it depends on the gregariousness of the individual in question. I know myself, hopefully making friends will be the least problem I'll be faced with at college. The academic environment is to me a bigger consideration. Had I been positive I wanted to do Political Science, I would've settled on Yale ages ago. But that is far from the case. I'm fairly sure I want to be a Physicist, and that makes it a little harder for me to dump Princeton. For Yale!!! Absolutely no way. Princeton is more well-rounded academically, whereas at Yale I came across more people who shifted from Physics to Political Science in their sophomore year than the other way round. I cannot back this by figures, for this is a result of a privately-conducted survey, but it serves my personal needs. At Yale, I'll probably be facing a risk by taking up Engineering. At Princeton, I can confidently start off wanting to be a Physicist, and be assured that should I change my mind, there's Woodrow Wilson, Comp Lit, and Sociology. It's a safer investment. </p>
<p>And I love the setting. Beautiful. I like the idea of a quiet town rubbing shoulders with NYC. You get the best of both worlds. And... well, Princeton has been more generous in its Aid award.</p>
<p>So Princeton all the way!!! I'd like to get in touch with anybody I'll be seeing there this September.</p>
<p>A question, though. I suspect it's a dumb one, since it hasn't been asked before. Yale had an acceptance rate of 8.6% this year, while Princeton--what?--10.2%. Marginal difference, but being the smaller of the two, shouldn't Princeton be far more selective?</p>
<p>Yale gets many more applicants per spot than Princeton (and many more than Harvard as well), across almost all levels, reflecting its status as a much stronger university in the sciences, humanities and liberal arts. This is why it has a lower acceptance rate. Yale receives over $400 million per year in Federal scientific research funding. Princeton receives less than $130 million.</p>
<p>congratulations on your choice, huda. you won't regret it. as for your acceptance rate question: princeton had a lower acceptance rate than yale throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, until yale dropped binding ED for still-restrictive SCEA a couple years ago and saw applications rise by several thousands. it seems inevitable that princeton will eventually follow suit, although i thought they would have by now. when they do, whenever that may be, princeton will experience a similar increase in apps and at least "catch" if not surpass yale on this measure (which, in any event, is fairly meaningless). also working against princeton's acceptance rate is the 11% enrollment increase that is currently being worked in. if this year's class size were the same as class sizes just a few years back, this year's acceptance rate would be in the single digits.</p>
<p>Ahem... Are the scientific research funding figures quoted by PosterX true? Anybody? Quite ironic...</p>
<p>One of many sources: <a href="http://facts.wustl.edu/comparison.htm%5B/url%5D">http://facts.wustl.edu/comparison.htm</a></p>
<p>F.scottie, that is not true. EA/SCEA etc have little to do with the number of applications per spot in the class.</p>
<p>WOW! JHU is a monster in terms of funding. </p>
<p>Do you have a link showing that SCEA and ED years had the same number of apps per seat at yale? I doubt this, but sometimes you can pull a rabbit out of a hat. </p>
<p>f.scottie - why hasn't princeton gone to SCEA? They've openly declared that are going for the best - so why keep that ED relic policy?</p>
<p>JHU is an exception, because it has an associated federal laboratory located 45 miles away. It has nothing to do with the campus, but is technically under the JHU umbrella. JHU's central campus figure is less than $100 mil.</p>
<p>i don't know why fight me over every fact, X. in yale's last year with a binding ED program, it received 2,611 early applications; in its first year with a restrictive SCEA program, it received 3,928, an increase of more than 50%. that same year, princeton had a 23% drop in early apps, with many would-be early applicants taking the non-binding option at yale or stanford (stanford had switched from ED to SCEA at the same time as yale, and it experienced a similarly large surge in early applications). surely you can appreciate that not everyone is comfortable with the binding nature of ED, and as a result SCEA draws more applicants.</p>
<p>as for your question, crimson, i guess the princeton admissions office (despite its change in personnel and certain processes) continues to think that ED serves it well, as an institution. i strongly disagree and have argued for SCEA (or even open EA, however unrealistic) on this very forum. the office has, however, recently retained some sort of education consulting firm to evaluate its admission program, and it could conceivably make the switch next year if it likes what it hears about the likely outcome.</p>
<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=127990%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=127990</a> (#14-15)</p>
<p>People apply early to give themselves an advantage. I would have applied early to Princeton in a heartbeat if it were not binding, but since it was, I went with Yale. That didn't mean I'd chosen Yale over Princeton. It meant I was trying to give myself an advantage at a fantastic school without removing my ability to make a choice later in the year.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree with F.Scott. Princeton should switch to SCEA so they can get a variety of applicants to choose from. I dont know why they re not doing that. They got formidable academic strengths and wild financial resources to do that easily. For example, the girl I know got money showered so she chose Princeton in RD, even though she got into other fantastic schools. ;)</p>
<p>Frankly, I consider SCEA to even be somewhat "cowardly" although less so than ED. SCEA schools still win 90% of their early applicants, compared to 99% with ED.</p>
<p>College admission, in my opinion, should be a complete free market. Non-binding EA for everyone!</p>
<p>even better than open EA would be a single deadline for <em>all</em> applicants, whether in november, december, or some other month altogether. the problem is, some exception would have to be made for early notification of athletic recruits, which i think is one reason why early programs developed in the first place.</p>
<p>Just as fscottie says, there is a direct connection between total applications and the move from early decision to either early action or single choice early action. When Brown and Yale switched to SCEA their applications soared. Here is another article where this is discussed.</p>
<p>From the Yale Daily News regarding the 55% increase in SCEA applications:</p>
<p>With 4,046 early applications, that means there are roughly 15,500 regular applications, about a 2.5 percent increase in regular applications from last year. Early applications, on the other hand, rose 55 percent this year, accounting for much of the rise in total applications. Admissions officials and high school college counselors have attributed drastic increases in early applications to decisions by some universities -- including Yale -- to change from binding Early Decision programs to nonbinding single-choice Early Action programs.</p>
<p>The rise in applications at Brown was even greater than that at Yale. Harvard experienced a similar significant increase (in the 20% range) when they (for one year, I believe) allowed students applying early decision to other schools to apply early action to Harvard. </p>
<p>You might be interested to know that Yale moved from early action to early decision following Princetons lead many years ago. It was only more recently that Levin decided to switch back to early action with its predictable significant increase in applications. At the time Princeton made the change it was for the express purpose of cutting down on the number of common applications across all selective schools so as to make students think more deeply about their reasons for applying to any one school. Yale was convinced of the arguments and followed Princetons lead. The effect at that time was just as anticipated. Instead of applying early to multiple schools, students applied to just one or at least fewer and the total number of applications declined slightly. Since that time, the thinking at Yale has clearly changed, with a desire for more applications and the decision to switch back to early action.</p>
<p>Your historical account is laughable. Things didn't happen that way at all, and your explanation of Princeton's alleged motives, among other things, is absolute, total rubbish. Yale didn't "follow Princeton's lead" and the motives for moving to binding early decision were far from high-minded.</p>
<p>Byerly--while you might have your doubts about the reasons for the switch to ED, Fred Hargadon, Princeton's ex Director of Admissions (and yes, we all know about the scandal on his watch, so please don't bother to make a snide comment about it), said that he felt that ED was better for Princeton for because since the admissions staff had to drop everything on Nov. 1 to read applications, there should be some sort of quid pro quo on the part of the students requiring them to attend the school. In addition, as PtonGrad200 stated, Hargadon felt that ED would cut down on the number of common aps and would thus be a better for the overall admissions process at selective schools.</p>
<p>Although I too prefer the SCEA choice and I would hope that Princeton would move to it in the near future, I have no reason to doubt Hargadon's account. Certainly I don't know how you can term it "total rubbish" since you were not in the room or in his mind when the decision was being made.</p>