<p>This Spring, Barnard accepted 1,207 prospective students from a pool of 4,273 applicants, maintaining 2007s admit rate of 28 percent. According to a Barnard press release, the steady rate of 28 percent retains the Colleges place as the most sought-after womens school in the country. </p>
<p>Over the last five years, the release notes, Barnard has steadily admitted slightly over 25 percent of its applicants. In 2008, Barnard admitted 187 students via early decision, and the release anticipates that there will be about 560 students in the class of 2012. The new admits hail from 46 states and 36 countries. </p>
<p>From everything I have read and observed from CC and other informational sites, the numbers this year may look horribly skewed due to the number of applications out there. Because of the use of Common App. and the greater prevalence of on-line applications we are seeing students apply to 15, 16 even 25 schools. Sometimes the only differences is when colleges ask for a supplement to the Common App. and even these "essays" may be just cut and paste from others. The schools attempt to ask questions that may be different, but change a paragraph here and there and presto, you have a customized essay based on your template. There is also the ease of taking the SATs multiple times and schools superscoring. The only controlling factor is the cost to apply or take the test. No one even has to write a check, just put it on your credit card. Use of the Common App also makes international applications more prevalent and extends way beyond the regional reputation and reach of the school. I am certain that it would be very different numbers if each school had their own custom application and the students needed to handwrite or individually type each one. There is also the case with some schools eliminating EA meaning that many students flooded other schools with applications, not that it is their first choice, but that they just want to have an acceptance in hand before the RS application deadline. Why apply to a academic safety when you know you are in a good school (financial safeties are a different matter.) You can also infer that many that are accepted EA began applying to more reach schools with the thought of "why not, I have already been accepted to reach school A, the worst that can happen is that this would be my only choice, the best is that I get accepted into all my reaches". Also, if you are deferred or rejected EA, time to apply to a bunch of other schools and using the Common App helps this out. Applications reached a record number this year and this makes the <10% admission rates see more ominous. But in reality, in the end each student can only choose one school. Just imagine for a minute how the numbers would change if, for example there was only one common application for Ivy schools and it went to a centralized place and the Adcoms in this central committee decided who and which school the applicants would be admitted. Do you think that there would be 200,000 applications (8 x 25,000)? I highly doubt it, probably less than 100,000 (and this would be a conservative estimate thinking that most applicants now apply to at least two ivies.) Now redo the numbers; 9.5% now becomes 19% and the numbers do not seem so ominous and this gives everyone a little more hope. </p>
<p>Please no need to defend your children or chop down my conclusions; this is just a general observation. Now I am just speculating, but what we may see from this is that the waitlist may become very important. Schools have tried to determine which of these applicants will actually send in their deposit as well. Some have knowledge of which schools applicants have applied to and some do not. We have seen from these boards students with flawless stats be rejected and many accepted that have made some envious/upset as to why this person got in instead of them. </p>
<p>Now don't get me wrong, I believe that the benefits offered to the internet generation are remarkable (I wish I had it in my days), but the ease and reach has definitely blown the numbers out of proportion.</p>
<p>Good luck to all the students out there. I only hope for the very best experience that college life can offer regardless of where you are attending.</p>
<p>I think it doesn't help that the very most seletive schools - HYP - reply to applicants last (tomorrow). If applicants could get their answers to the most selective schools first (and the selective schools with the best scholarships) then I think many applicants -- like my D -- would pull out sooner in the process and commit. I think ending EA at schools like H and P has just added to the mess. Also, schools with prestigious scholarships (Duke, Rice, Wash U, Emory) take a very long time to make their merit decisions. This keeps strong applicants active at these schools, thus potentially pushing others onto waitlists who would attend regardless of merit money.</p>
<p>When D. applied 7-9 schools seemed to be average; I was talking to another parent recently who has a sophomore, and she said their private prep school created a list of 40 schools for each student to start with and the expectation was that the student and his or her family would narrow it down to 15 or so. I remember how much work it was to apply to seven schools if you did a decent job on the essays rather than just cranking one out and reusing it.</p>
<p>mammall: So far this year, your post takes the award for making the most sense out of all the ones I have seen explaining this mess......SOOO true...If the MOST competitive schools released decisions first, the spiraling down would DEFINITELY free up spots for those who view the group like Emory, Vandy, Rice, etc as dream schools......now, it appears that those who are not quite up to Ivy-like standards (and who have no desire to be) will in fact be on those "waitlists"......and so-on, so-on, so-on down the tiers......</p>
<p>OTOH, There are those who would say that it makes the "lower" tiers so much more competitive because they can now tout their higher stats.....</p>
<p>Not sure I can disagree with either philosophy.....</p>
<p>It's going to be very interesting to see what happens when the dust settles on May 1 and what will happen with the waitlists. This is the 5th admission season I've observed on CC, and it's the most waitlisting/rejections I've ever seen reported.</p>
<p>I think if more competitive schools with an early round would turn their early round into a nonbinding early action round (as MIT, Caltech, Chicago, and I think Georgetown do), that would reduce the crush of applications somewhat. That would help students calibrate their "match" and "reach" lists by observing early round nonbinding results. The problem in the status quo is that there are too many colleges with SCEA (Yale and Stanford) or ED (a large number of highly desired colleges).</p>
<p>tokenadult: Stanford's SCEA is nonbinding. If you are selected SCEA you don't have to make your decision until May 1. They do require that you don't apply early decision/action to any other school. They have a list of exceptions, such as, it's okay to apply to state schools with priority deadlines, schools with rolling admissions, etc.</p>
<p>All of my son's applications were sent before Stanford's early admission decision came out on Dec. 14. This date is not early enough to prevent students from making applications to other schools. Winter break usually starts around Dec. 21, and all of the high school-related things that you need to do for regular admission to many schools (requests for transcripts, teacher recommendations, counselor recommendations) must pretty much already be in your hand before mid-December. Our schools deadlines for requests were Dec. 7. The kids don't get back to high school until after the regular decision dates have passed.</p>
<p>An applicant who has been accepted for non-binding early decision could accept the school's offer and withdraw his applications at other schools, lessening the frenzy for others. But I doubt that happens very often because they don't have finalized financial aid packages yet, and they want to compare all of their options.</p>
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They do require that you don't apply early decision/action to any other school.
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<p>Hi, gladmom, yes, that was the aspect of Yale and Stanford's early program I was focusing on. Sorry about the lack of clarity. The implication of SCEA is that a student can't test the waters at, say, MIT and Stanford at the same time, but will have to apply to one college or the other in the regular round. </p>
<p>Your point is well taken that everyone who expects financial aid, especially from a PROFILE college, pretty much has to keep applications pending into April to see what the financial aid offers are. Students who are interested in what the most selective--and highest list price--colleges have to offer simply need to have more than one application in the hopper.</p>
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It's going to be very interesting to see what happens when the dust settles on May 1 and what will happen with the waitlists.
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<p>I agree that it will be interesting to evaluate the impact of the recent changes by the "big guns." However, if history provides any lessons, the number of students emerging from the waitlists is particularly small, except at schools that had "marketing" reasons to accept a smaller number in April and go to the waitlist after announcing their admission numbers in April. </p>
<p>By the way, if there is one policy that should be scrutinized, it ought to be the (ab)use of waiting lists that are extremely large in comparison to a school's current admitted numbers. I believe that every offer of being placed on a waittlist should come with DETAILED statistics about the last five years' success stories. </p>
<p>Of course, this information should be available on the Common Data Set forms, but not every one knows --or wants-- to see the information which clearly shows that the overwhelming number of wait list offers are nothing but a cynical and misleading form of rejection.</p>
<p>Dartmouth announced today that it has extended offers of admission to 2,190 applicants for its Class of 2012, from a pool of 16,536 - the largest of number of applicants in the College's history and 2,361 more than applied for last year's entering class -- an increase of more than 16.6 percent.</p>
<p>The admissions rate was tighter this year at 13.2 percent</p>
<p>93.4 percent were ranked in the top 10 percent of their secondary school's graduating class, including 38.5 percent who were valedictorians and 11.3 percent who were salutatorians. The mean of their SAT scores are: 726 for Verbal, 731 for Math and 726 for Writing.</p>
<p>The numbers of men and women admitted were virtually even -1,090 and 1,100 respectively.</p>
<p>The College admitted 178 international students representing 59 nations this year. </p>
<p>The Class of 2012 includes 324 first-generation college students, comprising 14.8% of the admitted group. </p>
<p>Admittees come from across the nation as well as around the world: 324 from New England; 615 from the Mid-Atlantic; 216 from the Midwest; 368 from the South; and 441 from the West, with the remainder having a non-U.S. address. </p>
<p>Just more than 6 percent of the record 20,118 applicants will receive acceptance letters, compared to rates around 10 percent in previous years, with the target size for the Class of 2012 being 1,240 to 1,250 students, Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said in January.</p>
<p>The University will confirm the admissions statistics later this afternoon.</p>
<p>Off topic, but can't resist: If you follow the Yale link, there's also a story about College Confidential. And the Harvard story is written by someone whose name I'm pretty sure I recognize as a regular CC poster last year.</p>
<p>On topic: some of these acceptance percentages are staggeringly low.</p>
<p>"Columbia College received a total of 19,116 applications, a 5.7 percent increase from last years numbers, and admitted only 1,660. The overall admit rate of 8.7 percent is the lowest ever in the Colleges history.</p>
<p>The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science experienced a similar surge in the number of applications received, admitting 609 students out of a pool of 3,463, for an admit rate of 17.6 percent. The combined admit rate for CC and SEAS was 10 percent."</p>
<p>That Daily Princetonian summary has to be a bit off, since it implies that Princeton was planning to assume a 100% yield on its acceptances. Princeton was in an especially difficult situation. It used to accept half of its class ED, and had a relatively low yield on its RD acceptances (compared to its main rivals, about 50%). It's hard to imagine Princeton accepted many fewer or more than 1,750 applicants, which would mean an acceptance rate a little higher than 8.5%.</p>