<p>How did stanford do?</p>
<p>Their EA apps were up over 5% to 4,300, but no report on RD apps yet. If the past two years are any guide, we should hear about March 1.</p>
<p>Stanford had 19,169 apps last year, of which 2,424 were admitted.</p>
<p>You forgot to post this link in the Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth and Penn threads. Don't forget!</p>
<p>You are incorrect. It has been posted in the Dartmouth thread, along with today's shorter roundup story from the Daily Dartmouth, and in the Cornell thread as well. There are no Penn numbers yet, so that it is premature there.</p>
<p>Is the article accurate when stating that Harvard doesn't count personal wealth in its financial aid package, allowing families who don't work because they are rich to cash in on the under-$40,000 exemption? That would seem to be a very stupid policy that unfairly favors the rich.</p>
<p>You can read about the initiative HERE:</p>
<p>I noted the dark hint that Harvard was funnelling most of the increased aid designated for families with low incomes to millionaires with paper losses or some such; but one assumes that application forms would pick up such cases if they exist.</p>
<p>The Yale Herald seems to share the Daily News view that financial aid needs to be improved if app numbers and "diversity" are not to suffer vis a vis its "rivals".</p>
<p>See: "Harvard sucks... applicant pool"
<a href="http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=4016%5B/url%5D">http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=4016</a></p>
<p>So all you need to qualify is an income less that $40,000? Sounds like there is a strange loophole there for the rich. Maybe they do take into account total wealth, though I can't find it.</p>
<p>And I definitely agree that Yale needs to institute more competetive financial aid policies. Soon, with all of this competition heating up, kids will be going to college for free!</p>
<p>I do think that economic diversity would be increased at Yale if it broadened its Financial Aid program. I think it's a bit silly to say that Yale needs Financial Aid to improve its application numbers, though. Yale had the lowest acceptance rate of the Ivies last year, and anything in the single digits is probably too low to be healthy.</p>
<p>Yale's Law School is also the only law school with a single-digit acceptance rate, and the application process is just too excruciating (as you well know, Byerly, I suppose...)</p>
<p>At the current application numbers, people like you who attended Harvard in the past could no longer gain admittance to HYP. Don't you think today's acceptance rates are a bit unfair?</p>
<p>The Ivies and other elites have dropped the white gloves and are fighting for the most academically talented students the way the factory schools fight over football recruits and MLB fights over free agents.</p>
<p>Call it a bidding war or whatever, it seems to be escallating and it remains to be seen whether the schools will look for ways to limit the competition in their own interest. ED and "restricted EA" are, of course, the main ways to limit competition for the top "draft choices" at the moment, with such other devices as the "likely letter" being used to - hopefully - gain an edge on "the opposition". </p>
<p>The lower the RD admit rates go, the greater power the schools have to - in effect - compel top students to surrender their negotiating power by "signing" early in order to benefit from a preferential admit rate.</p>
<p>The Ivies are - at the moment - hindered by their policy against granting so-called "merit" aid. But they do have the resources to award substantial "need based" aid. Not to be cynical, but this helps to explain the heightened interest in an "economically diverse" applicant pool. Only among the less affluent (but stiil highly qualified) applicants can the Ivies fight dollar for dollar against the flagships and others awarding big "merit" packages.</p>
<p>It's strange to consider that Yale might be losing out on any of the most academically talented kids when the Early Action board is full of kids with greater than 1500 SAT scores and perfect GPAs who are being turned away or deferred. I suppose there is just a growing population and more top talent in high schools these days while the top Ivies have failed to grow their student bodies to keep up with the demand. The number of spaces at HYP relative to the total number of college students is the lowest it has ever been, by far.</p>
<p>Harvard and Princeton are going to increase their undergraduate classes. Princeton next year and Harvard (by alot supposedly) when it builds up to four new houses across the river in Allston. Byerly might be able to expound/correct on the projected harvard college class increase. all the while, yale is losing out and actually decreasing its class size.</p>
<p>If Yale's goal is to have the lowest acceptance rate again, it looks like the changes (increases at H and P and recent decreases at Y) will feed into that plan. I suppose it could be worse - Yale Law School's admit rate is only 7%.</p>
<p>We could soon have a situation after the enrollment size changes that would resemble the current rates at the law schools... around 7% at Yale College and YLS, compared to about 10-11% at Harvard and HLS, and 11-12% at Stanford and SLS (as well as Princeton on the undergrad level only).</p>