<p>In and of itself I don't consider this statistically significant. But in light of substantial increases from other schools with binding ED, I think the fact that we not only failed to register a similar increase but instead DECREASED is significant.</p>
<p>The question is: why?</p>
<p>The answer (in my opinion) is the campus security issue, and Maureen Rush's failure to do anything about it. It is also the problem of Philadelphia at large, and John Street is no better than Rush at doing anything about it....</p>
<p>There are only two things Penn (and every other school) cares about: money, and its applications/acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Now that security is affecting the university's priorities, I can only hope they will deal SERIOUSLY with this problem. Fire the politically correct hired-because-of-sexual-orientation Maureen Rush, replace her with a REAL cop, and start aggressively tackling crime.</p>
<p>IMO many, many potential applicants from NY/NJ/CT realized that their ED application would be much more successful elsewhere....Under Stetson's rule, tri-state acceptances plummeted....that being said, I don't think that -1.8% is such a big deal; not really significant.....</p>
<p>i think that the slight decrease in early decision applications can be partly due to Harvard and Princeton's retraction of their ED programs. I think this because since those schools no longer offer ED their RD acceptance rates should go up slightly, and students that would normally have applied to those schools early will still do so in the regular decision round, on top of the students that have realized that the RD %'s will go up. I think that, coupled with the increase in crime are the reasons the number of applicants went down.</p>
<p>1.5% is so small it could just be random variation - no reason at all. You are talking about a difference of something like 70 applications out of 4000. If 1 or 2 people fewer in each state applied, that's 70 people. Basically, I think Penn maxed out on its hotness factor two years ago when ED jumped 50% (now that's statistically significant) and since then has just stayed level because they achieved such high levels of interest 2 yrs ago that it's virtually impossible to do any better. That they are getting enough applications to totally fill the school almost twice just in ED is a real tribute. Most colleges outside of top 20 schools would think they are in heaven if they got that may apps on ED alone.</p>
<p>1.5% is nothing.
Penn is as hot as ever.
That tiny 1.5% is from people who were told-- apply to cornell instead of Penn becuase you know what you want to study and your SATs are borderline and cornell is big on fit. </p>
<p>Philadelphia residence helps your chances. The Philly suburbs - they are trying to diversify away from the Northeast. Probably hurts more than helps though they do take tons of people from the 'burbs.</p>
<p>I think the OP has foreseen that most ppl would reply with sth like this: "1.5% is nothing".The OP actually said this at the very beginning: </p>
<p>"In and of itself I don't consider this statistically significant. But in light of substantial increases from other schools with binding ED, I think the fact that we not only failed to register a similar increase but instead DECREASED is significant."</p>
<p>So it isn't about the 1.5% decrease alone. It's about the 1.5% in the context of the dramatic increase in the number of early applications to other top schools. WHY?</p>
<p>Bagels, your analysis is mean spirited and moronic. I sincerely hope you're not a Penn student. </p>
<p>The ED deadline came long before any of these odd recent developments.</p>
<p>ED apps are down because anxiety-ridden prestige whores would rather try their luck in the first round at an Ivy that they do not need to commit to, so they can apply to others RD. Expect an increase in RD apps come April. </p>
<p>And good riddance. I wouldn't want to have that sort of person as a classmate.</p>
<p>Crazy - then how do you explain the fact that ED #'s are up at other schools equally beloved by prestige whores - e.g Duke, Brown, etc (both up over 6%)?</p>
<p>I can't see why country_crazy went crazy over Bagels :D </p>
<p>Guys, there's definitely some underlying problem behind that 1.5% fall in ED apps. And yeah... there're even more seniors this year and there were last year. So why did the number go down? Any other hypotheses?</p>