<p>Our College Counselor received a letter from Grinnell yesterday with some interesting data on this years pool.
They received just over 3800 apps (down from 3888 last year). There was a large increase in ED apps (50% I think) so more got accepted ED. They're aiming for 385 incoming, down slightly because the yield has been up the past few years with resulting larger incoming classes. Overall the acceptance rate was 27%, down from 36% last year.</p>
<p>So congrats to those in the 27%. For those that aren't, you're in great company - best wishes wherever you go.</p>
<p>Here is the exact quote from the NY Times article: </p>
<p>“So as public institutions say they will accept fewer students, many private schools say they will accept more. The 13 members of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, which includes Carleton, Macalester, Grinnell and Colorado Colleges, plan to accept 10 percent or 11 percent more applicants, said the group’s president, Christopher Welna, to make up for about a 10 percent decline in applications.”</p>
<p>I don’t read that as saying that Grinnell said it would accept 10% more applicants–rather that the 13 colleges overall would accept 10% more. Given Grinnell’s high yield last year, that might have been a really bad idea for Grinnell, if the higher yield holds up this year.</p>
<p>Everything I’ve read says that LACs are expecting yield rates to go down across the board this year due to the economy. Don’t know why Grinnell would be any different.</p>
<p>A few reasons I can think of: Grinnell meets 100% of demonstrated need, it costs less than many comparable schools to begin with and it offers merit aid, which most comparable LACs do not. But who knows what will happen in this economy?</p>
<p>This year might be different. Grinnell’s endowment was hammered by the stock market downturn, which can only mean less $$ to spread around in FA. If Grinnell (like other LACs) accepted a higher-than-normal number of applicants ED, it most likely did so in order to fill the class with a higher percentage of students that don’t need FA. A greater-than-usual number of students admitted off the wait-list would mean the same thing, since most schools do not accept wait listed students on a need blind basis. All told, it’s not a good admissions year if you are looking for significant FA.</p>
<p>They actually allocated more money than usual this year for Financial Aid Redandtheblack.</p>
<p>Looking at that rediculous acceptance rate, if it is overall for both RD and ED, then that RD acceptance rate may have been under 20%!!! Assuming that with 50% more ED apps which meant a large increase in people accepted ED (not necessarily bigger acceptance rate, just more people) left very few spots for RD applicants.</p>
<p>Wow, Grinnell lost apps and still found a way to make a much smaller acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Any college can lower its overall admissions rate by accepting more students ED. Since Grinnell received 3,800 apps, and has about 380 spaces, it could lower its admissions rate to 10% by accepting 100% of its class ED. At the same time, accepting a higher percent ED lessens the amount of FA the college has to dole out, since ED applicants, as a group, are less needy than RD applicants. This is true regardless of whether a college claims to be “need blind” or meets 100% of demonstrated need. For this reason, many LACs, apparently including Grinnell, are accepting a higher percent of this years class through ED. The fact that Grinnell received 50% more ED apps this year does not mean that it had to accept a higher percentage of its incoming class through ED. In fact, I have attended info sessions at LACs (Amhest, Bowdoin, Whitman) where they informed that the school has a policy of limiting the number of ED acceptances to 25 to 35 % of the incoming class in order to be fair to the RD pool and to ensure a greater amount of economic diversity in the incoming class. Can’t remember if Grinnell espoused this policy or not, but if they did, they apparently threw it out the window this year, and not, I would argue, simply because they happened to receive more ED apps than usual.</p>
<p>redandtheblack: you have a lot of words like “if”, “might” and “apparently” in your posts. If someone has the facts on Grinnell admissions, they could post them. Let’s not speculate and pretend we’re discussing facts.</p>
<p>I just looked at Grinnell’s CDS for 2008-09, and it reports about 3,200 apps for last year, not the 3,888 stated in this year’s admissions letter. It also says they enrolled about 460 for last year, out of which 137 were accepted ED. Oh well. One thing’s clear, it’s getting harder to get into Grinnell!!</p>
<p>lefthanddog: I agree. Bingle started this thread by saying Grinnell sent a letter to his GC saying that it accepted more people ED this year than normal. I haven’t seen this letter, or any other real data, and for that reason I felt the need to qualify my statement that Grinnell accepted many more kids this year through ED with “if” and “apparently.” The rest of my argument was working from that assumption. It certainly was not my intention to “speculate and pretend we are discussing facts.” If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have qualified my statements with “if” and “apparently”! Frankly, I hope that it turns out that the number accepted ED was more or less normal. I love Grinnell, and plan to apply there next year. I’m sure that in due time Grinnell will post the real numbers on its website or in the CDS.</p>
<p>I remain very curious about the difference between the 3888 figure he uses (as the number of applications received for 2008) versus the 3217 shown on the Common Data Set.</p>
<p>I think the 3217 is for last years applications. I’ve looked at the CDS your talking about and it also includes the total number of freshman enrolled at 464, which was last year’s class size. Since final decisions aren’t made until May and its still April the data should be for last years class.</p>
<p>In Seth Allen’s blog, he says “Grinnell received just over 3800 applications for one of 385 spaces in this fall’s entering first-year class, our second largest applicant group ever behind last year’s pool of 3888 candidates.”</p>
<p>So he says last year’s pool (for fall of 2008) was 3888. </p>
<p>The Common Data Set for 2008-2009 on Grinnell’s website says:
“Provide the number of degree-seeking, first-time, first-year students who applied, were admitted, and enrolled (full- or part-time) in fall 2008.”
The number listed in the Common Data Set is 3217. </p>
<p>So the mystery remains unresolved, so far as I can see.</p>
<p>It was the CDS for 08-09: “Provide the number of degree-seeking, first-time, first-year students who applied, were admitted, and enrolled (full- or part-time) in fall 2008.”
The number listed in the Common Data Set (for the number applied) is 3217 (1503 men + 1714 women). </p>