<p>Finally, some facts from the SPS website.</p>
<p>Form of 2009 Completes Competitive College Process
5/13/2009</p>
<p>Members of the Form of 2009 submitted 1,144 applications to 193 colleges and universities and, as a whole, the Form received acceptance letters from 42% of the schools to which they applied. The Form received 80 acceptance letters from the top ten schools in the College Office’s four-year matriculation report, which includes admit statistics from seven Ivies plus Stanford, Tufts, and Georgetown. </p>
<p>Those numbers are consistent with numbers achieved by members of the previous three graduating forms. </p>
<p>“We continue to focus on fit,” says Toby Brewster, director of college advising, adding, “In terms of competitiveness, this year’s class did very well given increasing numbers of applications at the most selective schools.”</p>
<p>Reports indicate that U.S. colleges and universities are reaching a peak of 3.3 million high school graduates – the largest number in American history. Those numbers do not include international applicants, who can now apply to more American schools with greater ease thanks to electronic submission of application materials and a wealth of information on college choices available on the Internet.</p>
<p>The most popular colleges for the Form of 2009 in terms of interest include Boston College, the University of Virginia, Tufts, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, Columbia, Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, and Brown – schools that each received at least 20 applications from SPS Sixth Formers. </p>
<p>Columbia is the most popular destination for Form members with seven Sixth Formers choosing to attend, followed by Georgetown and Yale with six each. At least four SPS graduates each will attend Tufts, Middlebury, Brown, Harvard, UVA, Carnegie Mellon, and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Despite the College Office’s best efforts to keep application numbers down, members of the Form of 2009 applied to an average of 8 schools – up from 6.5 a year ago. That trend is consistent with nationwide application numbers, which continue to rise. Yale University has seen its application numbers more than double since 2004. </p>
<p>“We had over 26,000 applications for a target class of 1,310. As more and more students submit applications online and as more schools affiliate with the Common Application, it becomes easier to fire off applications to your target schools,” says Peter Chemery, associate director of undergraduate admissions at Yale, reporting a 7.5% admit rate at the University. “What is unusual is that we are over our target class size and, for the first time in several years, it doesn’t look as though we’ll use our wait list.”</p>
<p>Selectivity has increased as application numbers have gone up. Data compiled by the SPS College Office shows admission rates at some of the most selective schools at less than 20% for the current admissions cycle. Those schools include Harvard (7%), Columbia (9.8%), Princeton (9.8%), Brown (10.8%), Dartmouth (12%), Penn (17.1%), and Cornell (19.1%).</p>
<p>“Application numbers have been going up every year since I’ve been doing this,” says Yale’s Chemery, “but in the last 15 years, the increases have been huge. It is true that we are probably at the peak demographically for students at this age group. [Still], we are expecting another increase next year because that’s all we’ve ever seen, but who knows?”</p>
<p>Brewster and the SPS college advising team continues to stress the importance of individual fit in the choices available to St. Paul’s Sixth Formers.</p>
<p>“If we measure our success by the number of students who are admitted to the most selective schools, then we continue to do very well,” he says. “Our goal, however, continues to be on finding the right school, and not necessarily the most selective school, for each student – a goal that’s more difficult to measure.”</p>