<p>Now that it is May 1st, it is time for some waitlist speculation. </p>
<p>I heard that, last year, Princeton began making the waitlist calls around the end of the second week of May. Since there were about a thousand people waitlisted last year and only a couple hundred people waitlisted this year, is is it possible that waitlist calls be made around the end of the first week of May?</p>
<p>Does anyone know when waitlist calls were made in previous years (besides last year)?</p>
<p>the timing should be similar to previous years... i don't think the number of students on the waitlist will make much of a difference... i would imagine that it takes at least 2 weeks to get things going. just my opinion, fwiw...</p>
<p>didn't they say "several hundred" people were waitlisted? </p>
<p>i think the reason it takes the 2 weeks before they start calling is cuz they need to count their reply cards, and then argue about who to take...</p>
<p>btw, does anyone know the # of accepted waitlist applicatns and the year? because on the letter it said something like "in the last 5 yeras, we have accepted 99, 76, 26, 6 and 0 (or some other #s) off the waitlist". did they do it from max to min, or from most recent to oldest, or...?</p>
<p>The waitlist numbers they released were max to min. The reason they had so many waitlisted last year was due to changes in the admissions process at Stanford and Harvard when they switched to SCEA from ED as far as I remember. There are a lot fewer waitlisted this year, but I would speculate that the numbers will pan out to be around 30-40 accepted from the list as recent years admits have tended to fall in ~10% range of the waitlisted pool. </p>
<p>From e-mails with the Admissions Office, I've heard that they won't go into committee until 2nd week of May to decide on the waitlist admits, so we might not know until the end of May or early June via a letter about our status. If they decide to call us though, the lucky ones might find out earlier...</p>
<p>are y'all sending them anything?...cuz the letter really made it sound like they don't want additional info from us...</p>
<p>I sent a letter of interest with some teeny updates-the Rep I talked to said that sending letters of interest was "advisable"</p>
<p>i sent a little too...i mean, theres nothing to lose i suppose. are they gonna penalize us for doing extra work?</p>
<p>Last year, they notified people on May 13, which means...</p>
<p>8 days left, maybe fewer since there are fewer waitlistees this year</p>
<p>According to this article Princeton placed 1000 on its wait list this year?
<a href="http://college.wsj.com/aidadmissions/newstrends/20050502-chaker.html%5B/url%5D">http://college.wsj.com/aidadmissions/newstrends/20050502-chaker.html</a></p>
<p>Ok, I just "crunched" the numbers, and the results are fairly pathetic.
(Note, this assumes a 100% yield rate from the waitlist. Not true, but can show about how many students will be offered a spot).</p>
<p>Last year's yield rate before the waitlist was 66% of 1631 students (1076 students) plus 99 waitlisted students (I think) to get the class size of 1175.</p>
<p>For this year, assuming a 66% yield rate again, that would yield 1192 students, leaving <strong>28</strong> students to get off of the waitlist.</p>
<p>This assumes a similar rate, so the only real way that more (say 100) students could get off the waitlist would be if the yield rate dropped. Each % Yield less allows for 18 or so more students off of the waitlist. So if I drops to 61% (very unlikely), then they would accept 118 students.</p>
<p>What this means is that if Princeton has 1,000 students on the waitlist (usually about 70% or more decide to stay on), then they will be accepting a much smaller portion off of the list than in previous years, UNLESS their yield rate drops significantly.</p>
<p>Any thoughts? This is fairly depressing, meaning that the few waitlist slots remaining probably go to waitlist students with special cards yet to play (i.e. connections, donations, really big award winners).</p>
<p>actually, it may be even harder than you think. Usually, they use the waitlist applicant pool to plug holes.</p>
<p>All that number crunching got me interested in looking at what was really going on with the admissions statistics. The findings are interesting, although not particularly insightful. The first assumption to throw out is the total projected yield of 66-68% of all admitted students as the numbers are skewed by disproportional yields and admissions between ED and RD applicants. If we break down the statistics and analyze just the RD pool, then we can get a clearer picture of the actual probabilities for wait list admits.</p>
<p>Using the data from last year's admissions class we have the following:</p>
<p>1176 Freshmen Enrolled
581 Admitted Early Decision
494 of 1,152 Admitted Regular Decision (42.88% yield)
99 Admitted from Wait List</p>
<p>The numbers of course assume that everyone admitted ED enrolled which probably is not the case for a variety of reasons, but is safely assumed as being relatively accurate. The admissions office also appears to have been looking for ~51.65% yield from the Regular Decision pool (595/1,152), but missed its mark considerably, which led to the large amount of students taken off the wait list.</p>
<p>If we extrapolate the data to this year's admissions statistics we have:</p>
<p>1220 Freshmen Enrolled (Targetted)
593 Admitted Early Decision
627 of 1,214 Accepted anticipated from the Regular Decision pool (A coincidental 51.65% yield)</p>
<p>If, however, the actual yield for the regular decision pool is similar to last year, we can expect only about 520 (42.88%) of the 1,214 to actually enroll at Princeton, leaving a healthy 107 spots open for those on the wait list. </p>
<p>While more encouraging than Nickleby's post for most people, it's still only speculation - For all we know, Princeton might be more popular and the RD yields will be much higher. With no major change in the structure of admissions at the top echelon of schools though, it seems probable that the numbers stay in the same range as last year.</p>
<p>So keep holding out a bit of hope. Princeton still may be in the cards for about 10-15% of those that stayed on the wait list.</p>
<p>Ok, I think I have found the discrepencies between the two sets of data:...</p>
<p>1.) anatidae's is more accurate, showing that most of the extra admitted students came under regular decision that has the <50% yield.</p>
<p>2.) The number of students admitted. According to the article linked above, 1631 students were admitted last year (not including wait lists). And 1807 were admitted this year. anatidae's numbers add up to 1733 students last year, cutting the difference in less than half. If anyone knows these numbers more specifically, it could clear this up (with an ED/Regular breakdown, if possible). I sincerely hope that Anatidae's numbers are the right ones.</p>
<p>The 2004 numbers came from the Princeton Registrar here:
<a href="http://www.princeton.edu/pr/facts/profile/04/08.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.princeton.edu/pr/facts/profile/04/08.htm</a></p>
<p>And the 2005 numbers came from The Daily Princetonian here:
<a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/04/01/news/12524.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/04/01/news/12524.shtml</a></p>
<p><em>Edit</em>
After doing some more digging up, my numbers for 2004 are off by a bit. Apparantly the 2004 Registrar data includes the 99 admits from the waitlist. The actual numbers are 1,631 total admits, 1,050 RD, and 581 ED.</p>
<p>Of course, the wait list admits is still the same number, the only difference is the RD yield is higher at 47.05% instead of the 56.67% they were predicting.</p>
<p>That shifts the expected number for this year down - 47.05% of 1,214 RD admits this year means 571 enrolled, filling up 1,163 of the 1,220 available spots for the class of 2009. Still, 57 is better than 28.</p>
<p>Princeton's registrar's site may have included those offered from the waitlist.</p>
<p>From the second article, this is what frightens me..."The University plans to enroll 1,220 students for the Class of 2009, 28 more students than was originally planned. The number of students accepted went up by 176 from last year's 1,631 accepted."</p>
<p>Thats an increase of 176 people with only 45 more slots availible.'</p>
<p>(Although hopefully the new use of the common-app will mean that more people that applied to Princeton were not as interested, so the yield rate may go down slightly because of that.)</p>
<p>So are we thinking the Wait List letter lied and it was 1000. Hardly
able to stretch several hundred to a 1000 and be honest! Also, to
the point about the common app. I really feel that the common app,
which increased # of apps by 20% will also have a negative affect on
yield. In last year's pool an applicant had to go through the process
of filling in the Princeton specific forms and mail to school. This year
it is so easy for the HYS SCEA admits to then send the Princeton
common app with the small supplement just to see if they can get in.
Although this will increase apps it will probably decrease yield because
most of those apps are from high achievers who already decided to go
to HYS. I also think this follows the reasoning why such a high percent of the ED apps (over 75% I think?)were the Princeton app vs the common app and the reverse was true of the RD apps. Could also be a result of having to fill in so many more apps RD but could still be partially
due to cross applying SCEA admits at HYS. Interested to hear what the cross admit numbers are this year vs last and how many turn down Pton for HYS this year vs last. Interesting and I guess we will see!</p>
<p>I have to agree with 2CarpeDiem. Why would Pton lie in the Wait List letter only to then later tell the truth to the WSJ? If I had to say which stat was likely to be accurate, the "few hundred" in the Wait List letter is directly from the "horse's mouth." WSJ's numbers are second hand at best.</p>
<p>They might very well have put 1000 on the waitlist, considering only a portion of them choose to stay there, leading to their claim of "several hundred". Of course, the number on the list doesn't matter quite as much as the number that get off it, so I say it's better not to worry about it.</p>
<p>I agree that the higher applicant pool is due to the common app, but whether the yield drops or not is really hard to say. I'm sure a lot of people that did do the common app were cross applying to HY (I don't think Stanford EA was available via common app), but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't have applied to Princeton through the Princeton app if that was the only means available. </p>
<p>People have always rejected Princeton for HYS in the past. The common app wasn't even all that much easier in terms of content than the Princeton app. It just eliminated the hassle of re-entering personal information. So, while it probably attracted more people to apply in the first place, the reality is that only those willing enough to write compelling essays and responses to the Princeton supplement, like those willing to write compelling essays and responses to the Princeton application, are the ones the admissions committee admitted. Out of those people, their desires to go to Princeton over HYSMC seems negligibly different than previous years.</p>
<p>if i am recalling the pton letter correctly, i believe that explained that there were a few hundred on the wait list of which some will make other plans and that pton would not add to the wait list... i still believe that pton would not write that in a letter and then later tell the WSJ that there were 1000 on the wait list. it just doesn't make sense...</p>