<p>The overall acceptance rate for Yale College hit a record low again this year, with 9.7 percent of applicants from an overall pool of 19,448 students receiving letters of admission to the Class of 2009, the admissions office announced on Thursday.</p>
<p>After witnessing a 1.2 percent decrease in total applications, the College accepted 1,880 students, a trimming down from last year when Yale accepted 1,950 students -- about 9.9 percent from an overall pool of 19,675 applicants. Officials hailed this year's applicant pool as the most competitive in Yale's history.</p>
<p>This year, the acceptance rate stood at 18 percent for early action candidates and 7.5 percent for regular decision candidates. While Yale admitted 710 of the 3,926 students who applied through its single-choice early action policy, 1,170 students were admitted in the later round of admissions from a group of 15,522 regular applicants</p>