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Ivy League Schools Experience Application Increases

February 3, 2010 By

While top Ivy universities Columbia and Harvard saw a 4% and a 5% rise in applications (respectively) this past year, other universities in this category saw a higher than 15% jump in the number of applicants applying to their undergraduate programs. University of Pennsylvania experienced a 17% increase, Brown came in at 20%, and Princeton University at 19%. University of Chicago (a top university outside the Ivy League) saw a whopping 42% increase. Yale University, in contrast, experienced a 1% decrease.

According to The Daily Pennsylvanian there are a few possible explanations for these significant application increases across the board (almost) at these top universities. Here are few suggestions:

  1. Certain schools (like Penn) have broadened their advertisements, including a feature in a New York Times blog by Eric Furda, Penn Dean of Admissions.
  2. Applicants are applying to more places in order to keep their options open when it comes to receiving and then comparing financial aid offers.
  3. For Harvard, the elimination of the early decision option and the opening of the new School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have led to an increase in the applicant pool. Harvard has also implemented other financial aid initiatives, says Jeff Neal, Harvard spokesman.
  4. University of Chicago’s huge application increases are attributed to the school’s switch to allow the Common Application.

Yale Universities 1% decrease, according to Sally Rubenstone, a Senior Advisor at College Confidential, may be due to the murder of Ph.D. student Annie Le or to Yale’s “hyper-selective and seemingly unpredictable admission decisions.”

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  • http://www.collegeconfidential.com/ Sally Rubenstone

    I was misquoted in this blog, which is largely lifted from an article in the "Daily Pennsylvanian." I did NOT attribute Yale’s very small dip in applications to either the death of graduate student Annie Le or to Yale’s unpredictable acceptance patterns. This is what I REALLY said (from the DP article):

    Yale University saw a slight decrease of approximately 1 percent.

    College Confidential Senior Advisor Sally Rubenstone said in an e-mail that many people attribute the decrease to the tragic death of Annie Le or to Yale’s “hyper-selective and seemingly unpredictable admission decisions.”

    Still, she thinks the reasoning is much simpler. “Just like hot cars and cool clothes, college popularity inevitably waxes and wanes. Yale’s numbers were way up last year and down only slightly this time.”

    Rubenstone doesn’t think the decrease is particularly significant.

  • Linda Abraham

    Sally,

    Thank you for your comment. A few points in response:

    1) This post didn’t "lift" anything. It does summarize the DP article. It explicitly links to the original article, and cites the source both in the body of the article and in the references.

    2) You weren’t misquoted. The author of this post found the elements in the DP quote that she found most relevant and included them in her post.

    You are obviously entitled to disagree with the author about the most relevant elements of your statement.

    Thank you for sharing your perspective.

    Linda Abraham