| Annabell, I’m delighted you’ve decided on Princeton! At the same time, I have to agree with Treeman. Certainly, there are many students who turn down offers of admission to Princeton in favor of some other school. No university in the country has a yield of 100%. Even Harvard, with the highest yield in the country, loses about 20% of its admitted students to other schools. Many end up at Princeton, including me. In recent years, about 30% of students admitted to Princeton have decided to matriculate elsewhere. This is one of the highest matriculation rates in the country but still means that there are many who decide Princeton isn’t right for them. Most of the time, the students who turn down Princeton end up attending one of the equally fine schools with which it regularly competes. In a smaller, but not insignificant number of cases, students turn down Princeton to attend schools that may not be nearly as well known. Since Princeton’s financial aid is among the best in the country, it typically isn’t for financial reasons. Rather, it may be about being closer to home, being in a city rather than suburbia, having the chance to play for a major athletic team in a big media market, etc.--the reasons are as varied as the individuals making these decisions.
In terms of how Princeton does in cross-admissions with its biggest name peers, I can tell you this. Not long ago I was part of a small group that was meeting privately with a high level administrator at Princeton. An alumna in attendance asked about those cross-admit statistics. Universities generally keep this information very confidential but this administrator (it was not the Dean of Admissions but was someone in a position to know) gave us some hard facts and did tell us that Princeton currently splits evenly with, or beats, all of its peers with the exception of Harvard, the only school that takes more from Princeton than it loses to Princeton. Princeton splits evenly with Yale and has a very slight advantage against Stanford. Even so, there are plenty of potential Princetonians who decide they would prefer to wear colors other than orange and black!
Congratulations on your acceptance and welcome to Princeton! |