Regular Decision at competitive schools: 2012 statistics are showing up

[xiggi]

As the tradition dictates, admissions' offices are starting to release their latest numbers for the Class of 2012 that will enter in the Fall of 2008.

So far, there are no great surprises, except the noteworthy mention that Stanford dipped below the 10% for overall acceptances as they only accepted 2,400 students from close to 25,000 applications.

We can expect more numbers shortly.

[momof3sons]

xiggi, numbers are out for Swarthmore-
17% increase in applications from last year, 50% over the past three years, acceptance rate drops to 15%
http://www.swarthmore.edu/x17822.xml

[xiggi]

Thanks. Please keep adding the numbers as they are announced.

PS Last year, Swarthmore accepted 890 out of 5,244 for a 16.97% rate. A LAC dipping below 15% is mind-boggling.

[rodney]

Vanderbilt: 23% combined rate (edi, EDII and RD)...No exact numbers for how many were accepted out of >16,000 applicants, but if you do the math, I guess it's approximately 3,700

[Dean J]

I just posted some of ours.

[MR. Tubbz]

usc- 21% acceptance rate

[mini]

Poor them - rejecting more students who would serve their needs well, having more students reject them to go elsewhere, and ending up with a class less likely to fit their needs than when acceptance rates were higher.

[GA2012MOM]

Where would someone look on a particular college website to find this information?

[xiggi]

Poor them - rejecting more students who would serve their needs well, having more students reject them to go elsewhere, and ending up with a class less likely to fit their needs than when acceptance rates were higher.

Mini, that oft-repeated argument won't get "more true" by repeating it ad nauseam. The issue of yield is one that concerns the school admins, not the members of this forum. No matter how despicable it sounds to you, a lower admission number does directly corresponds to a higher selectivity, and a higher selectivity intimates that the school was able to select the candidates according to its well-established individual criteria for best fit at their school.

And, for what it is worth, a school with an admission rate well above 50% can be as "rejected" by the admitted class as one with a 15% or a 20% admit rate. The only difference between the school with the 50% rate is that the group of admits that represent the yield is bound to contain more students with lower statistics as it is a given that students prefer to attend the school that corresponds to their BEST AVAILABLE choice. And, nothing says that Swarthmore does not consider its 15% admitted pool to be as good a fit to its need than the school in NOHO that has to admit more than 50% of its applicants or go deep in its wait list to have a chance to fill its classes.

And, fwiw, that is probably why having to weigh admissions and yield is more an art than a science.

[xiggi]

Where would someone look on a particular college website to find this information?

The official numbers are typically found at pages submitted by the Admission ofiices, the Provost, the Registrar, or the Office of Institutional Research. However, official numbers for the class of 2012 won't come out for months (or ever in a few cases.)

The current sources of information are the students' newspapers that pressure the adcoms to release the data, adcoms' blogs, AND press releases by the schools.

Googling the name of the school of interest with terms such as "Class of 2012" or "XYZ school admits Class of 2012" sends you in the right direction.

[tokenadult]

Agreed with xiggi about the oft-repeated, unconvincing statement from mini.

[sly_vt]

When searching for stats on college websites, I've used the search function (which is typically found somewhere on the home page) and searched for "common data" and "class profile."

[Faline2]

http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/m...-3289726.shtml

record-low regular decision acceptance rate of 18.8 percent. Of the applicants, 2,933 were accepted to the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and 881 were admitted to the Pratt School of Engineering.
With the 472 students who were accepted under the early-decision process, a total of 4,286 applicants have been invited to be a part of Duke's Class of 2012. The University expects to admit an additional 50 to 75 students off the waitlist in May, Guttentag said.

[mammall]

Is there a sense that this years class of applicants is the most competitive of the era - will the craziness start to diminish next year? I have another D coming up and would like to launch her in a kinder gentler world than this one.

[mootmom]

MIT stats for the Class of 2012 (includes EA); from Matt McGann's blog:

13,396 applicants (8% increase in applications over last year)
1,554 admitted (11.6% admit rate, down from 12.5% last year)

of those,
3,086 were international applications (up 12% from last year)
121 admitted (3.9%)

and
739 applicants offered a spot on the waitlist (5.5% of applicants)