<p>Interesting turn of events. </p>
<p>The cynic in me thinks this announcement is timed for the admissions cycle in order to generate the application numbers that other top schools have achieved. If you look closely at the Princeton application numbers relative to all other Ivy League members, (with the exception of Dartmouth possibly because of negative publicity driven decreases) the application numbers have yet to hit the level of the others. In addition, schools such as MIT, Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, UChicago, and Northwestern have also seen sizeable growth in their applicant pools. If you look at the application tally table published in the NY Times The Choice Blog for the past cycle, Princeton numbers were flat or had a tiny decrease. The magnitude of the difference in application numbers among the schools was substantial even taking into account the varied sizes of the student bodies.</p>