<p>How serious is pton in sci/eng? As a prospective applicant, i am concerned with the statistical/anecdotal evidence showing that pton has turned away the top tier applicant in favor of second tier, but still strong applicants, in the hopes of maintaining yield because top students tend to go to harvard or mit.</p>
<p>i was not impressed with my school’s adcom visit, who bubbled all about cornell west and chose not to answer any (serious) questions. i really liked pton on my campus visit over the summer, and id like positive evidence to bring back the original luster.</p>
<p>some “positive evidence” for you: princeton is ranked #11 in the country for engineering by u.s. news. harvard, by way of comparison, is in the 30s and yale is in the 40s. princeton has more faculty members in the national academy of engineering than either school, and it has more faculty members in the national academy of sciences than yale, too, despite being a smaller school and having no medical school. in short, when measured against its non-tech peers, princeton is plenty “serious” in engineering and the sciences. also, FWIW, princeton splits common admits 47/53 with MIT. and while a certain amount of “yield protection” may have gone on under princeton’s former adcom, princeton’s new dean of admissions clearly isn’t driven by that concern. after all, only princeton among its peers has followed harvard in abandoning early admissions, while MIT, stanford, and yale have clung to it despite its manifest unfairness.</p>