I’m going to guess that most of the marginal addition of applicants was concentrated among Internationals, not least Internationals with need, who are really competing with each other and not so much domestics or even full pay Internationals. Which would in turn mean most of the marginal reduction in acceptance rates was also concentrated in Internationals, and in particular Internationals with need.
It will also be “interesting” to see what happens with International applications this upcoming cycle.
Curious as to which state is not represented in the U Penn Class of 2029.
Indeed. It will also be interesting to see what happens to the total number of Penn applicants this upcoming cycle as Penn restores the pre-COVID requirement that all applicants submit SAT/ACT scores.
I’ll place my chip on Wyoming.
Yes, if forced to bet I would guess both domestic and International applications to Penn will go down this upcoming cycle, and their acceptance rates for both will go up.
And of course still be ludricously low, but maybe not AS ludicrously low.
The March press release mentions admitting students from all 50 states ( see Penn releases regular decision results for Class of 2029 after receiving 72,000 applications | The Daily Pennsylvanian ). So it’s a question of which of the single admit states is most likely to have a student who was admitted, but chose to attend elsewhere. In recent previous years, the states with 0 matriculating students include
New Mexico (2021)
Montana (2021)
S. Dakota (2022, 2023)
W. Virginia (2023)
Regarding the news story, while 5% is a low admit rate. I don’t find it particularly surprising. The admit rate also rounded to 5% last year, so not what I consider to be a dramatic change. Most other other highly selective private colleges that have reported admit rate stats also show a decrease in admit rate over last year.
I found what I believe is the number from last year which is 65,236 so it’s a significant increase to 72,544.
Why do you think it was internationals, particularly those with need? Did Penn go need-blind for internationals this admissions cycle?
So it appears from Common App data that over the last few cycles before this one, generally speaking International unique applicants were increasing more rapidly than domestic unique applicants. Apparently this might have changed this cycle, but it depended on the type of applicant, and my sense is the types of applicants who are likely to apply to colleges like Penn might have continued increasing.
Then in general, there are apparently a lot more needy International applicants by US standards than full pay. This makes sense because in many countries, even what counts as a solidly upper middle class professional family might be well within the need range for colleges like Penn.
That being said, I was probably wrong. On reflection given the magnitude of that change, Penn might also have gotten some additional domestic test optional “refugees”, and that might put the domestic increase ahead of the International increase in gross terms, although maybe not in percentage terms.
It would be interesting to see the break down of applicants for the Ivies and see if the ones that went test required had fewer applications while the ones that remained test optional had increased numbers or if it was just Penn.
Data are starting to come out. For class of 2029, Dartmouth received 28,230 apps while for class of 2028, Dartmouth received 31,657 apps.
When Dartmouth went test required for Class of 2029, they would have expected their apps to decrease. It will be interesting to see the impact on the number of disadvantaged and/or URM students both for admitted and enrolled subsets for class of 2029 when full data become available.