That is the second fewest in the Ivy League. Only Dartmouth receives fewer applications.
Perhaps it’s because the Princeton Admissions Office is a bit - (how to put this delicately?) - aloof. After visiting, I can say their admissions people are sorely in need of hospitality training. Perhaps your mileage may vary, but when we visited, they put off the “you need us more than we need you” vibe to applicants.
Compare their aloofness to universities like Alabama or Chicago that really go after top students, and much is left to be desired. Applying to Princeton is like depositing your application into a silent black monolith ala 2001: A Space Odyssey and awaiting its final judgement months later with nary a word of encouragement or follow-up.
Applicants can sense this - no doubt manifesting as lower numbers of applicants to Princeton compared to peer schools like Harvard and Yale.
Not to mention that student tour guides seemed a bit harried (this was when grade deflation was still in place this past summer), and their answers to questions about grade deflation gave the place a pressure-cooker feel, especially when our tour guide lamented that there were limits on A’s even in introductory language classes. Granted, grade deflation has since been dropped, but I am curious to see how long it will take for the gloom to really lift.
Oh, well, perhaps their admissions people can afford to be haughty for now - after all, they are “Princeton.”
However, such historical advantages will dwindle over time if they don’t change their ways - at least IMHO.
Eh. In my experience, no tour on earth is worse than Harvard’s, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to go under any time soon. My guess is that Princeton and Dartmouth get fewer applications in large part simply because they have smaller freshman classes than the other schools in the bad basketball league.
@SomeOldGuy I think that Princeton and Dartmouth get fewer applications because they are situated in rural areas. Compared to schools like UPenn, Columbia, and Harvard, which are located in cities, Princeton and Dartmouth are their own little bubbles in the middle of nowhere. Students want to be in urban areas because there are more opportunities for excitement, more internships, more nightlife, and the like. Sure, there’s nature at Dartmouth (and some people are into that), but I think the majority of students are looking for fun and variety in combination with a great education.
So there’s my analysis.