College Admissions: Who Really Gets in to Ivy League Schools
Monday, April 09, 2012
What were the best routes to the Ivy League this year?
3.8% Get into Harvard Regular Decision
With the reinstatement of early action this year, Harvard reached a record low overall acceptance rate of 5.9% (the regular decision acceptance rate was just 3.8%). 1,260 students were accepted during the regular decision round, and 772 students were admitted during the newly reinstated early action plan. The group is a diverse one; just over 10% of the accepted class is African American, 11% are Hispanic, and 12% are Native American. According to the University, approximately 20% of Harvard students are international.
At Dartmouth 60% are 1st in Class
16% of Brown Admits are 1st Generation
Brown received a total of 28,742 applications and accepted 2,760 students. Applications were up for early decision, but down for regular decision. This year the regular decision admission rate was 8.5 percent (up slightly from 2011) and the overall acceptance rate was 9.6 percent. 47% of the admitted freshman class are valedictorians or salutatorians, 53% are female and 16% are the first generation in their families to attend college. Students from 80 nations were admitted, with the highest number coming from China, Canada, Korea, India, and the United Kingdom.
Princeton Hits Record Low 7.9% Admit Rate
Like Harvard, Princeton re-instated an early admission program this year. They received 3,443 early applications, and accepted 21%. The overall 2012 admission rate was 7.9 percent, the lowest in Princeton’s history. Among those admitted, 97% are in the top 10% of their class, 12% are international students, 47% are students of color, 12.5% percent are first generation college students, and 9.5 percent the sons and daughters of Princeton alumni.
Other Ivy League Stats:
Yale’s overall acceptance rate was 6.8 percent, which is the lowest in the history of the university.
Cornell received a record number of early decision applications, and accepted 32.7%, filling a whopping 37% of the entering freshman class before Christmas. Overall, they admitted 16.2% percent of applicants, making this the most competitive year in the history of the university.
UPenn remained stable this year, accepting 12.3% of applicants. They experienced a drop in early decision applicants, most likely due to the reinstatement of early admission plans at Harvard and Princeton.
Columbia’s overall admission rate was 7.4 percent. This was a .5 % increase from the Class of 2015 when the university saw a huge surge in applications after joining the Common App.
Cristiana Quinn, M.Ed. is the founder of College Admission Advisors, LLC which provides strategic, college counseling and athletic recruiting services for students. http://www.collegeadvisorsonline.com/.
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Comments:
Charles Beckers
10:49am on Monday, April 09, 2012
This article suffers from confusing statistics about "early action" with statistics about "early decision" programs. There should be clear definitions of the two very different program groups, and how they are implemented at each institution.
Cristiana Quinn
3:19pm on Monday, April 09, 2012
Charles--There was an earlier article closer to ED/EA deadlines that explained different early admission programs in more detail:
http://www.golocalprov.com/lifestyle/college-admissions-demystifying-early-admission/
John McGrath
5:03pm on Monday, April 09, 2012
Superficial presentation, the usual use of statistics to present insignificant information.
What matters would be parental incomes and educational levels. This information would show that the entering class is hardly diverse. Nor are the graduating classes diverse, with near majorities or majorities having majored in quantitative economics.
The Ivy League schools have multiple missions. One is to provide real scholarship and, in most cases, a very good education. Another is to produce or continue America’s aristocracy, the 20% to 10% to 1% to .01% who benefit from our economy. In Ivy League code talk this production of our aristocracy is called “education for leadership,” and the cultivation of the “brightest and best,” dutifully reminding their students that they deserve to rule over our institutions. Mainly for their benefit, but this is disguised with high minded talk about public service and “corporate responsibility.”
The Ivies instill a crude morality of “meritocracy,” again a code term for “people get what they deserve” (including parents’ money). This notion of meritocracy makes it easy to advance public policies that favor the rich and global corporations, and eviscerate the funding for equalizing institutions such as inexpensive (or dare we say free?) higher education. This notion of meritocracy makes it easy to turn the function of government away from the common good and widespread prosperity toward the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many.
Ruth Simmons has certainly enjoyed her huge “compensation” for serving on the Board of Goldman Sachs and catering to corporate desires. But then perhaps she is just being realistic, accepting the fact that America is a corporate oligarchy, and that either you join with the oligarchy and become a winner (maybe) or you resist and become a loser.