It seems the Ivy League is getting even more popular. Record-numbers of applicants have resulted in low acceptance rates at many of the institutions including all-time records at Yale, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.
Yale accepted 2,121 students out of a pool of 13,266 applicants for an acceptance rate of 15.9 percent, and Penn took 4,703 of its 17,661 applicants for a rate of 26.6 percent - 2.6 percent less than last year. Both schools saw their largest application pools and lowest acceptance rates in history.
Princeton accepted the lowest percentage of applicants in the Ivy League and its lowest ever. It took only 10.8 percent of its 14,874 applicants for a total of 1,600 students accepted -- half a percent less than Harvard which took 2,055 of its 18,160 applicants.
Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Karl Furstenberg, who also saw a large number of applicants this year, gave an explanation for the recent trends in Ivy admissions statistics.
"People are looking for quality and looking for the value of the degree," Furstenberg said. "The credibility of an Ivy degree in the society and in the job market is very high."
Furstenberg said that the revamping of many of the Ivies' financial aid programs and aggressive recruiting also contributed to the increase in applicants.
He also attributed the increase in Ivy popularity to the state of the economy.
"People have more in the way of resources. When the economy is good, luxury purchases go up," Furstenberg said. "In the minds of some people an Ivy education is a luxury. People think, 'Maybe now we can afford that Ivy education,' that they didn't think was possible before."
Despite the increase in applicants, the quality of the students did not diminish. "This year's pool was statistically the best we've ever had. The Ivies are becoming so selective that I think weaker applicants are taking themselves out of the pool -- to some extent we are scaring some people away," Furstenberg said.
Dartmouth accepted 20.6 percent of its 10,261 applicants - almost one percent fewer than last year.
The only Ivy that reported a major decline in the number of applicants was Brown University which received 811 fewer applications for admission than it did last year. Still, the school accepted only 16.7 percent of those who applied.
Cornell University accepted 6,560 of 19,950 applicants for a rate of 32.9 percent, by far the highest in the Ivy League.
Columbia University, which has seemed to gain in popularity in recent years, accepted 13.6 percent of 13,010 applicants for a total of 1,763 students.
