Dartmouth received a record 17,768 applications for the Class of 2013, according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Maria Laskaris, bucking a trend of stagnant or decreasing application numbers among similarly sized, private liberal arts colleges. The College intends to accept 1,800 applicants during the regular decision process, for a final class size of between 1,090 and 1,100 students, Laskaris said, resulting in an overall acceptance rate of 11 to 12 percent, the lowest in Dartmouth's history.
Applications increased by 7.5 percent over last year.
Laskaris, in an interview with The Dartmouth, placed schools into three categories with respect to the ongoing economic crisis: public universities; Dartmouth and other members of the Ivy League that have "all significantly enhanced [their] financial aid institutions" and colleges that have tuitions similar to those in the Ivy League, "but don't have the strength of our financial aid."
Institutions belonging to the first two categories will likely continue to receive high numbers of applicants in 2009, Laskaris said.
She argued that colleges in the third category might be seen as a risky choices given the fiscal climate. For example, St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. had received 30 percent fewer applications as of December than it had by that same date the previous year, according to The New York Times.
Harvard and Princeton University's recent elimination of early admission programs likely contributed to the increase in applicants to Dartmouth and its peer institutions, Laskaris said.
Other Ivies have experienced a similar increase in regular decision applications. Yale University has received nearly 26,000 applications overall, as compared with 22,817 last year, the Yale Daily News reported Tuesday.
Although requests for financial aid are not due until Feb. 1, Laskaris said that the percentage of families in need of aid will likely increase because of the tightening economy. The degree to which the economic climate will affect assistance requests is still unclear, she explained.
"My gut says we will see greater numbers of financial aid applications," she said. "I can only speculate [at this point] what those numbers would be."
The College's endowment had plunged by $220 million by the end of November, but financial aid will not be affected, Laskaris said.
"We will continue to meet 100 percent of a student's demonstrated need through our programs," she said. "Both [College President] James Wright and [Chairman of the Board of Trustees] Ed Haldeman ['70] have been very clear about their commitment to our financial aid program."
Dartmouth's assistance program is "strong and robust," Laskaris said, noting that the average student who received financial aid last year was awarded $33,000.
The College expanded its financial aid package in January 2008 by replacing student loans with scholarships and offering free tuition for students whose families earn less than $75,000 per year.
The new package also extended need blind admission to international students, and provided leave-term financing for students who receive aid, Laskaris noted.
The number of applicants of color increased by 10 percent from last year, Laskaris said.
She credited a "tremendous amount of outreach" on the part of the admissions office for "reaching out to students who have been traditionally underrepresented" as a factor in this jump.
Students hailing from the south, midwest and western regions also comprise increasingly large numbers of the applicant pool, reflecting recruitment efforts and overall population trends in the United States, Laskaris said.
The composite SAT scores of this year's incoming students remain "almost exactly identical" to previous years, Laskaris said, noting only a one-point difference from the Class of 2012.
The admissions office will be reading and processing applications from now until mid-March, at which point students will be notified whether or not they have been admitted.
The original version of this article incorrectly stated that the target class size of the Class of 2013 is 2,200 students. In fact, that number refers to the total number of students the College intends to accept, for a final class size of between 1,090 and 1,100 students.
