While the College saw a 3 percent decline in applications for the Class of 2017 the only Ivy League institution to see a significant drop this year the decrease is not expected to have long-term effects on admissions numbers, according to Dean of Admissions Maria Laskaris.
Columbia University saw a 5 percent increase in applications this year, Brown University had a 1 percent increase, Yale University saw a 4 percent increase and University of Pennsylvania had one more application than it did last year. Princeton University saw a less than 1 percent decrease in applicants. Admissions statistics from Harvard University and Cornell University have not yet been released.
The decline in applications will not affect this year's acceptance rate, which will remain at roughly 10 percent similar to that of last year, Laskaris said.
Eric Hoover, a senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education, said that this year's decline is unlikely to have a long-term impact on the College. It is typical for application numbers for Ivy League schools fluctuate year by year.
"Some years, there is a slight increase in numbers," Hoover said. "Some years, there is a slight drop. To see numbers drop from one year to the next is not a big thing."
Dartmouth is not the only Ivy League institution to have a significant decline in applications in recent years. In 2010, Columbia saw a 9 percent decrease in applicants from the year before, the Columbia Spectator reported.
It is too early to predict whether this year's decrease of applications will have a long-term effect on the College, according to Laskaris. There needs to be at least another year of decline in order for it to be declared a trend.
"Every year is a new year," Laskaris said. "I wouldn't base future predictions on one year."
Hoover said it is more important to see how application numbers have changed over several years rather than how they change from year to year.
"Dartmouth has seen a large increase in the long term," Hoover said. "That is the bigger story."
Over the last 10 years, the number of students applying to Dartmouth doubled to 23,110 in 2012 from 11,855 in 2003, according to the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid.
The recent hazing scandals and last year's Rolling Stone article on Dartmouth's social scene likely did not have had a major impact on the College's application numbers, Hoover said.
"It is possible that some students were turned away by it, but they probably weren't super serious about Dartmouth to begin with," he said. "These things do not have a major effect from one year to the next. They have an effect on the margins rather than across the entire pool."
Laskaris said that prospective students show both interest and concern about the College's Greek system every year.
News stories involving colleges can have a slight impact on application numbers, but are unlikely to be the major driving force behind the changes, according to Hoover.
"If a not super well-known school, like Butler [University,] sends a basketball team to the Final Four, they might see increases," he said. "There will be some increases, but there would probably be increases anyway."
Phillips Academy, a prestigious boarding school in Andover, Mass., did not see a major change in the number of students who applied to Dartmouth this year, according to college counseling director Sean Logan.
"The numbers have been fairly consistent over the last few years," Logan said. "That trend has been very similar at the other Ivies as well."
Laskaris said that she is optimistic that the Class of 2017 will be as strong as previous classes are.
"I'm confident we will have a wonderfully talented group of students matriculating next fall," she said.
