Dartmouth's acceptance rate rose to 10 percent this year, up from 9.4 percent for the Class of 2016. Students and admissions experts believe this change will have a small and potentially positive impact on the College, but could constitute a cause for alarm if the trend continues.
ACCEPTANCE RATE
As the only Ivy League institution to report an increased acceptance rate this year, Dartmouth diverged from the decade-long national pattern of consistently decreasing acceptance rates, said Michele Hernandez, a former admissions assistant director at Dartmouth and founder of Hernandez College Consulting.
Dartmouth's regular decision acceptance rate was only 8.58 percent, Hernandez said. This number does not include the early decision applicants, who were accepted at a rate of 29.5 percent.
Hernandez said the overall increase is negligible and shows "ethical" intentions on the part of the Admissions Office, which could have relied more heavily on its waitlist.
"I see it as virtually identical to last year," she said. "I think if they wanted to, they could've taken fewer kids and waitlisted people, but they didn't want to play that game."
Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Maria Laskaris said the College's admissions rate was not a main concern and continues to be highly selective.
"There's a lot of focus on how many students are accepted on decision day," Laskaris said. "Whether we're admitting 9.4 or 10 percent of our pool, essentially we're admitting one in 10, and it's excruciatingly difficult."
Though the number of applications decreased by 3 percent this year, it rose last year when many peer institutions were not reporting increases, Laskaris said. Changes such as these are expected due to annual variations in the process, she said.
Students interviewed agreed with Laskaris' assessment, citing the small increase and fluctuations at other universities.
"Other schools go through changes too, and other schools may have had their rate go up or may have had changes in admissions," Thienan Dang '16 said. "I think it's just a natural change of things happening, it's not one thing or another."
The College has experienced two previous acceptance rate increases since 2000. The Class of 2008 saw an 18.3 percent acceptance rate, while applicants for the Class of 2007 faced what was, at the time, a record low 18.2 percent rate. Three years earlier, the acceptance rate went up to 22.8 percent for the Class of 2005 from 21 percent for the Class of 2004.
Kenyon College dean of admissions and financial aid Jennifer Delahunty said Dartmouth's choice to accept more students rather than place a greater number on the waitlist shows the Admissions Office's favorable priorities. The small increase in the rate, does not reflect negatively on the College, she said.
"That may be good for Dartmouth in the sense that they're not trying to reject more kids," she said. "This undue focus on exclusivity is the cancer of the whole admissions body."
Jon Reider, a former Stanford University admissions officer and current San Francisco University High School college counseling director, said he does not believe the slight admissions rate increase is indicative of larger changes at the College.
"From my perspective as a guidance counselor, it means nothing," he said. "It doesn't mean anything at Dartmouth is broken."
Recently accepted students do not believe concern about the acceptance rate is widespread. Many were unaware that Dartmouth was the only Ivy League school whose rate increased.
Jane Handorff, a prospective student from New York City, said the increase in the acceptance rate was "curious" but could benefit future applicants.
"It could help people apply if they were on the fence," she said. "I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing since admissions is so ridiculous, but it could become a bad indicator."
Handorff speculated that the hazing allegations brought forth by Andrew Lohse '12 and published last year in Rolling Stone magazine may have affected the admissions numbers, but that any effect is small and temporary.
"It shouldn't deter people who are serious about applying," she said. "I think that's short term and will go away in the next year, if people see that the school is going in a positive direction."
INCREASED DIVERSITY
The accepted class has a record 48 percent students of color, including a record number of Asian-American and Native American students. Minority students constituted 46.2 percent of the pool of accepted applicants for the Class of 2016, though only roughly 36 percent of these students matriculated, according to data from the Dartmouth College Fact Book.
"Our incoming classes should reflect the changing demographics of our country," Alysson Satterlund, Office of Pluralism and Leadership director, said in an email. "I think this is wonderful and it reflects our efforts to continue to broaden access to the country's brightest students."
The increased diversity of the newly accepted students reflects the College's increased efforts to reach out to a broader cross-section of the nation, Laskaris said. These initiatives include working with diversity-focused community organizations and ensuring that underprivileged students in rural areas are not overlooked.
Current and prospective students have noticed these efforts and results and said diversity is a noticeable factor when choosing a school.
"When I was looking, I do remember myself looking to see the percentage of how diverse the college is," Dang said. "I know my friends and I, when we were looking at colleges, we would think the same thing."
Handorff said the College's historical reputation for lacking diversity may be a barrier to attracting minority students, though she said increasing numbers of minority students enrolling would help alleviate applicants' doubts.
"I think Dartmouth has a certain reputation for being WASPy or something like that, so I think that it could get more people to apply, maybe more minorities," she said.
The College's socioeconomic diversity is also increasing, with a record 68 percent of accepted students requesting financial aid, Laskaris said. This number may decrease once the enrolled class is finalized, but will likely stay at approximately two-thirds of the class.
Another challenge to attracting and matriculating a diverse range of students in a geographic, racial and socioeconomic sense is the College's remote location, Reider said.
"The hardest thing for Dartmouth admissions is making clear how interesting and dynamic and culturally sophisticated it is, even though it's in the middle of the New Hampshire woods," he said.
This challenge will increase as the nation's demographics shift more toward the South and West and away from the College's "backyard," Laskaris said.
"We have historically had challenges with things like location, and I think as more and more of the population shifts away from New England to the South and West, and more families are unfamiliar with New England, that's something to think about," she said. "I think that's going to become a greater challenge for us as our applicant pool shifts."
CLASS SIZE AND YIELD
In addition to increasing the number of accepted minority students, the College offered admission to a higher overall number of students, increasing the size of the accepted pool by 72. The College accepted 2,252 students to the Class of 2017 out of a pool of 22,416, including 464 admitted through the early decision process in December. The College aims to enroll a class with a size between the largest and smallest classes currently at the College, Laskaris said.
The Admissions Office's goal of enrolling 1,120 to 1,125 students would place the Class of 2017 slightly above the current average class size, which is 1,111 students, according to the Fact Book.
"We're just trying to smooth out the peaks and valleys and not have such tremendous variations from one year to the next," Laskaris said. "This is not about growing the class, it's about evening out variations in enrollment."
The increased number of accepted students does not mean that the College is expecting a lower yield, she said. If further spots still need to be filled after students notify the College of their decisions on May 1, the College will then look to its waitlist.
"Since I knew I wanted to come in with a slightly larger class, it made sense to admit those students now instead of waiting until May 1," she said.
There is currently a difference of 41 students between the College's largest class, the Class of 2014, with 1,139 students, and its smallest, the Class of 2016, with 1,098 students.
The Office of Residential Life is working with admissions to ensure there is adequate housing for the incoming class, director of undergraduate housing Rachael Class-Giguere said.
"We're expecting a class of 1,120 to 1,125, and that's what we've been planning for and expecting," she said. "There isn't a change in that."
Students who learned that more students were accepted were initially skeptical of increasing class sizes, but did not believe the change was significant. Frances Buren '15, a tour guide, said she would become concerned if the increase continued.
"It's so small I don't think it makes much of a difference, but it could start to add up," Buren said. "I think Dartmouth does pride itself on being a small school, and that's one of the reasons why I came here."
Laskaris, however, said that students should not be concerned about the class size, particularly because 72 more accepted students will not translate into 72 extra students in the class. The College's yield will likely continue to hover at around 50 percent as it has in years past, she said.
To attract accepted students, admissions will host calling sessions, return to more old-fashioned techniques such as sending letters, promote the Dimensions of Dartmouth program and host its annual "Chatapalooza" online question and answer session.
"We want to leave no stone unturned in our work to yield these students," Laskaris said.
FUTURE EXPERIMENTS AND GOALS
Admissions will work to attract its accepted students before the May 1 decision deadline, with many students choosing between Dartmouth and other Ivy League schools, Laskaris said.
Atlhough this short-term goal will take up much of the Admissions Office's time and energy in the coming month, there may be room to "crowdsource" potential changes to the application in years to come, she said.
Dartmouth currently requires all applicants to turn in a peer evaluation form, which aims to evaluate the applicants as a potential member of the Dartmouth community. Laskaris said this portion of the application may be the first to undergo adjustments. New questions could include asking what the applicant would be like as a lab partner or trippee, Laskaris said.
"I'm wondering, Should we be a little more intentional about directing the peer evaluator with some specific questions?'" she said. "I've begun to talk about this with some of our student interns and some other students who are interested in the process."
Laskaris said an essay component would not add value to the application, but may consider asking alumni interviewers more specific questions about applicants.
"If the Admissions Office decided that it wanted some additional information, I feel that the alumni interviewers would be able to get it to them," interviewer Michael Berg '82 said. "But between the forms that we're asked to fill out and the interviewing tips and guidelines that we're given, we have more than enough to go on in terms of exploring the students passions and interests and whether they're a potentially good fit for the college."
Experts interviewed suggested other ideas for potential reforms to the process, from limiting the number of college applications a student could send to instituting universal early decision programs among all colleges. All agreed that the process merits a close re-examination.
"There are lots of ways we can talk about fixing the system, but for [colleges] they just keep trying to beat each other," Hernandez said. "I just don't see the point, I think it's this endless rat race."
