Princeton Early Action

Princeton Early Action numbers are up by about 10% this year (image by Alfred Hutter).

Princeton Early Action numbers are in. There was an article yesterday in “The Princetonian” about the spike in Early Action applications to Princeton this admissions cycle in which our founder, Bev Taylor, is quoted. This year at Princeton, 3,791 students applied for admission in the Early cycle. This number marked about a ten percent increase from the 3,443 students who applied in the previous Early cycle. And because of Hurricane Sandy, more applications may be trickling in since Princeton decided to enact a flexible Early deadline for applications.

According to “The Princetonian” article on Early Action admissions at Princeton by Catherine Duazo, “Last year, the Office of Admission accepted 726 of the applicants, or 21 percent. The target class size for the Class of 2017 is 18 fewer students than recent class sizes due to the over-enrollment of the Class of 2016 by 49 students. The over-enrollment was partly a result of the University’s reinstated early action program, which began last year and made the yield more difficult to predict. The University had a binding early decision program between 1996 and 2006 but stopped the practice to attempt to make the admission process more equitable.”

So why the 10% increase in Early Action applications to Princeton? It’s possible, as the Dean of Admissions at Princeton suggests, that because Princeton’s Early Action policy has now been around a year longer, it gave more time for students to weigh applying to Princeton Early. Also, as Bev suggests, the flexible deadline that Princeton instituted because of Hurricane Sandy could have led to an increase as many other schools only extended their deadlines a couple of days.