Class of '95 is least selective in Ivy League

The class of 1995 is the least selective admissions class in at least a decade and has the highest admittance rate of all Ivy League schools, according to figures released yesterday by Associate Dean for Admissions Christoph Guttentag. A drop in applications by 850 high school students and a 55-person increase in the number of students admitted yielded an admissions rate of nearly 47 percent, by far the highest in the Ivies. This is the fourth straight year the rate has increased. Despite the declining number of applications, Guttentag maintained yesterday that the quality of the class is the same, if not slightly better, than last year's class. Guttentag would not release the average SAT score of the class, saying only it is comparable with last year's. "[The SAT scores] appear to tell more than they do," Guttentag said. "There is absolutely no significant difference between this and last year's average SAT scores." The Admissions Department was "pleased" that such a small applicant pool could yield such a qualified class, Guttentag said. Guttentag blamed the change on a declining number of 18-year-olds nationwide. He said this caused the applicant pool to drop from 10,650 last year to about 9,800 this year. "To a certain extent it reflects the overall decline in the number of 18-year-olds," Guttentag said. The University accepted 4,580 students to the class of 1995 class and expects 2,250 to matriculate. Last year, the University admitted near 42 percent of the applicants compared with 40.6 percent in 1989 and 35 percent in 1988. Every Ivy League school has a significantly lower admittance rate than the University with Brown University admitting 23 percent, Columbia University 32 percent, Cornell University 31 percent, Dartmouth University 25 percent, Harvard University 17 percent, Princeton University 16 percent and Yale University 21 percent. In fact, the University's admittance rate was twice Brown's and almost three times higher than Princeton's. The University's size is one reason it has a higher admissions rate. With the exception of Cornell, the University is the largest and most comprehensive school in the Ivies. In order to maintain a low admittance percentage, it would need a far greater number of applicants than any of the other Ivies. "We have a smaller applicant pool, a class that is the same size, a matriculaiton yield that's the same, and a class that is the second largest of the Ivies," Guttentag said last night. In addition, the increase in total admissions failed to bolster the representation of minority students in the class. The University admitted 35 fewer black students and 20 fewer hispanics than last year. Guttentag stressed that despite the drop in the raw number of hispanic and black admits, the University accepted a higher percentage of the pool of black and hispanic applicants. "As long as I've been here we have made a consistent and concerted effort to get both as strong and as diverse an applicant pool as we can," Guttentag said. "We are always looking for ways to do more." A cause of the decrease in the applicant pool is the economic strain of a $24,000 school. Especially among less affluent minorities, the cost of an expensive university has scared off students who otherwise would have been qualified, according to adminssions officials. The cancellation of the New England Overlap Group meeting this year, in which several highly competitive schools including the University have met to discuss financial aid distribution, may have affected this year's pool, Guttentag admitted. "The chances of any given applicant who has applied to more than one overlap school. . . getting different financial aid awards increases," Guttentag said. "Will it affect matriculation rates?" Guttentag asked. "Maybe, but we don't have any history to go on." The University has kept the projected class size the same for the last two years despite the decline in college-age students, in part, for economic reasons. One reason for the stable class size is that the University needs the annual revenue a stable class size will provide. For a research institution of its size, the University has a small endowment and therefore depends heavily upon tuition payments for capital. Guttentag added last night that while students may be alarmed with the numbers, "quality is not a function of selectivity."

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