LETTER: Simplistic Method

I would like to discuss a recent Daily Pennsylvanian article about the admission rate for undergraduate applicants to Penn. I think your emphasis on this issue alone is limiting with regard to the quality of the University and its students. While the admission rate is certainly an acceptable indication of the level of selectivity of a university, it is far from being the best indicator of the quality of a university, of the education it offers its students or of the quality of the students attending that university. It is this last point that many people most often neglect. What does this mean? It means that the students we accept choose Penn as often as they choose other colleges, and that in attracting admitted students we do better than many of our peer institutions. And what better measure of students' interest in us than the school they finally choose to attend? Our competition for admitted students is predominantly other Ivy League schools, plus universities such as M.I.T., Northwestern, Michigan, Duke and Stanford. In an environment where most colleges across the country matriculate about a third of their admitted students, a matriculant yield of 50 percent is excellent. It is even more so considering the quality of our competition. Even within the Ivy League, only Harvard and Yale consistently matriculate over 55 percent of their admitted students. And yes, it is a challenge to have students attend Penn when Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Stanford has admitted them. But students do make that choice, if not as often as we would like. Given the size of the entering class at Penn, it is safe to assume that we will have the highest admit rate of Ivy League schools in the foreseeable future. It would be unfortunate if this one statistic becomes the only one used to measure the quality of the student body and the University. I feel it is an inappropriate approach, often used by college guides, to rank institutions by simple, apparently objective criteria. This neglects the fact that one cannot measure the quality of a student's education by such simplistic methods, and ignores the notion of "fit." We hope that students come to Penn because they believe that they will get the best education for themselves here, because it is "right" for them, not simply because it was higher on someone's list of colleges. I hope you will be able to take a broader view of what makes Penn the outstanding institution it is. Does this mean that we are satisfied with our position? Of course not. The admissions office will continue to work with faculty, students and alumni to find the most talented and diverse possible student body for Penn. We realize that we can never rest on past successes, especially considering our competition. And we expect to make further progress. But the mere fact that there is progress to be made does not mean that Penn is not an excellent institution with exceptional students. And overemphasizing the admit rate keeps us from focusing on what is really important. WILLIS STETSON Dean of Admissions

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