Students around the world with aspirations of scaling the Ivy wall may have to strive a little harder as admission rates hit record lows this year. Harvard University made the most stringent selections this year, admitting only 10.7 percent of their applicants to next year's class. Class of 2005 hopefuls also faced tougher odds at Penn, Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Columbia and Brown universities, which all offered acceptances at lower rates than last year. Dartmouth College, which had seen fewer applicants over the past few years, admitted at a greater rate this year. Penn accepted a record-low 21.5 percent, or 4,124 of its 19,150 applicants this year. The acceptance rate for regular decision applicants was even lower at 18.2 percent. This is a significant change from last year when Penn admitted 22.9 percent of all applicants and 20 percent of regular decision applicants. "In the past few years we've been getting a little more selective every year," Penn Dean of Admissions Lee Stetson said. Harvard, which received 19,009 applications, admitted 2,042 students, making it the most selective of the Ivy League schools. As over half of next year's class was accepted early, the regular decision acceptance rate was 10.6 percent, slightly lower than the overall rate. With an 11.7 percent acceptance rate, Princeton was the second most selective. It admitted 1,675 of its 14,287 applicants. A little over a third of next year's class was admitted early decision. Princeton's admission rate fell from last year's 12.2 percent. Yale, Columbia and Brown also had acceptance rates in the teens with 13.5, 14.3 and 15.9 percent, respectively. Yale admitted 2,000 of 14,809 applicants, for a record-low acceptance rate. This may change, however, if fewer than 66 percent of their admits choose to matriculate. Columbia offered spots to 2,367 of the 16,557 hopefuls for their class of 2005 and Brown sent acceptances to 2,639 of its 16,602 applicants. Cornell reduced its acceptance rate by almost five percent to 25.6 from last year's 30.5 percent, as it is trying to control its class size. It admitted 5,512 of its 21,518 applicants. Dartmouth saw a marked decrease in the number of applicants this year to 9,719 from 10,165 and increased their rate of acceptance to 22.8 percent from 21.4 percent last year. Dartmouth admitted 2,219 of its applicants. Stetson expects that Penn's final acceptance rate may vary a little, depending upon the rate of matriculation. Penn's yield of admitted students has been increasing steadily over the past few years and was at 55.5 percent last year. "What it means is that if it holds, we'll be using a small amount of the students on the wait list," Stetson said. All students admitted to the Ivy League have until May 1 to make their enrollment decisions.
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