Two days ago, potential members of the Class of 2013 logged on to the MyPenn Admissions Portal to find out whether they could stop praying for admissions and start praying for a room in the Quadrangle.
This year, Penn accepted 17.11 percent of overall applicants, a negligible increase from last year and not a number to scoff at. After all, plenty of students were rejected, and plenty of schools accept anyone with an SAT score above a certain threshold.
But Penn isn't an ordinary school, and in comparison to our peer institutions, several of our statistics are out of place or even disappointing. At most peer institutions, applications rose and the number of accepted students dropped. Harvard and Yale were unsurprisingly in the single digits, but Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell became increasingly competitive; Columbia and Princeton accepted many more students without affecting their rate of admitted students; and Stanford and Duke had huge surges in applicants coupled with lower acceptance rates.
It's difficult to assign blame in this situation; there's never a single factor that determines a successful application year. Everyone is hurting because of the economy, but our financial-aid packages are in line with other schools, so the substance of how Penn responds to students with concerns should not have had any effect on numbers.
Because of the economic uncertainty and the fact that Dean of Admissions Eric Furda is in his first year at the helm, this year will hopefully be looked at, in the future, as a not-quite-graceful transition.
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