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For the first time in five years, Penn has seen the total number of applicants fall for the incoming freshman class.

This year, 18,776 prospective Quakers applied to be part of Penn's class of 2006 -- a modest decline from last year's total of 19,153 applicants.

Although Director of Admissions Operations Margaret Porigow did not have complete numbers, she said that the School of Engineering and Applied Science saw the greatest decline in applicants, and that this is the primary reason the total pool is smaller this year.

"We understand that, with our peer institutions, Engineering applications are down," Porigow said.

Engineering Dean Eduardo Glandt said that he is not worried about the drop in applicants to the school.

"I think that it fluctuates from year to year and I'm not concerned for the long run," Glandt said.

There has recently been a large increase in engineering applicants at many schools across the country and this increase has begun to peak, according to Glandt.

"The enrollments have leveled off in engineering," Glandt said. "The drop is a correction in the" applicant pool.

Glandt said that the number of applicants to the Engineering School is heavily dependent upon current job market conditions, which applicants consider before applying to engineering schools.

"The market oscillates with the employment market," he said. "They come and go rather fluidly with the employment picture."

Glandt cited the recent decline of the dot-com industry as the main reason for the smaller number of applicants this year.

The Computer Science Department saw a massive increase in the number of majors over the past few years, and today is the school's most popular field. But with the insecurity in the computer job market, many applicants have thought twice before applying.

And Glandt said that other programs have received an increased number of applicants in recent years and will probably continue to climb in the future.

"Although Computer Science remains the most popular major, Bioengineering has seen a great increase," he said.

Though the total number of applicants decreased this year, the applicant pool remained very strong and is as competitive as last year's class, according to Porigow.

"The quality of the applicant pool is up," she said. "We have seen an increase of 10 points in the [average] SAT score."

Porigow said that this increase is evident in applicants across all of four of Penn's undergraduate schools.

And though the total number of applications fell at Penn this year, this number is a reflection of a drop-off in the regular decision number. Early decision applications actually rose at the University this year.

Porigow said that there were 15,741 regular decision applicants this year compared to last year's number of 16,300.

Though it is still unclear why this was the first drop in applicants since 1997, Porigow offered a possible explanation.

"Our thinking is that because more people applied early, more people got into their schools early," she said.

Of its 3,056 early applicants, Penn accepted 1,181, or nearly 50 percent of the entire class of 2006.

Though she said it is still too early to draw any conclusions, Porigow said that the Sept. 11 attacks may have had an impact on applicants who would need to travel long distances to attend a particular school.

Currently, over 80 percent of Penn students come from outside of Pennsylvania.

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