Deferred from the early applicant pool, Abby Coven was in shock when she finally found out online yesterday if the University had accepted her.
The Short Hills, N.J., high school senior began her futile attempts to access the Penn Web site at about 4:30 p.m. yesterday to learn her fate.
Half an hour later, Penn made its admissions decisions available online to the approximately 18,800 candidates for spots in the Class of 2009.
The University also sent out decision letters the old-fashioned way to all applicants yesterday.
While other schools, including Harvard, Stanford and Yale, released statistics yesterday, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Stetson said that acceptance rates and other statistics would not be available until next week -- after he briefs University President Amy Gutmann on the results.
He said only that he believes the Class of 2009 "will be an exceptional group."
As there were roughly 3 percent more applicants this year than last and a slightly larger percentage of the class -- roughly 48 percent -- was accepted early, Stetson predicted in February that this year's acceptance rate would be around 14 percent. That would be an all-time low for the University.
As a result of the early decision process, 1,170 students were admitted in December into what should ultimately be a class of approximately 2,400.
Stetson said that "the great majority" of students will check their decisions today online, as opposed to waiting for the decision in the mail.
Associate Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Operations Margaret Porigow said that traffic started hitting the Web site as early as 1 p.m.
In the first two minutes after the decisions were made available, she said, 532 students were able to find out whether Penn had accepted them. By 6 p.m., approximately 2,800 had viewed their decisions.
"I am a little surprised that it isn't more," Porigow said. She added that the high volume of people trying to access the site was causing delays.
Accessing the decisions was "a little bit slower than we anticipated," she said, "but the student are getting through."
Although Penn has had problems in the past with delays in accessing decisions, admissions officers thought that it would not be a problem this year because the school contracted a service provider in Texas to remotely host the Web site.
Oceanside, N.Y., high school senior Chris Matles was forced to wait some 10 to 15 minutes for the site to load before receiving the good news that he had been accepted. He is planning to come to Penn -- his first-choice school since eighth grade.
"It's cooler to see the decision online," he said, adding that he was not particularly bothered about the wait. "I'm excited to be [at Penn] next year, and I hope it's fun."
Porigow called the online decision process successful overall.
"Usually by now we have angry people calling" to complain about trouble with the site, she said. "We're not getting those this year."
And although Coven had to wait three hours before she could access the site, she said some of her friends did not experience the same difficulties.
With her mother in the room for support, the two-time Penn summer program veteran was ecstatic when she found out she was accepted.
"It's just the best day of my life. It was everything I ever wanted," she said, adding that she had expected to receive a rejection letter after being initially deferred.
"I was freaking out all day," the Millburn High School student said, adding that it was especially difficult to concentrate on classes as all the Ivy League schools released their admissions decisions today.
Harvard admitted 2,074 out of an applicant pool of 22,796 -- an admission rate of 9.1 percent that the Harvard Web site touts as "the most competitive" in its history.
Yale admitted 1,880 out of 19,448 applicants, with a 9.7 percent acceptance rate.
Stanford admitted 2,412 out of an applicant pool of 20,194.
