Early Decision applications decrease 1.5 percent

The number of early-decision applications to Penn dropped slightly for the second year in a row, admissions officials announced yesterday.

Penn received 3,929 early-decision applications this year, a 1.8 percent fall from last year's 4,001 applications.

Interim Dean of Admissions Eric Kaplan said he expects early-decision applicants to make up 45 to 48 percent of the class of 2012, which translates to an acceptance rate of about 30 percent.

Many other schools, particularly those that offer a non-binding early-admissions program, saw record numbers of early applications, reaping the benefits of the decision by Harvard and Princeton universities and the University of Virginia eliminated their early-admissions programs.

Early applications at Yale University rose by 36 percent; at Georgetown University by 31 percent; and at the University of Chicago by 42 percent. All three schools have non-binding early action programs.

"They're getting a lot of runoff of students who want to apply to an early-action program but now can't apply to Harvard," said Steven Goodman, an admissions consultant in Washington, D.C.

Goodman also predicted that the yield for those early applicant pools would see a dip.

Still, among early-decision schools, Penn was the only peer institution to report a drop thus far. Brown University had a 6 percent increase, Duke University saw a 7 percent increase, and Columbia and Dartmouth universities also saw modest increases, according to The New York Times.

This year's drop in early applications, along with a decrease last year of 2.5 percent, comes after a 21-percent surge in 2005.

But Kaplan said he wasn't concerned about the possibility of any downward trend, instead focusing on a record number of international applications, which crossed the 600 mark for the first time.

The exact breakdown of applications by location, school and ethnicity will not be available until admissions decisions are sent, but Kaplan said they were similar to last year's numbers.

Applications from the east coast were slightly down this year, but more applied from western states than in 2006.

"We've had such a mature [applicant] pool in some areas . that at a certain point, it can't go any higher," Kaplan said.

Admissions experts say regular-decision applications should be on the rise across the country as another result of Harvard and Princeton eliminating early admissions.

"This is going to be a record-breaking year" for regular applications, said Michelle Hernandez of Hernandez College Consulting.

Students who would have been accepted early at Harvard and Princeton, and students deferred from schools that saw their early applications spike will send out a flood of regular applications, she said.

Kaplan said that it would be hard to tell how many regular applications will come in, but he said that 1,500 students were admitted early to Harvard and Princeton last year.

"Because the students couldn't do so this year, they'll have to apply regular and are likely to apply to peer institutions like Penn."

- Staff writer Cecily Wu contributed reporting to this article.

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