Dartmouth and Yale have reported record numbers of early admission applicants, reflecting a trend seen early in the fall. Yale admitted 13.4 percent of its nonbinding early action applicants this fall, significantly lower than its 18.1 percent rate last year. Yale both had an increased amount of interest in its early action program and was simultaneously scaling back its acceptances because of an unusually high enrollment rate from last year. It had 5,557 applicants this year, up from last year's 4,888, but it also admitted just 742 students, 143 fewer than 2007. Yale sent twice as many rejection letters and deferred 47.6 percent to the regular round, down from 65 percent from last year.
Dartmouth received 1,550 applications for its binding early decision program and accepted 401 of those students, just two more than the prior year, even though the number of applicants went up 9 percent. Dartmouth also reports an 8 percentage point increase in financial aid requests over last year.
Cornell has similarly seen a 10 percent increase in the number of binding early decision applications, from 3,094 to 3,405. Apparently the number of admits also went up, because acceptance rates held relatively steady around 37 percent. However, the university reports an increase in denials (similar to Yale's), from 34.84 to 40.23, while the percentage of applicants deferred into the regular admissions pool declined from 25.89 to 21.53.
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