Princeton may convert rooms, hire more faculty to accommodate large Class of 2016

The University will increase the capacity of freshman rooms and repurpose residential college social spaces to house students from the larger-than-expected Class of 2016. Additionally, many University programs will also expand their operations to meet the greater demand from the freshman class, in particular by increasing the number of sections for large, popular introductory courses and increasing the number of Writing Seminar courses offered.
For example, the larger student body means the University may need to hire part-time non-tenure track faculty, Dean of the Faculty David Dobkin said. The University does not intend to ask current faculty to increase their teaching load, he added.
Last week, University officials confirmed that the University had overenrolled the Class of 2016 by between 50 and 65 students and would not admit any students off its admission wait list. Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said in an email that the 66.7 percent yield “exceeded our expectations.”
This was the first year since 2006 that the University offered an early round of admission. Of the students who were admitted through the University’s single-choice early action program, 86 percent ultimately decided to attend Princeton.
In an interview, Rapelye said her office was unaware what the yield was for students admitted regular decision. Yet if 86 percent of the 726 students admitted early — or 624 total students — decided to matriculate to Princeton, then in order to achieve an overall yield of 66.7 percent, 773 of the remaining 1,369 students who were admitted regular decision decided on Princeton. This would mean that Princeton’s regular decision yield — roughly 56.5 percent — would be exactly the same as last year’s overall yield.
The University aims to fill a class of 1,308 students, yet this year 1,397 students — or 66.7 percent of the 2,095 total students offered admission — accepted. Some of these will defer their admission or withdraw from Princeton for a number of reasons in what is called the “summer melt,” Rapelye explained. The final class size will end up being between 50 and 65 students over the target, she predicted.
Rapelye explained that Princeton’s adoption of early action, which coincided with Harvard’s decision to renew an early program in February 2011, made it very difficult for her office to predict the yield. This changing admission landscape in the Ivy League led to the over-enrollment.
“We simply didn’t have a benchmark for this year. The last time Princeton had early action was long enough ago that it didn’t apply,” Rapelye explained.
This year’s yield will serve as a benchmark for future years, Rapelye explained. She noted that the University has not yet decided whether it will admit a smaller-than-average Class of 2017 in order to accommodate the large Class of 2016.
“We will certainly be taking into consideration housing on this campus for the next few years, but we haven’t made that decision yet, and I don’t think we’ll make it for a bit,” she said.
Rapelye said the University is working with Housing and Real Estate Services, the Writing Program, the Freshman Seminar Program and other offices to adapt to the over-enrollment.
In an interview in March after announcing the University’s admission numbers, Rapelye said the University offered “ a very conservative number” of admissions because the University had limited bed space.
“We have bed space for 1,300 students, and we can’t go over. So we’re looking to hopefully come in just under 1,300 and would like to go into the wait list in May and June,” she said at the time.
But on Monday, Undergraduate Housing Manager Angela Hodgeman said in an email that the University should be able to house the additional students. Hodgeman explained that Housing and Real Estate Services is planning to increase the capacity of certain freshman rooms that in recent years had been housing fewer students than they could potentially accommodate.
“For instance, typically a handful of rooms were triples in the past. The last few years they were doubles. They will go back to being freshman triples, their normal capacity,” she said.
Additionally, Hodgeman said the University will repurpose residential college spaces such as lounges and studies into undergraduate housing. Even before the over-enrollment, Whitman College was already in the process of converting study rooms into single rooms.
The 109 rising juniors and seniors currently on the Housing wait list may also be affected by the size of the Class of 2016. Hodgeman explained that it is unlikely these upperclassmen will be placed in a residential college, like some have been in the past. However, no rooms in upperclassman housing will increase in capacity, Hodgeman said.
The large size of the Class of 2016 will also have ripple effects on staffing for courses and other elements of the freshman academic experience.
Director of the Writing Program Amanda Irwin Wilkins GS ’05 said the University will offer five extra sections of the freshman Writing Seminar in order to meet the increased need, increasing the total number of sections over the two semesters from 112 to 117. Wilkins explained that the University decided to increase the total number of seminars by five because it anticipated it would need to place roughly 60 extra students into writing seminars, which have a capacity of 12 freshmen.
Wilkins noted that the Writing Program would both be asking current instructors to teach additional sections as well as bringing in supplemental faculty members to teach Writing Seminars, though none will be teaching more than a full-time course load. She said that because the University has many postdoctoral lecturers, who make up most of the Writing Program instructors, she was not worried about meeting the need for additional faculty.
“We have an embarrassment of riches, and it’s a privilege to go a tiny bit deeper into that pool,” Wilkins said.
Wilkins said in an email that the extra seminars would cost the University additional money. Dobkin, whose office manages the program's teaching budget, declined to comment on how much additional money the expansion would cost.
Deputy Dean of the College Clayton Marsh ’85, who oversees the Freshman Seminar program, said in an email that the University had already planned to expand the program for the upcoming school year to approximately 85 seminars. Marsh explained that this expansion was unrelated to the increase in class size but that it will position the Freshman Seminar program to meet the extra students in the Class of 2016.
However, Marsh did say that the University would have to increase capacity for entry-level classes that are popular among freshmen, such as prerequisites for B.S.E. students or introductory courses in computer science and economics. Marsh said that Dobkin and Dean of the College Valerie Smith are working together to ensure staffing for the increased sections.
Other programs that partially depend on the size of the freshman class will not change in response to the increased class size. Director of the Bridge Year Program John Luria said in an email that the program will not admit a greater number of students to compensate for the size of the Class of 2016. Interclub Council Chair Chris Merrick ’08 said in an email that he did not expect the eating clubs to make any changes to adapt to the higher number of potential eating-club members in the Class of 2016.
Director of Undergraduate Financial Aid Robin Moscato said in an email that the financial aid awards for the freshman class would not be affected, as the size of individual aid is independent of the size of the class.
The University is reaching the end of its plan to increase the size of the undergraduate student body. By this fall, the University planned to increase the number of undergraduates to 5,200, an 11 percent increase in the size of the student body since the gradual expansion began in 2005.
Senior writer Catherine Duazo contributed reporting.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2012/05/21/30989/

Princeton over-enrolls class of 2016, none taken from waitlist

The University will not admit anyone off its admission wait list after more students than anticipated accepted offers of admission, Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye confirmed Sunday night.

“We closed the wait list last week since the yield on the admitted students exceeded our expectations and we are over our target number for the Class of 2016,” she said in an email.

University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua was not immediately able on Sunday night to provide exactly how many students accepted admission offers.

The University admitted 2,095 students, 726 of which were offered admission during the early action round this fall. This was the first two-round admission cycle the University offered since 2006.

The University aims to fill a class of 1,300 students, but it is unclear what the size of the new class will be. The latest news highlights the complicated calculus university admission offices must conduct when guessing how many students will accept offers of admission. Princeton’s yield for the Class of 2015 was 57.2 percent; because the University over-enrolled the target class of 1,300 students, Princeton’s yield must have increased by over 5 percent.

Harvard, which also returned to early admission beginning with the Class of 2016, saw a roughly 5 percent jump in its yield to nearly 81 percent.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2012/05/14/30977/

Updated: U. overshoots Class of 2016 by more than 50 students

The University overenrolled the Class of 2016 by between 50 to 65 students and therefore will not admit anyone off its admission wait list, University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua said in an email Monday evening.

The University aimed to admit enough students to build a freshman class of 1,308 students, Mbugua said, but a higher number of students than anticipated accepted offers of admission.

“We closed the wait list last week since the yield on the admitted students exceeded our expectations and we are over our target number for the Class of 2016,” Dean of Admission Janet Rapleye said in an email Sunday night.

Of the 2,095 admitted students, 66.7 percent accepted Princeton’s offer, Mbugua said, a ten percentage point increase from last year’s 56.5 percent yield. The large increase is partly due to the reinstatement of early admission, which was offered this year for the first time since 2006. Of the 726 students admitted under single-choice early action, 86 percent of those ultimately decided to attend Princeton.

The latest news highlights the complicated calculus university admission offices must conduct when guessing how many students will accept offers of admission.

Harvard, which also returned to early admission beginning with the Class of 2016, saw a roughly 5 percent jump in its yield to nearly 81 percent.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2012/05/14/30977/

Stanford Accepted No Students from the Waitlist for Class of 2016

Due to a three percent increase from last year’s yield rate, the Class of 2016 will have about 50 more students than anticipated by the Office of Admission.

Administrators across undergraduate departments are taking steps to accommodate this larger entering class, including keeping Gavilan as an all-frosh dorm, hiring more Pre-Major Advisors (PMAs) and potentially hiring more Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) professors and Thinking Matters teaching fellows.

Freshman class size has steadily increased over the past three years from 1,675 to 1,709 to 1,766 entering students, which is the current approximation for the Class of 2016, according to Dean of Admission Richard Shaw.

“Right now, the count is 1,786 [students], but some will withdraw over summer,” Shaw wrote in an email to The Daily.

The class of 2014 and 2015 will also gain 27 transfer students next year, according to Shaw.

Stanford’s yield rate has been consistently increasing from 64 percent in 2002 to this year’s 73 percent rate.

Because so many students accepted their offer of admission, Shaw said that all students who were placed on the waitlist were released and admission for the Class of 2016 is officially closed.

Although Stanford Student Housing was planning to convert Gavilan in Florence Moore Hall (FloMo) into a four-class dorm for the 2012-13 academic year, the residence will have to remain all-frosh in order to accommodate the large freshman class.

Fran’Cee Brown-McClure, student affairs officer for ResEd, wrote in an email to The Daily that dorms in FloMo often change their class composition from year to year.

“FloMo is the type of dorm that can accommodate a wide distribution of students depending on the needs of that year,” Brown-McClure wrote.

Brown-McClure added that although the number of incoming freshmen will be higher next year, there is adequate residential staff in place to meet their needs.

In addition to the strain on student housing, the office of Undergraduate Advising and Research (UAR) will also see effects of the larger incoming class.

Freshmen are normally assigned to Pre-Major Advisors (PMAs) in groups of four to six other students. UAR has hired additional PMAs for next year in order to maintain the intimate size of PMA groups.

In an email to The Daily, Dean of Freshmen and Undergraduate Advising Julie Lythcott-Haims ’89 wrote that UAR is ready for the incoming class.

“Luckily, our recruitment efforts this year already yielded the largest number of PMAs ever, so we’re in good shape on that front,” Lythcott-Haims wrote.

Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education Harry Elam wrote in an email to The Daily that UAR is developing a new online advising tool in addition to the PMA program. The new tool, called “Productive Pathways,” would help freshmen select courses and make sure they feel supported during their freshman year.

UAR has also been planning to hire two new Academic Directors (ADs), independent of the Class of 2016 increased yield, as part of an effort to bring the overall AD-to-student ratio down, Lythcott-Haims wrote.

Elam added that more PWR instructors are needed, and that the new required freshman program, Thinking Matters, may have to hire more post-doctoral fellows to lead discussion sections in order to maintain small class sizes.

Despite these necessary adjustments, administrators said they were thrilled with the larger-than-usual size of the incoming class.

“On top of the obvious things – the academic excellence and infinite possibility – I imagine the genuine affection we all feel for the place comes through and matters to admits,” Lythcott-Haims wrote about why the yield rate was so high this year.

“It is good news that Stanford has had such a strong response,” Shaw wrote. “The University has the capacity to manage this overage.”

Lythcott-Haims added that there is only one potential problem with the freshman class size increasing.

“In UAR, we love freshmen, so there is no such thing as too many of them, except to the extent we can’t fit them all in MemAud,” she said, referring to New Student Orientation events held in Memorial Auditorium.


http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/05/14/university-braces-for-large-incoming-class/

Northwestern Will Take 6 Students from the Waitlist for Class of 2016

The class of 2016 has broken records again, this time with an impressive yield for Northwestern.

Of the 4,895 admitted students, 43 percent are choosing to enroll this fall.
The 2,086 students who committed to NU are expected to include higher numbers of minority, transfer and international students than in previous years, said Michael Mills, the associate provost for university enrollment.
This is the second year in a row in which NU has seen a 5 percent increase in yield. The class of 2015 had 38 percent of admitted students enroll, and the class of 2014 had 33 percent. Mills said such a large increase is rare.
“I haven’t seen very many instances of back-to-back years with a 5 percentage point increase in yield,” he said. “That’s more or less a once-in-a-career observation, and it happened again this year.”
Mills said NU will take about half a dozen students off the waitlist for Medill because its yield was lower than expected, but no one from the waitlist will be taken from any other school. Last year, no students were taken from NU’s waitlist, he said.
In addition, international student enrollment increased from 6.7 to 7.2 percent last year. African Americans will make up 7.8 percent of the class, a rise from the 7.2 percent for the class of 2015.
The number of Latino students decreased from 9.1 percent last year to 8.6 percent for the incoming class. The number of low-income students who enrolled decreased as well, from 14 percent last year to 13 percent this year.
NU also had more minority applicants this year, Mills said. Classes often lose students over the summer, which Mills said he thinks will increase the incoming class’s diversity percentages. Last year, the class of 2015 lost about 70 students, and Mills said he believes this year’s decrease will be similar.
“It’s slightly more diverse than last year’s,” Mills said. “That’s another aspect of the freshman class that we are thrilled with.”
For the past two years, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions has cut the number of admitted students by 800 with the goal of having 2,025 students enroll.
Previous classes were larger, which placed a stress on residence halls and caused individual schools to add class sections and hire more faculty. This year, the class size is smaller, dropping from 2,107 last year to 2,086. Mills said NU plans to take 30 more transfer students than last year.
Overall, he said the incoming class had higher levels of academic rigor in high school, as indicated by grade point averages, test scores, class ranks and Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams.
Mills said the yield was especially abnormal because though NU accepts higher achieving students, these students receive competing offers from other top-tier schools, placing NU’s yield in jeopardy. Mills said students who have committed to NU may still end up attending other schools if they get off of other schools’ waitlists.
Factors that have contributed to the increasing matriculation at NU include the breadth of social and academic opportunities at NU and the strong groups that host prospective students, plan the Wildcat Days and give tours, Mills said.
Communication sophomore Daniel Flores is a tour guide and said he was excited about the increase in yield. He said Caitlin Smith, assistant director of admissions and tour guide supervisor, told the guides that they were getting positive feedback about their tours on comment cards, and some prospective students even mention specific tour guides in their application essays.
“They really love their tour. They can remember their tour guide vividly,” he said. “They just enjoyed the tour that much and it just made them want to come to Northwestern that much more.”
The Office of Undergraduate Admissions also hosts Wildcat Days for admitted students to visit campus. Spencer Gellman, a member of the class of 2016, came to Evanston from New Jersey to see NU and said his experience at Wildcat Days factored into his decision to attend NU.
“I decided to go to Northwestern because I was in love with the facilities there, the wonderful campus and the strong academic reputation,” Gellman said. “I was definitely impressed by the engineering program. It’s extremely strong at Northwestern.”
Flores said he was glad that NU students got to play a role in recruiting future students.
“We are there to showcase and show how great it is,” he said. “It’s not just the school. We’re trying to put our part in and resonate with a lot of students that are coming to visit.”

http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/campus/class-of-2016-has-record-yield-1.2739814

Harvard Will Accept 25 Students from the Waitlist for Class of 2016

In the first year of Harvard’s renewed early admissions program, the yield for the class of 2016 soared to nearly 81 percent, a significant increase from last year’s rate of 77 percent, the University announced on Thursday.
This year’s yield, which measures the percentage of accepted students who choose to enroll at Harvard, marks the first time this number has reached 80 percent since the class of 1975 was admitted.

"It is a major jump," Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said.

In December, Harvard admitted 772 students under its early action program. Another 1,260 acceptances were extended in March. Overall, 1,641 of those admitted to the Class of 2016 accepted their offer of admission from Harvard.

Due to this high yield a very small number of students will be taken off the waitlist, approximately 25, Fitzsimmons said. The admissions office began reviewing waitlisted applications on Thursday, he added.

Though this year’s yield is not the highest the College has ever seen, Fitzsimmons said it is certainly the highest in the modern era of highly competitive college admissions, especially at the most selective institutions.

"It was a very different world. Harvard and our peer institutions were not anywhere near the national and international institutions they are today. It’s really almost like apples and oranges," he said.

Fitzsimmons said he attributes this significant increase in the yield to three factors—the return of early action, the continuing poor economic climate, and an increase in awareness of new programs at the College.

Fitzsimmons said that the renewed early action program was expected to have a significant influence on the yield. According to Fitzsimmons, students who apply early typically have a stronger interest in Harvard than those who apply regular decision, and are thus less likely to apply elsewhere when admitted early and are more likely to attend.

Fitzsimmons added that the College’s financial aid program continues to encourage students to matriculate.

"The financial aid program continues to be paramount in people’s decisions, even the people who might not be on financial aid, but who see what might happen to them and to their own jobs and their own financial situations," he said.

In addition, Fitzsimmons named the increased public profile of a number of newly introduced programs at the College—including new engineering programs at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences—as factors in students’ decision to matriculate.

Of the other Ivy League universities, only Dartmouth has released its yield rate of 49.5 percent. Harvard’s yield is typically the highest among peer institutions.

—Staff writer Elizabeth S. Auritt can be reached at eauritt@college.harvard.edu.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/5/10/admissions-yield-2016-action/

MIT Accepts No Students from Waitlist for Class of 2016

For the first time in seven years, no students will be admitted off the waitlist for the incoming freshman class. By last Tuesday, 1,130 prospective students, or 70 percent of admitted students, confirmed their enrollment at MIT for the coming fall — MIT’s highest yield ever.

According to Dean of Admissions Stuart Schmill ’86, 100 fewer students were admitted this year relative to last year, to create the same size class as the 2015s. The admissions office chose to lessen the number of students admitted because early admissions was reinstated at Harvard and Princeton last year; since applicants who were interested in those schools might have already been admitted during the early admissions cycle, those applying to MIT were more likely to say yes.

“Students who applied early to one of those schools and were admitted may not have applied to us,” Schmill wrote in an email to The Tech, “where in the past they might have [applied to MIT].” To estimate just how many students to accept — such that the class size would work out right — admissions checked yield numbers from when Harvard and Princeton previously had early admission programs.

“[We] thought the yield would go up about 2 percentage points — not the 4 points it actually went up,” Schmill said.

The admissions office was “fully expecting” to take students from the waitlist this year and were “disappointed not to be able to offer admission to some really excellent students who were on the waitlist.” These students have been informed that the class is full.

“Rather than have them wait, we wanted to tell them as soon as possible,” Schmill explained.

Schmill credits the high yield of the class of 2016 to a spectacular CPW.

“CPW was outstanding because of the welcoming spirit of the entire campus,” he said, “We had a higher percentage of our admitted students attend than ever before, and they gave us great reviews on their follow up surveys.”

The class of 2016 boasts a higher percentage of women (46 percent) and underrepresented minorities (24 percent) than any other class, while 13 percent are first generation students. The SAT scores were the “highest ever” according to Schmill, with a math mean/median of 764/780 and verbal mean/median of 716/730.

The holistic (“arguably more important”) measures of the class, Schmill said, are “still as strong as ever.”

In addition, 25 transfer students, mostly sophomores, have accepted their offer of admission at MIT.

http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N24/admissions.html

Dartmouth Could Accept 20 ~ 30 Students from the Waitlist for Class of 2016

A total of 1,080 students accepted Dartmouth’s offer of admission to the Class of 2016 as of the College’s May 1 deadline for acceptance of admission, representing 49.5 percent of the 2,180 students who were accepted in this year’s admissions cycle, according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Maria Laskaris. This number is slightly higher than the number of students who had accepted admission offers at this time last year, when 1,071 of 2,179 students had accepted offers of admission to the Class of 2015, according to Laskaris.
“The yield came in pretty much where we expected,” Laskaris said. “We were a little conservative with the number of offers of admission because we don’t have a lot of wiggle room with first-year housing, so we aimed to come in under and use the waitlist to reach our target.”
The Admissions Office anticipates that more students will accept an offer for admission in the next several weeks, according to Laskaris.
“As always, a handful of students have requested extensions to have additional time to work out financial aid details, and we certainly want to give students that flexibility, so we have a few students yet to hear from” Laskaris said.
A total of 1,114 students accepted Dartmouth’s offer of admission to the Class of 2015 last year, representing a 52 percent yield.
The Admissions Office is aiming for a class of 1,100 to 1,110 students, which means they will admit students off the waitlist in the coming months, according to Laskaris.
“In the last four years, we have taken anywhere from 20 to 80 students off the waitlist, so it feels very much like our experience over the past few years,” Laskaris said. “We have a lot of eager students on the waitlist, and it’s nice to have the opportunity to add a few more students to the class.”
Apart from the elevated rate of 55 percent for the Class of 2014 two years ago, Dartmouth’s yield rate has consistently been around 50 percent in past years, ranging from 48 percent in 2009 to 52 percent in 2007, according to the Dartmouth College Fact Book.
Of the students who have accepted offers of admission, about 10 percent are international students, representing an increase in the 8 percent international student yield in past years, according to Laskaris.
“The Admissions Office has been working to increase our presence internationally, and many of our international alumni have been energized to help us recruit,” Laskaris said.
Additionally, College President Jim Yong Kim’s recent election to the World Bank presidency may have increased international students’ enthusiasm for Dartmouth, according to Laskaris.
“I also have to wonder if it has anything to do with President Kim’s world tour right around the time admissions came out,” Laskaris said. “He visited a lot of places where we have lots of applicants and admitted students.”
Laskaris also said that the media coverage of Kim’s nomination and selection, which also made people aware that Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner ’83 is an alumnus of the College, may have helped students and their families realize that “Dartmouth alumni do really well.”
The media attention surrounding hazing at the College did not seem affect the yield, Laskaris said.
“I know that students and families read the Rolling Stone article because we got specific questions about it,” Laskaris said.
Over Dimensions, the Admissions Office hosted a forum in which they addressed prospective students’ questions about the social life at the College, Laskaris said.
“We want to answer questions forthrightly,” Laskaris said. “We had a program with Dean [of the College Charlotte] Johnson specifically focused on building responsible communities, and we wanted to make sure that students and families had a chance to talk to us and share questions and express concerns so that we could help them make an informed decision.”
The questions about social life, however, did not seem to deviate much from similar questions in past years, according to Laskaris.
“When choosing among many good options, students look for who offers the best fit and where they see themselves thriving, so the question of social life has always been something that prospective students have wanted to ask,” Laskaris said.

http://thedartmouth.com/2012/05/04/news/yield