PENN admits 3,769 of 22,922 for Class of 2012

Admit rate increases to 16.4 percent
Penn only Ivy thus far to not set a record-low acceptance rate, admits 3,769 students
By: Naomi Jagoda
Posted: 4/2/08
In contrast to the other Ivy League schools, Penn's overall acceptance rate increased to 16.4 percent for the class of 2012.
Penn is the only Ivy League school thus far that has not reported a record-low acceptance rate.
This admissions cycle, Penn admitted a total of 3,769 of 22,922 applications. Last year, 22,646 students applied and 3,628 were accepted - a rate of 16 percent.
The number of regular decision applicants accepted also increased, from 2,450 to 2,622. The regular-decision acceptance rate was 13.9 percent this year, up from 11 percent last year.
Interim Dean of Admissions Eric Kaplan said the office accepted more students this year because it is unable to predict what percentage of the admitted students will decide to attend Penn in the fall. Last year, 66 percent of admitted students chose to attend Penn.
Kaplan said he expects this year's yield rate to drop.
Difficulties in predicting the yield are due to recent changes in early-acceptance and financial-aid policies at a number of colleges nationwide.
"All of our historical data about yield went out the window this year because Harvard and Princeton eliminated their early policies," Kaplan said.
Average SAT scores increased this year from 2137 to 2153 out of a possible 2400.
Kaplan said he thinks it is possible that this year's applicant pool, which likely includes students who in past years would have applied early to Harvard and Princeton, might have led to the higher scores.
More minority students were accepted this year.
The number of black students admitted went up from 422 to 432, the number of Latino students accepted increased from 311 to 355 and the number of Asian-American applicants accepted increased from 769 to 851.
There was a decrease in the number of Native-American students admitted, down from 20 last year to 15 this year.
The number of international students accepted increased to 471 for the class of 2012.
The year before, the University accepted 454.
Like last year, students were accepted from all 50 states.
Despite the higher acceptance rate, Kaplan said he is happy with the quality of the accepted students.
"Everyone in the office continues to be really impressed by the pool and in awe of their accomplishments," he said.
Accepted students are glad they received good news from Penn.
"I'm very excited," said Abby Denburg, a senior at The Dalton School in New York City. "I applied early and got deferred, so I've been in love with Penn for a long time."
*This article has been corrected as of 7:27 a.m. on Wednesday, April 2. We incorrectly stated that the total number of applicants this year was 22,292.
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