Brown’s Undergraduate Applications Increase to Record 31,000 for Class of 2015

Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Brown University received almost 31,000 applications for undergraduate admission for the next academic year, an all-time high and part of a 50 percent increase over three years.

The university got its highest-ever number of international applicants, about 4,800, from countries including China, Korea, India, Pakistan and Turkey, James Miller, dean of admission for the university in Providence, Rhode Island, said today in a statement. The total number of applications rose about 2.9 percent from 30,136 a year ago.

After last year’s application surge of about 20 percent, the university couldn’t accommodate assembling hundreds of boxes of paper forms in its undergraduate admissions office and was forced to open a satellite office on campus. Brown switched to an entirely electronic format, Miller said.

“We are glad to be conducting this year’s admission cycle in a more efficient, environmentally friendly, online-imaging process, which has eliminated the need for us to print, track and file more than 1 million individual pieces of paper,” Miller said in the statement.

Brown, a member of the Ivy League group of eight universities in the northeastern U.S., admitted 9 percent of applicants last year. Undergraduate tuition, room, board and fees are $51,360 for the 2010-11 school year.

About 8,400 students attend Brown, including about 6,000 undergraduates. Next year’s freshman class is expected to be about 1,485 students, Miller said.

Harvard, Columbia

Undergraduate applications to two Ivy League colleges, Harvard University and Columbia University, also rose to all- time highs, the institutions announced Jan. 14 in separate statements

Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, received almost 35,000 applications for the next academic year, a 15 percent increase from 30,489 for the current year. At Columbia, in New York, applications rose 32 percent to 34,587, from 26,179 a year earlier.

Applications at Stanford University near Palo Alto, California, climbed 6.8 percent to 34,200 from 32,022 a year ago, Bob Patterson, director of admission, said Jan. 13 in an interview.

Brown, founded in 1764, lists among its alumni Meredith Whitney, the financial analyst who heads New York-based Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-18/brown-s-undergraduate-applications-increase-to-record-31-000.html