Yield for Class of 2015 increases slightly

The yield for the Class of 2015 is 57.2 percent, the Princeton Alumni Weekly reported on July 6. This number is a slight increase from last year, when the yield reached 56.9 percent.

The University initially offered admission to 2,282 students out of a record-high 27,189 applicants, leading to an initial 8.39 percent admission rate. In July, PAW announced that the University had offered admission to five students from the wait-list. All five accepted the offer.

The University did not respond to multiple requests for updated numbers.

The number of students admitted off the wait-list for 2015 appears to have dropped significantly from the 159 students accepted off the wait-list for the Class of 2014. While the ‘Prince’ has not been able to obtain the final enrollment of wait-listed students, this year’s reported number is much smaller than those of previous years. The Class of 2013 contains 31 students admitted off the wait-list, and the Class of 2012 contains 86.

The number of female and male students in the Class of 2015 is approximately equal, with 49 percent of the students female and 51 percent male. 12.3 percent of the students are children of Princeton alumni. The number of students indicating that they would like to join the engineering school is 302, and there were 121 women in that group as of mid-June. Both of these numbers are records, according to the engineering school.

Yield rates across the Ivy League have fluctuated over the last few years, with the exception of the University of Pennsylvania, which has maintained a 63 percent yield for the fourth consecutive year. Harvard reported a yield of 77 percent in 2011, up from 75.5 percent the year before. Yale experienced a 65.2 percent yield, down from 67 percent in 2010. Dartmouth’s yield also fell from 55 percent in 2010 to 52 percent in 2011. Cornell appears to have experienced the greatest success among the Ivy League schools who have reported their admissions statistics, with a yield rate that reached 52 percent in 2011 — an increase of nearly 3 percentage points from the year before.

This class is the last before the University reinstates an early admission program in the form of single-choice early action this fall for members of the Class of 2016. From 1995 to 2011, applicants had the option of applying to the University through an early decision program.

While the University saw significantly higher yield rates under the early admission program — 69 percent for the Class of 2010 and 68 percent for the Class of 2011 — Harvard experienced a drop of only a few percentage points when it dropped early action, reporting an 80 percent yield for its Class of 2010 and a 79 percent yield for its Class of 2011.