According to Nathan Scovronick, director of the undergraduate program for the Wilson School, 164 members of the Class of 2014 applied for admittance, compared to an average of 165 students over the past 10 years. Last year, about 180 students applied to the Wilson School. In 2010, 162 students submitted applications.
In April 2011, following a yearlong review of the program, the Wilson School announced it would end its selective admission policy beginning with the Class of 2015. The school also announced a set of prerequisite courses for entry into the major and introduced a new set of required courses for majors earlier this month.
These changes largely do not impact current majors or sophomore applicants but mainly apply to members of the Class of 2015 and all subsequent Wilson School majors.
Members of the Wilson School faculty said they were not surprised by the steady number of applicants this year.
“It’s very consistent with what we were expecting,” Wilson School professor Brandice Canes-Wrone, the undergraduate program faculty chair, said. She added that the consistency in the numbers may assuage fears that students apply for the concentration only because it is selective.
“In some respects, it’s reassuring,” she said. “My assumption is that they’re all very excited about studying public policy.”
Wilson School professor Robert Keohane also said he expected the stable numbers, noting that the main attributes of the school have not changed despite the recent overhaul.
“The fundamentals of the school and its comparative advantages and disadvantages with other Princeton majors remain similar to the past, so one should expect continuity more than change in numbers of applicants,” he said in an email.
Members of the Wilson School Undergraduate Program Student Advisory Committee also said that the steady numbers — at least in the short term — are what they anticipated.
“I don’t find it too surprising,” advisory member John Monagle ’12 said. “In general, people who apply to the Wilson School are interested in policy and international affairs.”
Monagle noted, though, that the application numbers could change over the next few years.
Elizabeth Katen-Narvell ’13, another member of the advisory committee, shared Monagle’s point of view, explaining that even if the total number of students applying were to remain the same, the composition might change.
“Even if the curriculum were to change, some people might be less interested, but others might be more interested,” Katen-Narvell said. Like Monagle, though, she said that changes were possible in the future. “There are likely to be changes for the freshman class given that it’s not selective, but no one can predict what those will be.”
Scovronick declined to comment on his reaction to this year’s application numbers.
The Wilson School will announce its decisions by March 16. The school has accepted 90 students every year since 1995.
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