The most visited posts in
the past two weeks:

Article Tags

“college admissions”

Hey, future class of 2015:

Decision Date (March 30) for Princeton and other major universities is drawing ever closer.

So, how are you feeling? Maybe you think you’re already set thanks to a good legacy background or some killer athletic prowess. Or maybe you’ll be sitting at your computer in four days, nail-bitingly paranoid: what if my school tells me I’m accepted but then realizes they rejected me? You mean like University of Delaware’s computer glitch this year? Or the colossal mishap of University of California, San Diego that affected 29,000 applicants?

Oops, yeah, don’t think about that.

Maybe you found some spelling mistakes in your college apps (personal story). Maybe your parents are already suing your pre-school for ruining your chances of getting into an Ivy League school.

But I’m here to tell you that it’s going to be okay. Take a deep breath. Do yourself a favor and don’t log on to College Confidential forums for a while.

And if it helps, the Princeton Tiger knows how you feel:

Mar 26, 2011

2015 Admissions Decisions near: Did you check for typos?

By Vivienne Chen
Posted in Musings Also tagged , , , , Leave a comment

Recently, bloggers have gotten ahold of President John F. Kennedy’s old college application essays, and boy, were standards different back then.

EDIT: JFK’s Harvard essay reads like this: (Source)

“The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I felt that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university. I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt that it is not just another college but is a university with something definite to offer. Then too, I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a “Harvard man” is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain.”

But wait… they found his application essay to Princeton was nearly identical.

Hey now, cut the late Mr. President some slack. It’s not like we all didn’t do a little tweaking on our Common App. (”Sure, Yale’s my top choice…”) On the other hand, he only spent 6 weeks at Princeton before going to Harvard.

Critics argue that if Kennedy applied today, he would not have been admitted to an Ivy League school with these essays. But honestly, if JFK could reapply knowing everything we do today, wouldn’t his essay be entitled “How I’m Going to Become a Pimpin’ Ladykiller/President of the United States Before My Untimely Assassination That Will Go Down in History as a Government Conspiracy”?

That’s what I called mine.

Moral of the story to Princeton students aspiring for elected office: guard your college apps.

Jan 22, 2011

JFK’s Princeton College App: It’s Okay To Copy/Paste

By Vivienne Chen
Posted in In the news, Internet Also tagged , , , Leave a comment

Princeton received a record 27,115 applications for the class of 2015, according to a statement from the university. The number is a 3.3 percent increase from last year’s 26,247 applications for the class of 2014, when applications jumped by almost 20 percent over the class of 2013.

The university intends to enroll 1,300 freshmen in the fall, which means that the admission rate will definitely be over at least 5 percent.

“The depth of the applicant pool is impressive, and, as in previous years, we will have extremely difficult decisions to make in the coming weeks because of the quality of this year’s applicants,” Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said in the statement. “With the increase in applications, it’s clear that the University’s academic excellence, students’ unrivaled access to world-class faculty members and our generous financial aid policy continue to have tremendous appeal to prospective students.”

The biggest trend is online–only 1 percent of applicants submitted a paper version of the application (Why? Who are these 270 high school seniors?) and almost all of them applied with the Common Application.

The 27,115 applications have set a record for the seventh year in a row, though the jump in applicants is markedly smaller than the 20 percent last year.

College Confidential? Unimpressed.

Screen shot 2011-01-19 at 3.45.12 PM

Update:

Other schools also set records…that were perhaps more impressive. (And that’s why we do these posts, to impress ourselves.) Harvard received 35,000 applications, a 15 percent increase from last year, according to Bloomberg. Dartmouth and Penn saw similar jumps, and Brown saw a 2.9 increase to 31,000 students. Columbia saw applications rise 32 percent, to 34,587.

One reason these schools are setting records year after year could be that it’s getting easier than ever to apply to colleges, thanks to the Common App. According to the Cooperative Institutional Research Program’s Freshman Survey, the percentage of students who applied to 7 or more colleges doubled to 23 percent from 1999 to 2009.

Jan 19, 2011

Class of 2015 sets new applications record, College Confidential is like, meh.

By Angela Wu
Posted in Goings On, In the news Also tagged , , , 2 Comments

Tina Fey as the Admissions Fairy. (Comedycentral.com)

Tina Fey is in discussions to play a Princeton admissions officer in a movie based on the 2009 novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, a former Princeton admissions officer.

(I chose this picture because this is the only way I could imagine Tina Fey as Admissions Officer: disgusted with your inflated resume, and handing out acceptance letters with a tiny, glittery, handwritten “Yes!” much like former admission dean Fred Hargadon did in the day. Also I was just pleasantly surprised that it existed and wanted to share that with you all.)

Admission is about Portia Nathan, an admission officer at Princeton who sees her job as “building a better fruit basket,” which ostensibly means achieving the right balance of “Olympic athletes, authors of legitimately published books, Siemens prize winners, working film or Broadway actors, International Tchaikovsky Competition violinists.” (Which one are you?) (Haha, no, really. Seeing as Korelitz writes about Nathan skimming the applications of applicants with “1990 birth dates,” which one are you, Class of 2012?)

The film is still in development, but according to TheWrap, Fey has read the book and expressed interest in the role.

Update: From Ruthie, in the comments, Korelitz is married to Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Princeton professor Paul Muldoon.

Jan 14, 2011

Tina Fey in talks to play Princeton admissions officer

By Angela Wu
Posted in Goings On Also tagged , , One comment
Princeton Preview 2010

Princeton Preview 2010

Remember when you were a high school senior, waiting nervously for that acceptance letter from Princeton? Well, it’s that time of year again. On April 1st (that’s this Thursday), at 5:00 p.m. EST, Ivy League applicants will receive their acceptances and rejections.

So, what are high school students and their parents thinking about this admissions season?

The Princeton Review released its annual College Hopes and Worries Survey on March 24.

With the Great Recession ongoing, the major worry is money.

  • 86% of applicants and their parents said financial aid is “very necessary.”
  • 68% said that the recession has affected their college decisions.
  • Due to the economy, 51% said they were applying to “more ‘financial aid safety’ schools,” 25% to “schools closer to home” and 24% to colleges “with lower sticker prices.”
  • 39% said their biggest worry was that they “will get into first-choice college, but won’t have sufficient funds/financial aid to attend.”

But if money wasn’t an issue?  What would be their dream college? Princeton ranked 4th among students, behind Stanford, Harvard and NYU. Among parents, we did a little better, ranking 2nd only to Stanford.

Mar 27, 2010

Dream colleges and money woes

By Miriam Geronimus
Posted in In the news Also tagged , , , , , , Leave a comment