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A great 60s-tastic shot of Nassau Hall. (photo from www.princeton.edu)

A great 60s-tastic shot of Nassau Hall. (photo from www.princeton.edu)

As of this afternoon, Princeton has offered 726 students spots in the Class of 2016 from a 3,443-person applicant pool, the University announced at 3pm today.  It’s the first time Princeton has offered students the option of applying Early Action–meaning that admitted students are not contractually obligated to attend, and may apply to other schools for Regular Decision if they so choose–since 2006, when Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Virginia all simultaneously eliminated their Early Decision programs.  Harvard took 772 students for the Class of 2016 out of 4,245 applicants, with an acceptance rate of 18.2%, while Yale had an 18% dip in Early Action applications this year, due in part to Princeton and Harvard’s reinstated programs.

Jury’s still out on how many admitted students will matriculate, though Dean Janet Rapeleye has said that the accepted Early Action students should represent about a third of the year’s total admits.

To read more about Princeton’s Early Action pool for 2016, including a demographic breakdown for admitted students, click here.

From www.collegeessayorganizer.com

From www.collegeessayorganizer.com

A whopping 3547 students applied Early Action to Princeton this year, according to the Prince. That’s up from 2,275 Early Decision applicants in 2006 (Though this is not a fair comparison since Early Action is not binding and the number of high school graduates has risen since 2006).

As we all know from when we applied, Princeton has been without an Early Action or Early Decision Program since the 2007 application cycle, when it eliminated Early Decision in an effort to increase socio-economic diversity by making the application process more fair. At the time, President Tilghman told the Prince that “Early Decision was advantaging those who were already advantaged.” Harvard and UVa eliminated their Early programs around the same time.

All three reinstated Early programs last year, after it became clear that other Universities weren’t following suit and Princeton was losing students to other schools with Early programs. But the new program is non-binding, so that students can compare financial aid packages. Perhaps this is the best of both worlds — allowing students to pick Princeton as their first choice, relieving some applicants’ stress when they are admitted early, but not disadvantaging low SES students. Or perhaps this is just PR. What do you think?

Savor your victory while you can, Harvard. We're coming for you Saturday.

Savor your victory while you can, Harvard. We're coming for you Saturday.

Classic Ivy League sports debate that no one actually plans on answering: Who is Princeton’s rival?

Some Tiger fans cling firmly to the geographical convenience of the supposed Penn-Princeton rivalry. Back in 2006, a columnist from the Daily Pennsylvanian noted that the rival stems almost exclusively from the two schools’ dominance of Ivy League basketball. But this year, Penn was just an obstacle standing in the way of the Tigers’ Ivy League run — the men beat the Quakers handily to force the one-game playoff against Harvard, and the women (who continue their ridiculously dominant streak, stretching all the way back to last season) absolutely trounced Penn in their final game of the regular season, 78-27 (no, that’s not a typo; it’s a 51 point win).

Aspirational sports fans, meanwhile, will tell you our rivals are Harvard and Yale, although neither school seems particularly interested in us. In a recent Deadspin article , a Harvard fan complained about choice of Yale as a “neutral site,” noting, “How is Harvard having to play at their fiercest rival’s court, where “neutral” fans that show up will automatically root against Harvard?” (Fair point, although the obvious counter would seem to be, everyone hates Harvard, so no where outside of Cambridge could ever be “neutral”.)

But this winter season, the games where we had the most to lose, and the contests we really cared about winning, were against Crimson athletes. And (here’s the shift), it seemed like this season, Harvard cared about us, too.

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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.

If Goldman Sachs released tables of the best Ivy League universities at making money, Princeton would come second. (This is based on absolutely no analysis of the following figures.)

PRINCO, the Princeton University Investment Co., announced annual returns of 14.7 percent for the fiscal year of 2010 today. After last year’s return of -23.5 percent and this year’s big turnaround, Princeton’s endowment currently stands at $14.4 billion. Annualized returns for the past decade amount to 7.9 percent.

Yeah, cool, a nice chunk of change, whatever. But what bugs me is that Columbia posted returns of 17.3 percent (albeit on a $6.5 billion sum). At least we beat Harvard (11.4 percent increase to $27.4 billion) and Yale (8.9 percent increase to $16.7 billion).

Does that mean we can start getting more free stuff/study breaks/Lawnparties?

quincyfire.blogspot.com

quincyfire.blogspot.com

Apparently our campus has become a lot more sexually healthy over the past year. The Trojan Sexual Health Report Card, created by Trojan® condoms, Sperling’s BestPlaces and Rock the Vote, is an annual ranking of sexual health at American colleges and universities. Last year Princeton ranked 61st. This year we rocketed up to 8th.

So what makes a school sexually healthy? A recent Prince column suggested that there is sexual harassment on the Street. And fellow New Jersey school Rutgers is ranked as the 9th most sexually healthy university — but a gay Rutgers student recently committed suicide after his roommate streamed a video of him having sex. It appears that sexual harassment and homophobia are not considered in the rankings.  What is?

Sperling’s BestPlaces assigned each college or university a GPA based on scoring from 12 categories. See the categories after the jump:

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As seen on the Crimson website:

harvard

The caption:

Admissions officers load rejection letters onto the USPS truck. They exchange congratulations on the successful completion of another year of decisions, and lament the fact that they must reject so many qualified applicants.

Whose idea was it to have everyone look so happy?  Harvard: crushing dreams with a smile since 1636.

Prefrosh: choose Princeton!

Here it is:

- 2,148  out of 26,247 admitted for an 8.18% acceptance rate — falling from 9.94% in 2009 and 9.25 in 2008.  (Harvard admitted 6.9%, Yale 7.5%)

- 50% men, 50% women.

- 9.4 percent admitted identify as African American; 21.5 percent as Asian American; 10 percent as Hispanic or Latino; less than 1 percent as Native American

- Admitted students hail from all 50 states plus: Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Costa Rica, France, Greece, Guatemala, Iceland, India, Israel, Jamaica, Kenya, Morocco, Myanmar, Norway, Senegal, Turkey, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia (and more).

- 1,451 students waitlisted.

In other news, the College Confidential forums have crashed.

From http://www.flickr.com/photos/hawken/247806194/

From http://www.flickr.com/photos/hawken

Remember when American universities started hurting from the recession? At Harvard, students were forced to go without hot breakfasts. Soup kitchens sprang up to help students through the whole thing (we heard).

When they learned of the travesty that had befallen Harvard, Princeton’s very own Tiger Magazine set out to remedy the situation by bringing hot oatmeal to the huddled crimson masses.

“Our humanitarian action was motivated by our deep-seated empathy for Harvard students,” head writer Jim Valcourt ‘12 told us in an email. “After all, they go to Harvard. Sure, our schools are rivals, but that’s no excuse for standing by idly while your fellow man is deprived of morning sustenance. Someone had to act.”

The mission’s mastermind Stephen Stolzenberg ‘13 carried out the Ivy League Marshall Plan with Valcourt, Myra Gupta ‘12, Rodrigo Menezes ‘13, Brian Edwards ‘11 and Steven Liss ‘10.

Ed Kelley ‘13 captured and edited their efforts and posted the video yesterday on Tiger Magazine’s website:

Of course, the attempt to nourish Harvard students’ stomachs and souls devolved into a heated rivalrous confrontation … or at least a couple of email exchanges between Harvard students attempting to plan such a confrontation.

Read our favorite emails after the jump.

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Emma Brown at Brown orientation, surrounded by giants. (From flixster.com)

Emma Watson at Brown orientation, surrounded by giants. (From flixster.com)

After only a two percent increase in applications for the Class of 2013, Princeton University has been pushing its hefty financial aid package–and it’s working.

The 19 percent jump in applications to Princeton this year was greater than that of Harvard (5 percent) and Yale (Not really a jump, more like a…tiny step backward.), prompting Bloomberg News to proclaim to the Internet: “Princeton Surge Beats Harvard, Yale as Applications Soar.” Hahaha, we won!

But why the competition? Why not some Ivy League bonhomie? Why must we always be bickering like over-privileged siblings in a race to be Mom’s favorite? Am I even allowed to use bicker in this context this time of the year?

So instead, let’s talk about Brown.

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  stress of exams got you down? time to wallow in some bad karma!  [source: ArtMechanic]

stress of exams got you down? time to wallow in some bad karma! [source: ArtMechanic

As we slog on through the sheer hellishness that is reading period, complete with the perfunctory stupidity from old friends at home (“Why do you have your exams now? That’s just so…weird!”), I took comfort in getting an email from my dad today asking whether I thought he should interview prospective Harvard kids.

Yep, folks: the college interview season has begun for those sad souls out there who get to tear their hair out in pursuit of the perfect Ivy, and I must admit it’s really providing me with some much-needed schadenfreude.  Sure, we’re locked in Firestone from dawn till dusk and it feels like we haven’t seen a proper night’s sleep since the Stone Age—but hey, look on the bright side!  At least we don’t have to get dressed up for interviews with preppy millionaires who enjoy nothing more than crushing our hopes and dreams!

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…A musical number from Les Miserables, of course!

Well, actually, no.

But still, as this Youtube video (via Yale Daily News) attests, it was pretty epic when it happened during lunch in Davenport College (one of Yale’s 12 residential colleges). The clip shows a group of students spontaneously belting out a rendition of “One Day More” as a fight between Harvard and Yale, in light of Saturday’s Harvard-Yale football game (Harvard won). The production even included brass and string instruments!

When can we expect something similar to happen in Rocky dining hall? It would be EPIC and would definitely pump me up for the rest of the day. Perhaps the two opposing sides could be students and grade deflation? That’s the closest thing I can come up with that can be considered our rival.

Yalies even produced their own version of “Where The Wild Things Are” with the Yale football team (complete with Arcade Fire, of course!). It’s pretty hilarious, and it definitely beats Yale’s traditional “Bladderball” event, which was just bizarre. The video after the jump:

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