Admissions stats reveal new shifts

The 3,770 students offered spots in the Class of 2011 are a product of an applicant pool that has changed significantly from those of previous years.

And after accepting 19.7 percent of aspiring Blue Devils, administrators said they are now looking for answers to explain the apparent trends.

Although applications to Trinity College of Arts and Sciences reached an all-time high of 16,132, applications to the Pratt School of Engineering declined from last year-a shift that is currently receiving attention.

"We've looked at the characteristics of the Pratt pool from various perspectives and no obvious pattern appears," Christoph Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions, wrote in an e-mail. "At the same time, Pratt has seen a fairly dramatic increase in applicants over the last several years, so this may not be terribly meaningful. We won't really know until next year."

Tod Laursen, senior associate dean for education in Pratt, said the school's applicant pool grew after Pratt expanded two years ago and this year's number of applications is second only to last year's.

"The number of [applications] we're getting still exceeds the number we were getting before we expanded," Laursen said. "What was the anomaly? Was it this year? Was it last year?"

He added that the drop from approximately 3,400 applications to approximately 3,000 seems particularly large due to the small base number of Pratt applicants.

"It seems a little bit absurd to call 3,000 a small number," Laursen said.

Laursen added that an independent committee within Pratt worked with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions to review the applications and was pleased with what they saw. "I'm confident we're going to get a good class," Laursen said.

Despite the discrepancy between Trinity and Pratt applications, Guttentag said the admissions office will seek to maintain a 4-to-1 ratio of Trinity to Pratt students, even if that affects which students are selected from the waiting list.

Although applications to Pratt declined, this year's applicant pool also hit a number of record highs.

Minority applications were the highest in history with 2,190, 1,303 and 5,173 from black, Hispanic and Asian and Asian-American students, respectively.

In addition, a record-high 2,292 international students sought admission, marking an increase of 13 percent from the previous year.

Guttentag said the increases did not reflect any particular recruitment strategies, but Provost Peter Lange said the change resulted from the gradual realization of a long-term goal.

"Those have been areas of focus in recruitment for a number of years and every year you do it you get a little more increment from it," Lange said.

Applications from North Carolina and South Carolina residents and from children of alumni also hit record highs, but Lange said these increases were not attributable to a particular cause or recruitment strategy.

"We don't really always understand the trends from year to year," Lange said. "Our efforts have been pretty steady there.... Some years you get more, some years you get less."

Guttentag emphasized that the patterns applied to applicants, not admitted students-a group he said he anticipates to be smaller than last year due to a higher expected yield.

Last year's initial acceptance rate was approximately 19 percent, but it rose to approximately 21.2 percent in the aftermath of the lacrosse case.

"We're obviously very pleased with the size and the quality of the applicant pool and now it all turns on yield," Lange said.