Apps Up 7.5%; Predicted Acceptance Rate of 18%

Cornell's admissions office graciously provided The Sun with this year's admissions numbers yesterday. As of Jan. 14, the University received 32,655 applications total for both Early and Regular Decision. Applications increased for all undergraduate colleges. Last year, The Sun reported that Cornell received a total of 30,382 applications for the Class of 2011 [1]. By our calculations, this is an 7.48 percent increase in applications, and according to the admissions report, a 57 percent increase since 2004.

Last year, the University accepted 6,229 total students, marking an acceptance rate of 20.5 percent for the Class of 2010. If the University accepts approximately the same number of people, we calculate that Cornell will reach an acceptance rate of around 18 percent this year, assuming a yield rate of about 49 percent.

In an updated report, Cornell received 3,095 applications for Early Decision. This is different from an older report we received earlier, which indicated that 3,110 students applied [2]. In absolute terms, this number is still an increase of 2.65 percent from last year's. Doris Davis, associate provost for admissions and enrollment, also indicated that 1,142 students were admitted under Early Decision, making up 37 percent of next year's freshman class. This means with updated numbers, Cornell accepted 36.9 percent of its Early Decision applicants, slightly higher than the 36.6 percent early acceptance rate from last year, but down from 38.9 percent two years ago.

The admissions office will release more detailed numbers in February.

Julie Geng is a Sun Senior Editor. She can be reached at julie.geng@cornellsun.com [3].

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