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Comment by happytoexplain | Hacker News Reader

Context: It's because the students admitted last year requested to defer starting until this year due to COVID, limiting the available space for new applicants.

Edit: Also exacerbated by more applicants this year, I suppose due to reduced entry requirements, again due to COVID.

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Looking at the graph that they provided, it seems that admittance rate has been slowly dropping for a few years now. I'd expect it to bounce up above 4% next year due to the lack of deferring students, but I wonder if their admittance percentage will hit 3.98% or less through natural growth in the upcoming years.

re: admittance rate trends.

Low admittance rate is a plus for most college rankings so institutions are incentivized to engage in efforts to increase the size at the top of the funnel.

Disclaimer: Princeton alumnus.

Personally I think absolute number of admitted students is a more useful metric, since you can't really control how many people apply, and your capacity is more or less fixed.

From the graph in the article, that is also in decline, but not as sharp (except the outlier of this year, which is caused by other factors).

Absolute number admitted is probably decreasing because the admissions committee is more effective at offering admissions to people who are more likely to accept the offer. There are a number of ways to do this.

Without looking, I would guess that that the entering classes of Princeton and other elite schools largely stay fairly steady over time for a variety of reasons.

As for the number of people who apply, this can be increased via outreach programs, marketing, etc.

Admission rates have also been trending downwards per the graph posted on the article.

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