Princeton Report: Students Reject Us If Harvard or Stanford Accepts Them

High school seniors who are admitted to Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford will choose any of the other three before Princeton, according to a report released by the central New Jersey school last week. They are most likely to attend Harvard.

Two-hundred-and-seventy members of the class of 1989 chose Harvard over Princeton, while only 73 turned down a chance to come to Cambridge for a four-year stay at Princeton.

"Harvard is a very attractive place to go," said Spencer Reynolds, Princeton's assistant dean of admissions. "The numbers have been fairly consistent over the years. Harvard has been the college students choose [over the other three] and represents the largest loss we have."

Those students that decline admission to Harvard go to Yale, Stanford, and Princeton, said Harvard's Director of Admissions Laura G. Fisher. "But they lose more than twice as many to us as we lose to them."

Harvard's 73.8 percent yield, the highest in the Ivy League, has been pretty constant over the last ten years, said Fisher.

Harvard has led the field among those schools that attract students from Stanford, said Jean Fetter, Dean of Undergraduate admissions at Stanford. Out of the 903 that turned down Stanford last year, 203 went to Harvard, 100 to Princeton, 92 to Yale, 60 to MIT, 36 to Berkeley, and 28 to Brown.

"Those top five schools have remained the same since 1979," said Fetter.

However, fewer students are turning down Stanford. The Princeton report showed an increase in students rejecting Princeton for the Palo Alto, Cal. campus. Although Harvard still takes more students from Princeton than any other school, Stanford is now number two, surpassing Yale.

Princeton lost 155 students to Stanford last year, but only 135 to Yale, according to the report.

Fetter attributed Stanford's rise in popularity along the east coast to its becoming in increasingly well known as a national university. She said that national prominence has been achieved largely through the high quality of Stanford's faculty and the extremely strong leadership of the past set of university presidents.

"Stanford is considered a 'hot' college. It's appeal may be faddish, but it's a terrific university," said Princeton's Reynolds.

Stanford is a hot college in other ways. But Fetter cautioned that even though "the sun shines more, the temperature is higher, students should not be misled.. [into thinking] the academics are laid back." Declined Princeton to Enter: Harvard  Yale  Stanford 270  135  155 Declined Others to Enter Princeton: Harvard  Yale  Stanford 73  94  102