Applications Dip in Ivy League

Applications to Cornell and Dartmouth plummeted this year in record-setting numbers that are representative of the fall in applications throughout the Ivy League.

In the largest percentage drop among the Ivies, Dartmouth received more than 8400 applications, an 18 percent fall from last year's record setting 10,250.

In its first decrease in applications this decade, Cornell received over 19,700 applications for entrance next fall, an 8.7 percent decline over last year's all-time high of 21,700.

This year, Harvard applications dropped about seven to ten percent from last year's record 14,436 applications, Harvard admissions officers said.

Cornell and Dartmouth admissions officers said last week that the down-ward trend in applications could be a result of demographics combined with a tendency among high school seniors toward filing fewer applications.

New England colleges are experiencing a particularly acute drop in applications because of a nationwide decline in the number of graduating high school seniors, said Director of Cornell Undergraduate Admissions Nancy Hargrave Meislahn.

The other factor is a drop in the number of students who apply to more than one Ivy League school, said Al Quirk, dean of admissions and financial aid at Dartmouth.

"I have a feeling that we're seeing the beginning of fewer multiple applications," Quirk said.

Meislahn said possible reasons for this trend are the increase in early action applications and a tendency for students to be dissuaded by tales of rejections resulting from multiple applications.

"In the last couple of years, with the large application increases at Cornell and other places, we had to say no to more students," she said.

Quirk said that efforts by the Ivy League to recruit more applicants have increased in the last five years to counter the expected demographic drop.

Both admissions officers said that the drop has been fairly evenly divided among all applicant groups, without a disproportionately large decline in applications from any one ethnic group.