The College completed its early decision application process in December, admitting 130, or 34 percent, of the 380 students who applied, according to Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Tom Parker. Another 214 were deferred to the pool of regular applicants.

Early admissions applicants must apply by Nov. 1 and the application is binding, meaning that applicants must attend the College if they are accepted. They may not apply early decision to any other school, although they may still submit regular, non-binding applications.

The College saw a slight increase in early applications from last year.

Diversity was an important part of the first round of the admissions process. Nearly a quarter of the accepted early decision students are students of color. This reflects the College's continuing goal of achieving greater diversity, according to Parker.

In addition, the College also accepted international students from Bulgaria, Ghana, Hong Kong and Jamaica.

The top states represented are Massachusetts, New York, California, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Of the 130 students accepted, 66 are male and 64 female.

So far, members of the incoming class come from 114 different high schools, an impressive figure, according to Parker.

Parker noted that 35 percent of the accepted applicants are on some financial aid, which is up considerably from the 20 percent last year. Also, a substantially larger number of students whose parents did not attend college were accepted, according to Parker.

The average SAT verbal score for the early decisions acceptees is 709 and the average math score is also 709.

"No movie stars, sons and daughters of famous people, not that I know of," said Parker jokingly. "But they are a wonderful and talented group."

An all-time record of 5610 applications has been received for regular admissions. This is an increase of over eight percent from last year's pool.

"Looking to spring, I anticipate a very competitive admissions process," Parker said.

Late last year, both Yale and Stanford Universities announced that they were eliminating the binding early decision admissions and replacing it with non-binding early action admissions in an effort to ease the pressures on prospective students and to increase diversity.

Parker reiterated that the College currently has no plans to eliminate binding early decision.

"We behaved ourselves; we only accepted 30 percent of the whole class during the early decision process," said Parker. "We have a self-imposed limit. The problem is that a group of Ivys have taken half or more of their class from early applicants. The more you take early, the less diverse the class is socio-economically."