There were more applicants for the class of 2009 than any other class in the College's history, according to Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Tom Parker. Last year, the College received 5,489 applications-the number increased by 14 percent this year. "This was the largest group ever to apply to Amherst," said Parker.
The College accepted 1,173 students, slightly less than 19 percent of the total number of applicants. Over 89 percent of the students accepted applied regular decision; only 126 students were accepted early decision. The College hopes to have 424 students matriculate.
Parker emphasized that he is not sure exactly why the College received so many more applications than last year, although he does have a few theories. "This is really speculative, but we have gotten a certain amount of response about the College being featured on the 'News Hour [with Jim Lehrer' on PBS]," he said. "Also, year after year being ranked number one or number two by U.S. News & World Report has a cumulative effect." Parker also said that he believes Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore Colleges are now often considered in the same group as Harvard, Princeton and Yale Universities.
The College was one of three schools to receive a substantial increase in applications. "Princeton, Harvard and Amherst all had double digit increases [in percent of applicants]," said Parker. "Small liberal arts colleges received on average within plus or minus three percent of the number of applications they received last year. Williams had a slight decrease of three percent this year, but that is following a slight increase last year."
Parker said that a considerable portion of the applications the College received were submitted electronically, which he added made the process a little easier for the admissions staff. "This year something like 70 percent of applications came in electronically," he said. "We were able to upload those directly into the database, which was great from a processing point of view."
Electronic submission helped to make the lengthy process of making admissions decisions a little bit easier, but the job is still very involved for the admissions staff. In January and February each application is read and evaluated. "Each file is read by minimum of two admission people. It is graded on its academic and nonacademic merit," Parker explained. "We then spend the first three weeks of March in committee discussing the files of competitive applicants."
Although the College does not yet know how many students in the class of 2009 will actually receive financial aid, Parker said that the College offered some form of financial aid to over 50 percent of the accepted students.
The academic statistics for the accepted students are incredibly impressive. Continuing a trend of increasing SAT scores, the average verbal SAT score of accepted students is 736, and the average math SAT score is 726.
There were slightly more women than men accepted, with 617 women and 557 men receiving offers of admission. Parker said that the matriculating class is usually gender balanced. "That usually evens itself out," he explained.
The accepted students have diverse backgrounds, including a wide variety of home states and countries. The state with the most accepted students was New York, according to Parker, followed by California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Illinois, respectively.
Interestingly, there are a lot of students from very warm climates. Students from California, the second most represented state, Florida, the fifth most represented state and Texas, the sixth most represented state, account for 23 percent of accepted students, according to Parker.
Three or more students were accepted from each of nine foreign countries, including Canada, Korea, China, India, Singapore, Bulgaria, Jamaica, Romania and the United Kingdom.
The accepted students come from several types of high schools. Most of the students, 704, attended public high school. Almost half of that number, 399, attended independent schools, 657 went to parochial school, and four were home schooled. "In total we accepted students from 800 different high schools," said Parker.
The group of accepted students includes 161 African Americans, 116 Asian Americans, 116 Latinos, 99 students of mixed heritage and 74 non-U.S. citizens.
Following last year's disappointingly low African-American matriculation rate, Parker was glad that the College received a record number of applications from African Americans. "We were really fortunate that we had a record number of African-American students apply, and we accepted 20 more than last year," he said. "If they matriculate at the rate which we expect them to, that will also be record-breaking."
The College made a special effort to have more students of color visit the campus to try to increase the matriculation rate. "Throughout the admissions cycle we have been very aggressive about having students come visit us on campus," Parker explained.
Approximately half of the children of alumni or other legacies who applied were accepted. Parker attributed this statistic to high percentage counseling that legacies can receive which often discourages them from applying. Hence, the percentage accepted is skewed by the counseling services provided by Parker. "We accepted about half of our legacies, and their average SAT scores are within a few points of the group as a whole," said Parker. "We have started keeping track of the people who I counseled out of applying. The admit rate including those people who would have applied [but did not after counseling] would make the legacy admission rate very different."
Parker also explained that the Admissions Committee worked hard to accept a high-achieving batch of student-athletes. "We moved up the floor in academic rating," he said. "We are hoping that the other NESCAC schools will follow our lead."