Ivy Pie in The Sky?

D-Day has come and gone. I'm talking about Decision Day for the Ivy League schools. Those applicants holding their breath for their Regular Decision decisions on March 28 this year were sufficiently nervous to cause server slowdowns on the College Confidential discussion forum. That's a tribute to their anxiety, eagerness, and just plain curiosity. If you have the time and want to see just how competitive admission has become at the Ivies, click through some of the Ivy schools' "results" postings to discover (or marvel at) how some of these high school seniors were denied admission. Their profiles read like fiction, in the positive sense. Some of the comments are quite moving.

Several days ago, I did an interview with a reporter from Princeton University's student newspaper, The Daily Princetonian. The thrust of the reporter's questions centered around the final acceptance rates for all the Ivies this year, not just Princeton's. The main question was, "Do you think acceptance rates can get any lower?" Well, in light of the results at Princeton this year, I'd have to say, "It's possible, but seems unlikely." Take a look at Princeton's numbers for the Class of 2017 ("SCEA" = Single Choice Early Action" (December notification); "RD" = Regular Decision (April notification)):