9.7% increase in graduate applications

Applications to the Graduate School increased by 9.7 percent in 2010, with 10.6 percent of the 11,123 applicants receiving offers of admission. Of the 1,183 admitted students, 636 accepted, the largest group in the last five years.

Growth areas include the chemistry department, which will add 47 first-year graduate students in preparation for its move to the new chemistry building, and the University’s new multidisciplinary program in quantitative and computational biology, which will have seven students in its inaugural class. The neuroscience program added seven Ph.D. candidates, meeting the target enrollment for its second year.

The graduate school’s admission yield — 54 percent — equals the yield reported at the same time last year. Among 1,433 applicants from American minority groups (Asian-Americans, Hispanics, African-Americans, and Native Americans), 116 were admitted. The University did not immediately release statistical information for individual minority groups because of changes in the self-identification options for applicants, but Dean William Russel, speaking to the Council of the Princeton University Community May 3, cited a disappointing decline in the yield of underrepresented minority students.

Applications by women in science and engineering departments rose 14 percent, from 1,151 a year ago to 1,308 this year. Of those applicants, 214 were admitted and 98 accepted, a yield of 46 percent — up from 34 percent last year. International applications rose 15 percent to 5,243 and accounted for close to half of all applicants; 418 international students were admitted.