In the News

Peter Silver, an assistant professor of history, was awarded the BANCROFT PRIZE for his first book, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (W.W. Norton, 2007). Silver is one of three honorees this year. The Bancroft Prize recognizes “books of exceptional merit in the fields of American history, biography, and diplomacy.”

International applications jumped 10 percent as the GRADUATE SCHOOL’s overall application pool increased 5.2 percent this year. Of the 9,238 applicants, 1,202 — or 13 percent — were offered admission. Acceptances totaled 608, a yield of 51 percent. Applications were received from 61 foreign countries; the largest number of admitted students were from China, India, Korea, and Canada. Both offers (76) and acceptances (48) among African-American, Latino/Hispanic, and American Indian students were the highest of the past five years, reflecting stepped-up recruiting efforts. The number of offers (184) and acceptances (70) for women in science and engineering both fell below recent years. Total fall enrollment is expected to be about 2,180, up from 2,030 last year. About 265 students are expected to hold Dissertation Completion Enrollment status.

After the May 1 deadline for students to accept or decline their offers of undergraduate admission, the University admitted 86 students from the WAIT LIST, and that number was expected to rise in what Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye termed a “rolling process” that could last until end of June. Last year Princeton offered admission to 47 students on the wait list; 37 accepted the offer.

This has been a year of transition and increased uncertainty, in part because of the end of early admissions at Princeton and Harvard. Princeton’s yield — those who choose to enroll compared to the total number accepted — is expected to decline from 67.8 percent last year to “close to 60 percent” this year, Rapelye said. She said the Class of 2012 will be “slightly stronger,” however, as measured by SAT scores. Students planning to enroll are evenly split between men and women and are “as diverse as last year’s class,” she said. Women account for a record 48 percent of incoming engineering students.

HUGH PRICE, former president of the National Urban League and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, will begin a five-year appointment to the faculty of the Woodrow Wilson School July 1. Serving as the John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs, Price will teach two courses this fall — an undergraduate policy task force on childhood obesity and a graduate seminar that will examine whether and how foundations can serve as agents of change.