Earlier this month, the office of admission received a total of 125 Early Decision applications, approximately 115 of which will be completed applications that will be reviewed by admission staff. This is an increase from last year’s 97 completed applications, but is still a number fairly consistent with the trend of the last six years.

Early decision applicants came from 21 different states, some of which were Ohio, Florida, and Tennessee.  About one-fifth of the early decision applicants identified as students of color.

According to Director of Admission Kevin Dyerly, the applicants are fairly similar to the past six years of Early Decision applicants.

“There’s a pretty good spread of students from across the country. The make-up of the pool looks pretty comparable to other years. There are just more applicants than last year,” he said.

Dyerly suggests that last year’s low number of applicants could have been due to the economy.

“You could look at last year and say that economy was a player. Certainly could have been a factor. But what’s not to say it isn’t a factor this year? It’s hard to point to specific causes other than families feeling the crunch and not wanting the pressure of committing to a school up front,” he said.

Though this applicant pool is fairly similar to those in past years, it does contain an anomaly. Within this application pool were 11 transfer applications. Compared to the number of transfer applications in the last six years, which ranges from zero to five, this number is quite high.

Dyerly speculates that the increase in transfer applications is due to the fact that Whitman will not be accepting transfer applications for the Spring 2012 semester.

Of these applications, Dyerly predicts that the office of admission will send acceptance letters to between 100-115 students. On average, an incoming class at Whitman is made of 25-30 percent early decision applicants.