Dickinson College has received 6,419 applications as of Feb. 28 for the class of 2023—a new record for the college.

According to Catherine Davenport, the vice president of enrollment management and dean of admissions, the incoming class has “the largest application pool in the history of the college.”

This number of applicants surpasses the record Dickinson College reached last year for the class of 2022, increasing from 5,829 applications in 2017 to 6,175 for 2018.

“We had a goal for ourselves to having a more robust early decision pool,” Davenport said in regards to the goals for applications. “You can see where we didn’t hit that goal.” 

However, the number of early decision one applicants and early decision two applicants has decreased. Early decision one and early decision two applicants for 2017 and 2018  ranged in the high 200s and low 100s, respectively. The number of applicants for early decision one for 2019 is in the low 200s while early decision two is in the low 90s. 

Davenport said that the lack of New York Posse scholars this year could have affected this turnout. “Those students would come to us through early decision and that would be an additional 22 to 26 early decision applicants each year. We still have LA [Los Angeles], but combined with the New York posse would give us the 22 to 26 applicants.”

The early action pool of applicants, however did increase. There was only a small increase from 3,009 to 3,137 applications between 2017 and 2018, but this year that number jumped to 3,422. 

“There is this sense of ‘early notification but I don’t have to commit’ [with early action], so we did see growth,” Davenport said that they offered admission for just over 1,400 of the applicants. 

Davenport noticed that early action used to “yield more enrollment at a higher rate than the regular pool. Over the last two to three years, it has balanced out a little more, so it is harder to predict the total applicant pool.”

Davenport said that admissions takes into consideration things such as high diversity, students that can pay the full tuition and different areas of the country when choosing applicants. “The challenge is that you can’t just predict one element. We’re looking at all facets of the applicant pool.”

One of the more sizable changes in the college’s application process is the removal of the supplemental writing piece, which the college used to help determine scholarships. “We’re looking at removing barriers to application because we want students to be able to be more thoughtful in what they’re telling us about themselves, but also specifically why liberal arts and why Dickinson.”