April 10th, the final day of receiving decisions from accepted applicants, marked the culmination of the regular admissions process for the 2007-2008 applicants. The Admissions Office formulated and released figures for the new group of incoming students.

The Admissions Office received the largest number of March 10th timeframe applications in Choate history—just over 1500 applications—exceeding last year’s number “by only a handful of applications, maybe ten more,” said Director of Admissions Ray Diffley.

Increased Competition

The increase in applications forced the Admissions Office to designate its most selective group of accepted applicants, a mere 25 percent. Mr. Diffley stated, “We surpassed our toughest acceptance rate ever, last year’s, by a small margin.”

With a rise in applicants, the quality of accepted candidates improved. The average GPA of last year’s accepted candidates amounted to 3.68, whereas this year’s average GPA was 3.7. Although the applicants’ grade point averages did not drastically improve from last year, Mr. Diffley noted that the overall strength of the applicant pool from top to bottom “had the admission office spending more time discussing qualified applicants.”

Every year, the accepted students and their families are required to decide on their enrollment by April 10th. This year’s yield was the highest with 63 percent of students accepting to enroll in Choate on April 10th. Mr. Diffley commented on this achievement, “The high percent yield put us [the Admissions Office] in a situation where we met all of our enrollment goals, without using the waitlist at all. It was great tribute to the attractiveness of Choate.”

Mr. Diffley credited the high percent yield to the success of this year’s Spring Visits and to the Admission Office’s outreach with the help of students and faculty. He explained, “We [at the Admissions Office] feel great about how well the students and faculty showed who they really are, and this helped us have such success.”

Girls v. Boys Ratio

Last year the Admissions Office enrolled significantly more girls than boys. Mr. Diffley explained last year’s phenomenon: “We had a particularly strong day student pool of girls last year. We skewed the numbers in order to accept the strongest candidates, period. We asked the administration if we could shift enrollmen a little bit to be girl heavy.”

The Admissions Office did not wish to favor the admission of boys solely in the interest of bringing the school to equal male-female numbers. Instead, the Admissions Office “wanted to see how the candidate pool looked, and if there was an opportunity to lean towards the boys, we would do it,” said Mr. Diffley.

The combination of luck and attractive marketing to boys played an integral part in this year’s admissions process. The Admissions Office had “an incredible group of boys look at us [Choate] this year,” explained Mr. Diffley. This allowed for an increase in male acceptance, as well as influencing the school to make Edsall a boys’ dorm once again. After the admission of 38 more boys than girls, the number of boys and girls at Choate is expected to achieve equilibrium for the 2007-2008 school year.

Because of the strength of the male applicant pool, the class of 2010 will receive a large number of male students. Mr. Diffley exclaimed, “The boys are coming!” Thirty-five new tenth grade boys and sixteen new tenth grade girls will join the class of 2010. This year was “unusually competitive for incoming sophomore girls, seeing how the spaces played out the way they did,” said Mr. Diffley.

The rising junior class will also grow in numbers. Fourteen new eleventh grade students were accepted this spring, comprised of ten boys and four girls.

Post Graduate Admission

The post graduate admissions were also highly competitive this year. Nevertheless, admitting post graduates greatly varies from admitting under formers. Mr. Diffley explained: “Accepting PGs is a very different segment for us, since we don’t look at it the same way we look at other students.” The Admissions Office looks for people who will complement every aspect of the school and make it a stronger community, as well as “one who is willing to integrate and embrace the community in his or her 9 months at Choate,” said Mr. Diffley. The Admissions Office has not yet witnessed a rise in female applicants for a post graduate year. This year only three girls were accepted out of the twenty students accepted for a post graduate year. Two of these twenty talented scholars and athletes are the Thai scholars, who will “bring a wonderful prospective to the table,” said Diffley. The new basketball coach, Adam Finkelstein, helped recruit three new basketball post graduates, and many of the post graduates were also recruited to join the football team.

Waitlists

Some of the students who were not accepted to Choate have been placed on the waitlist. The Admissions Office expects to see a small number of waitlisted students to get accepted because of last minute dropouts or a larger number of beds available than estimated. Mr. Diffley indicated the strength of the waitlisted pool, stating, “You could take the waitlist at Choate, Deerfield, Andover, and three or four more top schools, and create your own school with those students, and you could do very well. There is a very fine line between those who are waitlisted and those who are admitted.”

With over 1500 applications, “there aren’t many [applications] that aren’t pretty darn good,” said Mr. Diffley. He believes that Choate must take a deeper look into who is best for Choate and why. For this reason, a novel pilot program began in this year’s admissions process—an optional assessment called the Choate Self Assessment.

The Admissions Office pushed for applicants to take the online application, which they believed to be more convenient and beneficial because of the optional assessment that was included with it. Students who submitted their application online, over 1000 of the 1500 plus applicants, had the option to take the Choate Self Assessment, “a series of questions that gets to certain personality characteristics or traits that gives [the Admissions Office] more insight to the person’s potential for success at Choate,” explained Mr. Diffley. Close to 385 applicants chose to take this optional assessment.

New Choate Self Assessment

The online application labeled the Choate Self Assessment as a pilot program this year. The Admissions Office did not use the applicants’ answers against them because, “we [the Admissions Office] were asking for their cooperation this year,” said Mr. Diffley. In fact, the applicants were informed that their answers could only be used to help them in the admissions process.

From the students who decided to take the Choate Self Assessment and will attend Choate next year, admissions will determine how scores on relate to success during students’ Choate careers. Mr. Diffley said, “There is no other school in the country doing this kind of assessment, so that is pretty exciting.”

In addition to the new pilot program, Choate welcomed ten new Icahn Scholars and also kicked off new scholarship program called the Gakio-Walton Program. Four students will attend Choate next year under this scholarship program—a freshman and a sophomore from Kenya, and two other incoming freshman from Nevada and Arizona.

After completing the extensive 2007-2008 Admissions, the Choate Admissions Office feels confident that every incoming student will bring strong merits and a unique flavor to the school.