Georgetown saw a 47 percent yield rate for the 2012 admissions cycle, a 1.5 percent drop from last year’s record high of 48.5 percent.

Of 3,317 accepted students, about 1,565 have submitted deposits to secure a their spot in the Class of 2016. While the Office of Undergraduate Admissions is still waiting to receive a few late checks, it has already accepted about 50 students off the waitlist, according to Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Charles Deacon.

The higher yield rate in 2011 allowed the university to fill the Class of 2015 without pulling from its waitlist at all, while this year’s rate is more in line with Georgetown’s average yield of 47 percent over the past 12 years.

Due to a strict enrollment cap set in the university’s 2000 Campus Plan, Georgetown must come as close as possible to a class size of 1,580 students. Since last year’s yield was much higher than expected, the Office of Admissions accepted about 100 fewer students in the 2011-2012 admissions cycle than in 2010-2011, helping to bring the university’s acceptance rate down to a record low of 16.5 percent.

Deacon said that his office hopes to accept between 75 and 80 of the 1,150 waitlisted students this admissions cycle.

He added that initially accepting fewer students allows the university to balance out the incoming freshman class through acceptances from the waitlist.

“We can address things like geographic diversity … [and accept more] underrepresented minority kids, particularly African Americans and Mexican Americans,” Deacon said. “It allows us to balance [the freshman class] out, fine-tune it and also retain the same quality that we otherwise wouldn’t have had.”

Georgetown is also affected by the decisions of students who are accepted off the waitlists of other top schools.

In addition, statistics from previous years show that annually, about 50 students who submit deposits do not attend Georgetown because they are accepted from the waitlists of other schools and choose to enroll at those institutions instead.

According to Deacon, many of those students end up attending Ivy League schools.

Though Georgetown’s yield saw a slight decline, other top-tier universities have reported increases. Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University all saw record yields of 81, 70 and 43 percent, respectively, for the Class of 2016.

Overall, Deacon said he is pleased with the outcome of this year’s admissions process.

“Our conclusion is very good,” Deacon said. “We’ve come in virtually exactly where we wanted to come in so [that] we aren’t going to have too many [incoming freshmen].”