Georgetown received a record number of applications this year, but Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Charles Deacon said that this will lead to a three-percentage drop in the overall acceptance rate from last year. Deacon said approximately 18,750 people applied to Georgetown this year, surpassing last year’s record of 16,163. He added that a final number of this year’s applications is not yet available, as applications are still being received. The high number of applicants will necessitate a lower acceptance rate this year, Deacon said. “Normally, we would take the admit rate of the previous year – about 21 percent – and use that number for the current applicant pool,” he said. But he said that the sheer number of applicants makes the 21 percent standard impossible. Administrators have decided to admit about 18 percent of both early and regular decision applicants. The policy of admitting the same percentage of early applicants as regular decision applicants is one that “Georgetown has always stuck to,” Deacon said. Despite the higher number of applicants, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions is uncertain as to how many accepted students will matriculate. The yield rate, or the percentage of accepted students who then choose to enroll, which has been around 60 percent in recent years, will likely decrease this year. “Three elite institutions – Harvard University, Princeton University and the University of Virginia – have eliminated their early application programs,” he said. “Those three universities have a significant impact on our own applicant pool. Without their early programs, there are approximately 8,000 to 10,000 students trying to get into a school that’s non-binding, and so they have a good reason to apply to Georgetown.” Also, for the first time in university history, applicants could apply to Georgetown online this year, a fact Deacon said might have played a larger role than initially expected. In November, Deacon said the 31 percent university-wide increase in early applications – from 4,560 applicants in 2006 to 6,027 this year – was expected after several top universities dropped their early admissions programs. Furthermore, as the applicant pool increases, space has become an issue. “We have pressure from the neighbors and the zoning commission, enrollment caps – we can’t have too many [students],” Deacon said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. As a result, in December Georgetown accepted 1,079 of its 6,027 early applicants. “In the long run, this is all good for us,” Deacon said. “We will now spend more energy trying to yield those more competitive students who would have gone to a Harvard or Princeton. We will try to develop programs that get the faculty involved to open dialogue with these students.” Deacon said online networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace help in attracting students, as people from around the world can form groups, make friends online and potentially sway opinions and ultimate decisions. “We don’t have control over these types of things,” Deacon said, “but they could play a large factor.” Georgetown is not the only school to see a rise in this year’s number of applicants. According to David Hawkins, director of public policy and research for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, more students than ever are going to college – about two-thirds of high school graduates go directly to a two or four-year college. With easier online application processes, more students are applying to more schools at higher rates. Among other elite universities, Princeton has received a 6 percent increase from last year, UVA a 4 percent increase, and Harvard nearly a 19 percent increase, to 27,278 applicants, the Washington Post reported.