By Miro Bergam ’19
This year’s graduating class both applied to and will be attending a record number of colleges. The class of 2018 applied to 183 different schools, nearly matching the record 184 in 2014. The range and diversity of colleges applied to are reflected in their final decisions, as the class will be attending 72 different colleges — an all-time record for Pingry.
“This was the stat that jumped out at me,” said Director of College Counselling Mr. Tim Lear. Lear continued, “Clearly, they researched schools all over the country (and world). 72 is, to my knowledge, an all-time record high and incredibly impressive for a class of only 139 kids.”
He went on to explain how this range “helps classes in the future. It’s gone from 57 in 2008 to 72. When a school sees that they have a Pingry kid being a leader in their community — running the school paper or doing research in a lab — they’re going to want to accept more kids from Pingry.”
98% of the class applied to some form of an early program, with 87% of the class getting accepted early. Both the percentage of the class applying early and the percentage of the class getting accepted early were 10 year record highs for Pingry. 19% of the class was recruited for athletics, up from 17% last year.
Yet another record was the number of applications written per student. Students filled out the highest number of applications, averaging out to 12.4, in 10 years.
Seven students have been accepted off the waitlist from Cornell, Duke, F&M, Rice, Villanova, Wellesley, and William & Mary. Three or more students were accepted to 61 different schools and two or more members of the class were admitted to all eight Ivy League universities.
Some notable records in regards to specific colleges include Yale University accepting (6) and enrolling (5), the highest number of Pingry students in the past decade; Williams matching its highest number of Pingry acceptances (6) in the past decade; and Swarthmore admitting the highest number of Pingry students (3) in the past decade. Acceptances were at 5 year highs at schools such as Duke (7) and Washington and Lee (3). Oxford University accepted its first Pingry student since 2011 and Arizona State University, Drexel University, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and George Mason University enrolled their first Pingry student in over a decade.
Lear commended the class of 2018 for being “fun and easy to work with. They were proactive with their deadlines and took constructive feedback exceptionally well.” He joked, “they were easier to work with than my own children.”
