Admissions Information

Princeton Catalog Home

• The Application Process and Important Deadlines
• How Courses are Assigned
• Course Assignment Notifications

The Application Process and Important Deadlines

Please visit our Eligibility page for scores required to attend the Princeton program.

Submitting an application

Apply online or download an application.

Course Assignment Process

To be considered in our initial course assignment process, applications must be received at CTY by the end of business on January 11. Refer below to "How Courses Are Assigned" for details on how the course assignment process works.

After January 11, applications received by the close of business each Wednesday are considered for course assignment, following the same process.

The course assignment process continues once each week until registration closes in late spring. However, for applications received after April 14, a late fee is charged.

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How Courses are Assigned

Students are not assigned to courses on a first-come, first-served basis. Instead, we use a computer program to assign as a group all students whose applications are in house by a particular date. The computer program follows a ranking system that sorts students into these main categories:

• returning students, ranked according to test scores
• students who have never before participated in any of our academic programs, but who participated in the CTY Talent Search, also ranked according to test scores.

The computer assigns all returning students before moving to the students who have never before participated, and so on. Within categories, students with higher test scores are assigned to courses before students with lower scores.

As the computer places students, courses fill, and eventually the computer reaches a student whose first-choice course is closed. When this happens, it tries the second choice. If the second choice is full, it moves to the third choice, and so on, through all choices indicated. If the student has not indicated more than one choice, or if all choices indicated are full, the student is designated as unassigned, and the computer moves on to the next student.

Students who include several courses among their choices stand a better chance of receiving a course assignment. Listing multiple choices does not hurt a student’s chance of being assigned to the first-choice course; conversely, listing only one choice does not increase a student’s chance of receiving that course.

The computer program is not able to adjust a course assignment for one student based on what course another student received. This means that if siblings or friends wish to attend together, great care must be taken with course requests. Please call 800-393-6095 for further advice and instructions.

Course Assignment Notification

Students who apply on or before January 11 will be notified of their course assignment status by email on January 13. After that, students who apply by Wednesday of a given week will be notified of their status by email on Friday of that week. Course assignment information will be available on MyCTY on approximately the same schedule. Click on MyCTY.

Accepted students receive a Course Assignment Packet approximately two weeks after being notified of placement in a course. The Course Assignment Packet includes all the relevant details about the program and site, including travel information, a schedule of events, a list of what to bring, student medical forms, rules and policies, etc.

Students who could not be assigned to one of the course choices indicated on their applications will be notified at the same time as students who were assigned. They may withdraw, select another course from those that are open at CTY-Princeton, or keep their applications active in case space opens up in one of their original course choices. Deposits will be refunded to students who withdraw. The application fee is non-refundable.

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