When Harvard and Princeton gave the axe to early admissions last year, Stanford might have expected the size of its early application pool to increase. A number of elite colleges that offer the same kind of non-binding “early action” program as Stanford have indeed experienced a spike in applications, but Stanford is not among them.

4,636 candidates applied for early admission to the University last year, according to Director of Admission Shawn Abbott, who declined to give a final count for this year’s early action program due to extensions for Southern California applicants affected by last month’s wildfires. But he said that the number is not expected to exceed last year’s total.

“At this point we’re sure that our final total will crest nearly exactly where we were last year,” Abbott said in an email to The Daily.

Other universities that compete with Harvard and Princeton for applicants have seen large increases in early applications this year. According to The Wall Street Journal, Yale received 4,820 early action applications as of Nov. 14, up 36 percent from last year. The University of Chicago received 42 percent more early applications than last year, Georgetown’s early applications increased by 30 percent and MIT is expecting a 10 percent increase from its 3,493 early applications last year.

Abbott believes that a number of factors may have played a role in preventing an increase in Stanford’s numbers, including the fires that prompted widespread evacuations in parts of Southern California.

“It’s somewhat reckless to speculate as to why we didn’t experience a huge surge in early applications this year because no one really knows for sure,” he said. “It could have been any number of reasons, ranging from a natural disaster in our second largest metropolitan market, which occurred just a week before the application deadline, to the idea that Harvard’s and Princeton’s policy changes just [didn’t] drive our applicants to make any different decisions than they would if those two institutions still had early programs.”

Critics of the early admission program say that the process benefits students who attend well-funded high schools and can afford private guidance counselors. Harvard and Princeton announced last year that they would abandon their early admission programs in an effort to increase access for disadvantaged students. Most schools have left their programs in place, and students who would have applied early to Harvard or Princeton are now applying to rival schools to secure spots in the incoming class as early as possible.

Abbott said he would like to believe that Stanford applicants took the advice expressed both in the application and by admission officers, which urged them not to apply early to the University unless it was their first-choice school.

“We beefed up the language in our application instructions and on our [Web site] this year, emphasizing this point,” Abbott said. “Admission officers were aggressive in making this ‘first-choice’ point when speaking to prospective students on the road and here on campus. Applicants have been strongly discouraged from using our early program as a strategy for admission.”

Abbott said that the University does not expect to change any aspect of its admission process in light of national trends.

“The bottom line,” he said, “[is] we’re thrilled that the same number of candidates applied to us early this year. 4,600 early action candidates are more than enough to compete for the spots we have available in the Class of 2012.”