Recent Admission Statistics
New York Times article:
January 18, 2008: “Applications to Colleges Are Breaking Records.”
December 21, 2007- “Early Applications Rise”
2008 Acceptance Rates for some of the Most Selective Colleges in the U.S.
(Source: U.S. News & World Report America's Best Colleges 2009)
| School |
Early Decision Rate |
Regular Decision Rate |
Amherst College |
38.6% |
17.6% |
Boston College** |
33.5% |
27.3% |
Brown University |
22.6% |
14% |
Columbia University |
24.6% |
10.6% |
Cornell University |
36.5% |
21.4% |
Dartmouth College |
29.5% |
15.3% |
Duke University |
40.9% |
23% |
George Washington |
63% |
37% |
Georgetown University* |
20.1% |
20.1% |
Harvard University |
N/A |
9.2% |
Massachusetts Institute of Technology* |
11.6% |
12.5% |
Middlebury College |
25% |
20.6% |
New York University |
34.8% |
37% |
Northwestern University |
43.8% |
26.8% |
Pomona College |
20.7% |
16.3% |
Princeton University |
N/A |
9.7% |
Stanford University** |
16.2% |
10.3% |
Swarthmore College |
35.6% |
17.7% |
University of California- Berkeley |
N/A |
23.3% |
University of Notre Dame* |
41.3% |
24.5% |
University of Pennsylvania |
29.4% |
16% |
University of Southern California |
N/A |
25.3% |
University of Virginia |
N/A |
35% |
Washington University in St. Louis |
N/A |
17% |
Wesleyan University |
43.3% |
27% |
Williams College |
40% |
18.4% |
Yale University** |
16.8% |
9.9% |
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| * Early Action (non-binding) |
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| ** Restrictive Single Choice Early Action |
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| Compiled by: IvyWise |
- In the last 5 years, 7 of the 8 Ivy League schools have reported a decrease in admit rates: Brown by 3%, Columbia by 3%, Cornell by 9%, Dartmouth by 4%, Harvard by 2%, UPenn by 8%, and Yale by 6%.
- Of the approximately 3,487 students who applied Early Decision to UPenn's Class of 2009, about 15% (523 students) were sons or daughters of Penn alumni (also known as "legacies"). Roughly 48.6% of the 523 were admitted.
- A record 5,822 students applied for the 539 spots in Williams College's Class of 2009.
- In 2005, Harvard received the highest number of applications in the university's history—22,796—and reported a record low admit rate of 9.1%.
- 32% of Tufts' Class of 2009, 30% of Columbia's Class of 2009, and 29.3% of NYU's Class of 2009 were accepted in the Early Decision round.
- The same percentage of Georgetown's Class of 2009 was admitted through Early Action as it was Regular Admission: 22%.
- Tufts' Class of 2009, whose SAT profile is 24 points higher than the Class of 2008, includes 49 National Merit Scholars.
- 68% of the valedictorians who applied to Brown's Class of 2009 were denied admission.
For the past five years at the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) conferences, much discussion revolved around putting a moratorium on early decision or at least cutting back on the number of applicants who were admitted early. Many conference attendees think early decision is unfair to the students who are applying for financial aid, who cannot get their act together on time, who need to show mid-year grades or who need to take or re-take SAT I and SAT IIs.
