The College admitted 257 out of 964 early decision applicants to the Class of 2029 on Dec. 13, an acceptance rate of 26.6 percent. The College also welcomed 18 students through QuestBridge’s National College Match program on Dec. 2.
The College deferred 129 applicants and denied admission to 572. Typically, the College admits a “small number” of deferred early decision candidates through the regular decision round, Dean of Admission and Student Financial Services Liz Creighton ’01 told the Record. Last year, the College admitted 14 applicants who had been deferred during the early decision round.
This year’s early decision admission rate represents an increase from last year’s record low of 23.3 percent, when the College admitted 249 applicants. This year is the first in which the admissions rate has increased since 2020.
This year marks the second admissions cycle since the Supreme Court declared race-conscious admissions practices to be unconstitutional in June 2023. In response to the ruling, the College made changes to its admissions process for the Class of 2028 admissions cycle, including eliminating the application’s supplemental essay and removing self-reported racial and ethnic information from the files reviewed by admissions readers. The racial demographics of the Class of 2028 — the first cohort admitted after the Supreme Court decision — did not shift greatly compared to other recently admitted classes. Demographics for the Class of 2029 will not be available until students accept their regular decision offers in May.
According to Creighton, those changes remained in place this application cycle. “Our holistic admission process remains largely unchanged from last year,” she said.
“Admissions readers do not have access to information about applicants’ self-disclosed race or ethnicity while reading their applications,” she continued. “Applicants are, of course, able to discuss experiences related to race in any part of their application and admission officers may consider this information so long as ‘that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability,’ as permitted by Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion for the court.”
The Office of Admission and Financial Aid anticipates between 12,000 and 15,000 regular decision applicants, according to Creighton. Last year, the College received 14,100 regular decision applications — the most in the College’s history.
The deadline for regular decision applicants is January 6.
