Class of 2026 Early Admissions: Results and Trends
Elton Lin
It’s mid-March, which means that across the world, students of the incoming Class of 2026 are waiting to hear back from colleges about their Regular Decision responses. Although Regular Decision results are still pending, many colleges have released their Early Admissions statistics for the last admissions cycle! Below are some of these numbers for your viewing convenience, as well as some changes and trends between the Class of 2026’s results and those of last year’s applicants:
| School | # of Applications | # of Accepted Students | Admit Rate (Class of 2026) | Last Year’s Admit Rate (Class of 2025) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barnard College (ED) | 1,501 | 435 | 29% | 24% |
| Boston University (ED) | 6,311 | 1,640 | 26% | 30% |
| Brown University (ED) | 6,146 | 896 | 16% | 15% |
| Columbia University (ED) | 6,305 | 650 | 10% | 10% |
| Dartmouth College (ED) | 2,633 | 530 | 20% | 21% |
| Duke University (ED) | 4,015 | 855 | 21% | 17% |
| Emory University (ED) | 2,205 | 804 | 37% | 39% |
| Georgetown University (REA) | 8,832 | 881 | 10% | 11% |
| Harvard University (SCEA) | 9,406 | 740 | 7.4% | 7.9% |
| Johns Hopkins University (ED) | 2,500 | 520 | 21% | N/A |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology (EA) | 14,781 | 697 | 5% | 5% |
| Rice University (ED) | N/A | 440 | N/A | 16% |
| University of Notre Dame (REA) | 9,683 | 1,675 | 17% | 22% |
| University of Pennsylvania (ED) | 7,795 | 1,218 | 15% | 16% |
| University of Virginia (ED) | 3,466 | 1,097 | 32% | 33% |
| Yale University (SCEA) | 7,288 | 800 | 11% | 10.5% |
Barnard College received 17% more Early Decision applicants than it did last year.
Although Brown University’s ED acceptance rate stayed relatively similar to last year’s (16% to 15%), Brown had about 500 more students apply Early Decision this year, meaning both a greater number of students were accepted ED and a greater number were rejected or deferred.
Duke University saw a notable increase in admit rate, with its Class of 2025 admit rate of 17% going up to 21% for the Class of 2026.
Emory University saw a 13% increase in Early Decision I applications than it did last year.
Johns Hopkins University released their ED1 admit rate for the Class of 2026 (21%) despite not doing so for the Class of 2025. However, there is a definite decrease in admit rate as compared to past admissions cycles, as the early admit rates for the Classes of 2024 and 2023 were 29% and 31%, respectively.
You may have noticed that Princeton University is absent from this list; Princeton decided not to announce admissions statistics out of their concern that the “anxiety level of prospective students and their families” would rise if they were to release these statistics, and that this would actually “discourage some prospective students from applying”.
Rice University reportedly admitted 6% more students through ED and QuestBridge to its Class of 2026 than to its Class of 2025. This follows Rice’s announcement early last year that it intended to increase its undergraduate student enrollment by 20% by 2025.
The University of Notre Dame’s admit rate for its Restricted Early Action round dropped by 5% for the Class of 2026.
Among the students admitted ED to the University of Pennsylvania’s Class of 2026, 22% of them had a parent or grandparent who previously attended UPenn (making these admitted students legacies).
Yale University admitted 11% of its SCEA applicants, deferred 31% of them to be evaluated with the Regular Decision pool later, and rejected 57% of them. (The remaining 1% consisted of withdrawn or incomplete applications.)
These are only points of interest for individual schools after this year’s early results. Stay tuned for an upcoming ILUMIN webinar that will go over the full admissions trend for 2022—and to compare, check out last year’s article, where we discussed the overall patterns of 2021’s early admissions round!