2020 Acceptance Rates at Ivy League & Elite Colleges

We previously covered the Early Decision/Early Action acceptance rates for the Class of 2024 at the eight Ivy League universities as well at a number of other selective schools. As Regular Decision acceptances and rejections have officially been mailed out, College Transitions can now provide you the first look at the overall acceptance rates (Regular Decision plus Early Decision/Action) for some of the premier colleges in the country.

What follows are the Class of 2024 overall acceptance rates for the Ivy League as well as a sampling of other highly-selective colleges & universities. We also provide highlighted admissions-related facts and trends for each institution.

UPDATED: June 10, 2020

Ivy League –Acceptance Rates

Ivy League Admissions Facts & Trends:

Brown

• 96% of admitted students are in the top 10% of their high school classes.
• 61% attend public schools, 29% attend private schools, and 10% attend parochial schools.
• The applicant pool of 36,794 was the second largest in Brown’s history.

Cornell

• Cornell will not be releasing any information about the Class of 2024 until this summer when they report the information to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.
• They are keeping their admissions data under wraps in an effort to “reduce the metric mania” surrounding Ivy League admissions.

Dartmouth

• Average test scores for the Class of 2024 were 1501 for the SAT.
• The greatest number of accepted students hail from California, followed by New York, Massachusetts, Florida, and Texas.
• Approximately 27 percent of the accepted students are expected to be the valedictorian or salutatorian of their high school class.

Harvard

• The number of applications actually declined 7% since the previous cycle.
• Asian students continued to be largest minority group among admitted students at 24.5%.
• Students from all 50 states and 92 countries were admitted to the Crimson Class of 2024.

Penn

• 15% of admits are first-generation college students; 13% are legacies.
• International students from 98 countries represent 14% of the admitted class.
• 20% of accepted students are expected to qualify for a Pell Grant.

Princeton

• 63% of admitted students graduated from public high schools.
• 24% of entering students list engineering as their intended area of concentration.
• Over 20% come from low-income backgrounds.

Yale

• Yale accepted 87 Questbridge applicants, a 58% increase from the previous year.
• The overall undergraduate enrollment has increased by 15% since 2017.
• 1,290 applicants were offered a spot on the waitlist compared to 984 in the last cycle.

UPDATED June 10, 2020

Other Highly-Selective Colleges’ Acceptance Rates

Highly-Selective Colleges & Universities Facts & Trends:

Amherst

• The 10,601 applications received was an all-time high at Amherst.
• 60% of admitted students identified as students of color as opposed to 56% the prior year.
• Admitted students hailed from 48 states and 55 countries.

Duke

• The regular decision acceptance rate was 6%, up from last year’s 5.7%
• North Carolina, California, Florida, Texas, New York and Virginia were the states with the highest representation.
• The overall number of applications decreased from 41,600 to 39,783.

Johns Hopkins

• Students where admitted from 49 states and 41 countries around the globe.
• This was the most selective regular decision round in the school’s history.
• The applicant pool was smaller than last year when it exceeded 30,000 students.

Middlebury

• The acceptance rate jumped 8% between the Class of 2023 and Class of 2024.
• The applicant pool was the third-largest in school history, but fell short of the previous two years.
• More than 25% of applicants were students of color; 38% of those admitted identify as such.

Northwestern

• This is the third straight year that the acceptance rate at Northwestern has risen.
• The number of applications received declined slightly from the previous admissions cycle.
• The school expects an incoming class of 1,975 students.

Rice

• 10% of accepted students are international applicants, the same as the previous year.
• 37% of admitted students will be studying engineering and 30% will major in the natural sciences.
• 59% of students are from out-of-state; 32% are from Texas.

Swarthmore

• 28% of admitted students will be the first in their family to attend college.
• Students hail from 80 nations and all 50 U.S. states.
• 95% of admitted students finished in the top decile of their high school class.

University of Chicago

• The average SAT score of admitted students was 1518; the average ACT was 34.
• 13% of those admitted are international students.
• Included in the class are two Jeopardy! winners, Oman’s Woman of the Year, someone with a patent pending in AI, a researcher who presented to NASA, and the number 2 scrabble player in the world.

University of Virginia 

• The 40,971 applicants was a UVA record-breaker.
• The in-state acceptance rate was 32.5% compared to 36.2% the previous cycle.
• 12.7% of offers went to first-generation students while 11.2% were legacy admits.

Check back for more updates on Class of 2024 acceptance rate data as it becomes public.