What is Carnegie Mellon’s acceptance rate? The answer is 11.07 percent for the Fall 2025 entering class, and for almost every applicant asking the question, that number is close to worthless. Carnegie Mellon does not admit students to Carnegie Mellon. It admits them to the School of Computer Science, the College of Engineering, the Mellon College of Science, the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Tepper School of Business, or the College of Fine Arts, and those doors are not the same size. The 2025-26 filing says so in its own words, appending a note to the admission factors table that the importance of specific factors varies by academic program.
The headline rate has moved very little across five entering classes. It ran 13.54 percent for Fall 2021, dropped to 11.30 percent for Fall 2022, and has stayed inside a band of six-tenths of a point ever since. Read alone, that looks like an institution standing still. Underneath it, the early round inverted in a single cycle, the reporting base for high school rank collapsed by two-thirds, institutional merit money fell by three-quarters, and the racial and international composition of the entering class shifted further than at most peers.
This report works through the five filings covering entering classes Fall 2021 through Fall 2025, published by Carnegie Mellon’s Office of Institutional Research and Analysis. It covers a flat applicant pool that hides a climbing yield, an early decision round that no longer behaves like one, a waiting list that functions as a courtesy, the shift from optional testing to a policy that differs by college, the composition of the class before and after the 2023 Supreme Court decision, the end of merit aid, and the degree data that shows where the internal competition actually sits.
What Carnegie Mellon filed, and what it left blank
The 2025-26 filing is incomplete in ways that shape everything below. Section H2, which carries the number of students awarded aid and the average award, is entirely blank. So are section H5 on borrowing, section I1 on faculty counts, section I3 on class size, section F1 on residency and housing, and section J on degrees conferred. The H1 aid dollars in that filing repeat the 2024-25 figures verbatim, and the form itself labels them as 2024-25 estimates. Every aid, faculty, class size, and degree figure in this report therefore stops at the 2024-25 filing, and the tables mark that boundary where it falls. No value has been carried forward to fill a blank.
Three header errors also run through the most recent filing. The waiting list section asks about Fall 2024 admissions while reporting Fall 2025 figures, the test score section is labeled Fall 2024 while reporting the Fall 2025 entering class, and the retention item names the Fall 2023 cohort where the Fall 2024 cohort belongs. The underlying numbers are internally consistent and cross-foot against their own subtotals, so this report treats them as Fall 2025 data and flags the labeling. Earlier filings carry smaller slips of the same kind, including a 2022-23 form that reports the Fall 2022 class under a Fall 2021 heading.
A flat applicant pool and a climbing yield
Carnegie Mellon received 32,896 applications for Fall 2021 and 34,867 for Fall 2025, a gain of 6.0 percent across four cycles. Measured against the application inflation most selective private universities reported over the same period, that is nearly flat. The admitted count moved even less. After the Fall 2021 class, Carnegie Mellon admitted between 3,843 and 3,959 students in every single year, a band of 116 students.
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | |
| Entering class | Fall 2021 | Fall 2022 | Fall 2023 | Fall 2024 | Fall 2025 |
| Applications | 32,896 | 34,261 | 33,707 | 33,941 | 34,867 |
| Admitted | 4,453 | 3,873 | 3,843 | 3,959 | 3,859 |
| Admit rate | 13.54% | 11.30% | 11.40% | 11.66% | 11.07% |
| Enrolled, full-time | 1,896 | 1,716 | 1,708 | 1,807 | 1,804 |
| Yield | 42.58% | 44.31% | 44.44% | 45.64% | 46.75% |
Source: Carnegie Mellon University Common Data Set filings, section C1, Pittsburgh campus, entering classes of Fall 2021 through Fall 2025. Admit rate = students admitted divided by applications. Yield = full-time first-year students enrolled divided by students admitted. The Fall 2024 class also included one part-time enrollee, excluded here for comparability.
Applications, admitted students, and admit rate, Fall 2021 through Fall 2025. Source: Carnegie Mellon Common Data Set filings, section C1.
Yield is where the movement happened, and it climbed every year: 42.58 percent, then 44.31, 44.44, 45.64, and 46.75 percent. A four-point gain in the share of admitted students who enroll is the lever that lets an admissions office shrink its offer list without shrinking its class, and Carnegie Mellon used it exactly that way. The Fall 2025 class of 1,804 students sits within five percent of the Fall 2021 class of 1,896, assembled from 594 fewer offers. Demand did rise a little over the period. Conversion rose more, and that is what moved the rate.
The early round stopped behaving like an early round
Carnegie Mellon runs one binding early decision plan with a November 1 deadline and no early action alternative. Early decision applications climbed from 2,972 for Fall 2021 to a plateau above 4,400 for three consecutive cycles, then fell to 2,680 for Fall 2025, a drop of 39.4 percent in a single year. Early decision admits barely moved across the whole period, staying between 553 and 615.
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | |
| Early decision applications | 2,972 | 4,528 | 4,515 | 4,423 | 2,680 |
| Early decision admits | 592 | 567 | 615 | 612 | 553 |
| Early decision admit rate | 19.92% | 12.52% | 13.62% | 13.84% | 20.63% |
| Regular decision applications | 29,924 | 29,733 | 29,192 | 29,518 | 32,187 |
| Regular decision admits | 3,861 | 3,306 | 3,228 | 3,347 | 3,306 |
| Regular decision admit rate | 12.90% | 11.12% | 11.06% | 11.34% | 10.27% |
| Early admits as share of class | 31.2% | 33.0% | 36.0% | 33.9% | 30.7% |
Source: Carnegie Mellon University Common Data Set filings, sections C1 and C21, entering classes of Fall 2021 through Fall 2025. Early decision admit rate = early admits divided by early applications. Regular decision figures are derived by subtracting the early decision counts from the C1 totals, since Carnegie Mellon does not report the regular round separately. Share of class = early decision admits divided by full-time first-year students enrolled; because the plan is binding, admitted early applicants enroll except in rare release cases. Early decision is not available for Acting, Directing, Dramaturgy, Music Theater, or the School of Music.
Early decision applications against early and regular admit rates, Fall 2021 through Fall 2025. Source: Carnegie Mellon Common Data Set filings, sections C1 and C21.
The result is an early decision admit rate that swung from 13.84 percent to 20.63 percent while the university admitted 59 fewer early applicants than the year before. The denominator did all of it. An applicant who reads 20.63 percent as the current state of play is reading a figure that will revert the moment early applications recover. The regular round moved the opposite way. Derived regular decision odds fell to 10.27 percent for Fall 2025, the lowest reading in the five-year window, because the same 3,300 or so regular admits were spread across a pool that grew by 2,669 applications.
Two things follow for anyone weighing the round. First, the early advantage at Carnegie Mellon has been real but modest in normal years, running roughly two to three points above the regular rate for the Fall 2022 through Fall 2024 classes. Second, early decision has never filled more than 36 percent of a Carnegie Mellon class, well below the 50 to 60 percent share that binding early rounds now carry at several peer institutions. A student who cannot commit without comparing aid offers is not forfeiting most of the class by waiting.
The waiting list is a formality
Across five entering classes, 30,076 students accepted a place on Carnegie Mellon’s waiting list and 221 were admitted from it. That is an admit rate off the list of 0.73 percent, and it has never risen above 1.5 percent in any year of the window.
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | |
| Offered a place on the list | 8,792 | 8,986 | 8,587 | 16,484 | 7,117 |
| Accepted a place | 5,319 | 4,652 | 5,106 | 10,062 | 4,937 |
| Admitted from the list | 35 | 43 | 75 | 32 | 36 |
| Admit rate off the list | 0.66% | 0.92% | 1.47% | 0.32% | 0.73% |
| Offers as multiple of class | 4.6x | 5.2x | 5.0x | 9.1x | 3.9x |
Source: Carnegie Mellon University Common Data Set filings, section C2, entering classes of Fall 2021 through Fall 2025. Admit rate off the list = students admitted from the list divided by students who accepted a place. Offers as multiple of class = qualified applicants offered a place divided by full-time first-year students enrolled. The waiting list is unranked and Carnegie Mellon releases no position information to students or counselors. The 2025-26 filing labels this section Fall 2024 while reporting Fall 2025 figures.
The Fall 2024 cycle is the outlier that makes the point. Carnegie Mellon offered 16,484 waiting list places that year, more than nine times the size of the entering class, and 10,062 students accepted one. Thirty-two were admitted. The list contracted sharply the following year, to 7,117 offers, and the admitted count still came to 36. Whatever purpose the list serves at Carnegie Mellon, it is not a meaningful second route into the class.
Testing moved from optional to conditional
Carnegie Mellon suspended its testing requirement in 2020 and remained test-optional through the Fall 2025 entering class. Submission behavior did not stay flat under that policy. The share of enrolled first-year students who submitted an SAT rose from 47.7 percent for Fall 2021 to 65.5 percent for Fall 2025, with the largest jump arriving in the final year, and the number of SAT submitters climbed from 905 to 1,182 on a class that shrank slightly.
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | |
| Submitted SAT | 47.7% (905) | 50.5% (867) | 51.4% (878) | 52.6% (951) | 65.5% (1,182) |
| Submitted ACT | 21.9% (416) | 19.7% (338) | 16.6% (284) | 22.4% (405) | 18.1% (327) |
| SAT composite, 25th to 75th | not reported | 1500-1560 | 1500-1560 | 1510-1560 | 1500-1560 |
| SAT math, 25th to 75th | 770-800 | 770-800 | 770-800 | 770-800 | 770-800 |
| ACT composite, 25th to 75th | 33-35 | 34-35 | 34-35 | 34-35 | 34-36 |
| Share of SAT submitters at 1400+ | 93.8% | 95.5% | 95.33% | 96.32% | 93.4% |
Source: Carnegie Mellon University Common Data Set filings, section C9, enrolled first-time first-year students, Pittsburgh campus. Percentages express submitters as a share of the enrolled class; students submitting both tests appear in both rows. The 2021-22 filing reported SAT section scores without a composite range. The 2025-26 filing is labeled Fall 2024 while reporting the Fall 2025 entering class.
Share of enrolled first-year students submitting each test, Fall 2021 through Fall 2025. Source: Carnegie Mellon Common Data Set filings, section C9.
The score bands themselves have not moved. The SAT middle 50 percent has read 1500 to 1560 in three of the four years it was reported and 1510 to 1560 in the fourth. What changed in the most recent class is the shape of the distribution. The share of SAT submitters scoring 1400 or above fell from 96.32 percent to 93.4 percent, and the share of ACT submitters scoring 30 or above fell from 97.78 percent to 93.6 percent. More students submitted, and the pool of submitted scores widened at the bottom, which is what happens when a university signals that scores are about to become part of the requirement.
Across all five filings, Carnegie Mellon rated standardized test scores as considered, the third of the four levels the Common Data Set offers. Rigor of the secondary school record and academic grade point average sat at very important in every year, joined by extracurricular activities, character and personal qualities, and volunteer work. The essay and recommendations held at important throughout. Only one row changed materially: racial and ethnic status, rated considered in the 2021-22 filing, was removed from the form entirely after the June 2023 Supreme Court decision.
The transcript signals got harder to read
Average high school grade point average has been effectively fixed at 3.89 to 3.91 across all five classes. The share of enrolled students with a perfect 4.0 rose to 49.7 percent for Fall 2022 and has drifted down since, reaching 43.9 percent for Fall 2025. Neither movement is large enough to describe a change in standards.
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | |
| Average high school GPA | 3.89 | 3.90 | 3.91 | 3.89 | 3.89 |
| Share with a 4.0 GPA | 44.5% | 49.7% | 48.9% | 46.9% | 43.9% |
| Share submitting a GPA | 100% | 100% | 100% | 98.0% | 99.7% |
| Share in top tenth of class | 88.9% | 90.1% | 92.2% | 94.2% | 82.5% |
| Share submitting a class rank | 56.5% | 60.3% | 57.4% | 53.8% | 19.0% |
Source: Carnegie Mellon University Common Data Set filings, sections C10, C11, and C12, enrolled first-time first-year students. Top tenth and top quarter figures are calculated only on students who submitted a rank, so the base shrinks with the submission share in the row beneath. The 2022-23 filing recorded the average GPA with a stray percent sign, read here as 3.90.
The class rank row needs a warning label. The share of enrolled students submitting a class rank held between 53.8 and 60.3 percent for four years, then collapsed to 19.0 percent for Fall 2025. So the apparent decline in top-tenth representation, from 94.2 percent to 82.5 percent, rests on roughly 343 students where the earlier figure rested on roughly 972. Those two percentages describe different populations and should not be set against each other. What the row tracks across five years is the disappearance of class rank from American high school transcripts, and Carnegie Mellon rates rank as merely considered in every filing, which is what a university does with a signal it can no longer see for four students in five.
The class composition moved further than the admit rate
Nothing else in these filings moved as far as the demographic record. Asian students rose from 30.7 percent of the entering class for Fall 2021 to 42.6 percent for Fall 2025, an increase of 187 students on a class that shrank by 92. Over the same period Hispanic and Latino enrollment fell from 206 students to 108, Black enrollment from 86 to 56, and international enrollment from 387 to 261.
| First-year students | Fall 2021 | Fall 2022 | Fall 2023 | Fall 2024 | Fall 2025 |
| Asian | 582 (30.7%) | 569 (33.2%) | 603 (35.3%) | 711 (39.3%) | 769 (42.6%) |
| White | 419 (22.1%) | 356 (20.7%) | 365 (21.4%) | 379 (21.0%) | 346 (19.2%) |
| International | 387 (20.4%) | 324 (18.9%) | 276 (16.2%) | 362 (20.0%) | 261 (14.5%) |
| Hispanic or Latino | 206 (10.9%) | 211 (12.3%) | 203 (11.9%) | 115 (6.4%) | 108 (6.0%) |
| Race or ethnicity unknown | 88 (4.6%) | 85 (5.0%) | 86 (5.0%) | 127 (7.0%) | 174 (9.6%) |
| Two or more races | 128 (6.8%) | 89 (5.2%) | 98 (5.7%) | 75 (4.1%) | 90 (5.0%) |
| Black or African American | 86 (4.5%) | 78 (4.5%) | 77 (4.5%) | 39 (2.2%) | 56 (3.1%) |
Source: Carnegie Mellon University Common Data Set filings, section B2, degree-seeking first-time first-year students, Pittsburgh campus. Percentages are calculated against class totals of 1,896, 1,716, 1,708, 1,808, and 1,804. American Indian or Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander counts, never above two students in any year, are omitted for space. Federal reporting rules count Hispanic, multiracial, and international students separately rather than within a single race.
Composition of the entering first-year class, Fall 2021 through Fall 2025. Source: Carnegie Mellon Common Data Set filings, section B2.
Read the unknown row before drawing conclusions from any other. Students declining to report race nearly doubled, from 88 to 174, and that movement is large enough to absorb part of the change elsewhere in the table. With that caution registered, the timing is hard to miss. The single largest shifts arrived between Fall 2023 and Fall 2024, the first class admitted after race-conscious admission ended. Hispanic and Latino enrollment fell 43 percent in that one cycle, Black enrollment fell 49 percent, and Asian enrollment rose 18 percent. Institutions across the country reported the same pattern that autumn, and Carnegie Mellon’s version of it is at the steeper end.
International enrollment tells a separate story with a separate cause. It recovered to 362 students for Fall 2024 and then fell to 261 for Fall 2025, its lowest point in the window. Carnegie Mellon offers no institutional scholarship or grant aid to international undergraduates, a position marked in section H6 of all five filings, so every international student pays the full published price. In a year when visa policy and the currency cost of an American degree both moved against applicants, a university with no aid to offer them has less to work with than peers who do.
Price rose, and merit money disappeared
Published cost rose 12.2 percent across the four billed years the filings cover, from $78,140 for 2022-23 to $87,670 for 2025-26. Tuition alone moved from $59,864 to $67,020. The 2025-26 filing repeated the prior year’s figures instead of advancing to 2026-27, leaving four distinct billed years in the series.
| Academic year billed | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 |
| Tuition | $59,864 | $62,260 | $64,596 | $67,020 |
| Required fees | $1,480 | $1,569 | $1,650 | $1,756 |
| Room and board | $16,796 | $17,468 | $18,166 | $18,894 |
| Total published cost | $78,140 | $81,297 | $84,412 | $87,670 |
Source: Carnegie Mellon University Common Data Set filings, section G1, first-year undergraduates. The 2021-22 through 2024-25 filings each report costs for the following academic year; the 2025-26 filing reports the current year and duplicates the prior filing, so no 2026-27 figure exists in this series.
Published cost of attendance by component against the average need-based grant for first-year aid recipients. Source: Carnegie Mellon Common Data Set filings, sections G1 and H2.
Aid moved in two directions at once. Institutional need-based grants rose 40.3 percent, from $108.7 million in 2021-22 to $152.6 million in 2024-25, and the average need-based grant for a first-year recipient climbed from $47,052 to $56,222. The university reported meeting 100 percent of demonstrated need for first-year students in all four reported years. Institutional non-need-based grants went the other way, falling from $15.3 million to $3.8 million.
| Aid year reported | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 |
| Determined to have need | 761 | 715 | 713 | 649 |
| Awarded a need-based grant | 747 | 696 | 699 | 603 |
| Share of class with a need grant | 39.4% | 40.6% | 40.9% | 33.4% |
| Average need-based grant | $47,052 | $52,524 | $54,994 | $56,222 |
| Average total aid package | $51,560 | $56,256 | $58,579 | $56,005 |
| Share of need met | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% |
| Awarded a non-need grant | 250 | 274 | 309 | 48 |
| Institutional non-need grants | $15.3M | $17.2M | $16.6M | $3.8M |
Source: Carnegie Mellon University Common Data Set filings, sections H1 and H2, first-time full-time first-year students on the Pittsburgh campus. Share of class = recipients divided by full-time first-year enrollment of 1,896, 1,716, 1,708, and 1,807. The 2025-26 filing left section H2 blank and repeated the 2024-25 dollar figures in section H1, so no 2024-25 entering class aid data has been published.
The non-need row invites a conclusion the rest of the section does not support. First-year recipients of a non-need scholarship or grant fell from 309 to 48 between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 aid years, and institutional non-need dollars fell $12.8 million. That reads like the end of merit aid until three other lines are checked. Section H2a, which counts students with no demonstrated need who received an institutional non-need award, barely moved, from 28 first-year students to 32, at an average near $13,000 each. Section H14, listing the criteria Carnegie Mellon applies to non-need awards, checked academics, art, music and drama, leadership, and state residency in both years without change. And institutional need-based grants rose $22.3 million in the same year the non-need column fell $12.8 million.
The likeliest reading is that awards previously coded as non-need aid to students who also had demonstrated need moved into the need-based column, which would shrink the non-need count without changing what any student received. The filings do not say, and Carnegie Mellon has published no explanation. What the record does support is narrower and more useful: aid here is overwhelmingly need-based, the university meets full demonstrated need for domestic students, and a family above the need threshold should not build a plan around a merit award.
Borrowing eased even as the sticker price rose. The share of each graduating class leaving with any loan debt fell from 39.58 percent to 29.26 percent across four filings, while the average cumulative amount borrowed among those who did borrow moved from $30,652 to $31,298. President Farnam Jahanian put the longer arc at the March 2026 State of the University address, noting that roughly 25 percent of Carnegie Mellon students now use federal loans against 60 percent in 2018. Fewer graduates borrow, and those who do carry about the same balance.
Persistence and completion improved
Carnegie Mellon retained between 96.6 and 98.0 percent of its first-year students in every year of the window, with no clear trend inside that band. Completion moved more decisively. The six-year graduation rate rose from 92.8 percent for the 2015 entering cohort to 94.3 percent for the 2019 cohort, and the four-year rate reached 81.4 percent for the 2018 cohort.
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | |
| First-year retention | 97.4% | 97.3% | 97.0% | 98.0% | 96.6% |
| Graduation cohort | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |
| Four-year graduation rate | 79.0% | 76.3% | 79.1% | 81.4% | 78.9% |
| Six-year graduation rate | 92.8% | 91.5% | 92.5% | 94.1% | 94.3% |
| Six-year rate, Pell recipients | 91.6% | 88.0% | 88.7% | 91.7% | 93.2% |
| Student to faculty ratio | 6 to 1 | 6 to 1 | 6 to 1 | 6 to 1 | 6 to 1 |
| Instructional faculty | 1,215 | 1,237 | 1,285 | 1,306 | not filed |
Source: Carnegie Mellon University Common Data Set filings, sections B4 through B11, B22, I1, and I2. Four-year rates are derived by dividing students completing in four years or less by the final cohort after allowable exclusions. The 2025-26 filing left section I1 blank and misstates the retention cohort year, reporting the Fall 2024 entering cohort under a Fall 2023 label.
Pell recipients closed most of the completion gap over this period. In the 2016 cohort they graduated within six years at 88.0 percent against 92.8 percent for students who received neither a Pell Grant nor a subsidized loan, a spread of 4.8 points. For the 2019 cohort those figures read 93.2 percent and 94.7 percent, narrowing the gap to 1.5 points. The classroom held steady alongside it. Undergraduate class sections grew from 1,671 in Fall 2021 to 1,797 in Fall 2024, with sections enrolling fewer than twenty students holding between 67.8 and 69.5 percent of the total throughout, and the reported student to faculty ratio unchanged at six to one in every filing.
Where the internal competition actually sits
Carnegie Mellon’s degree mix shows a university consolidating around three fields. Engineering, computer and information sciences, and mathematics and statistics together accounted for 48.0 percent of bachelor’s majors in 2020-21 and 48.8 percent in 2023-24. Business and marketing grew fastest in relative terms, from 10.12 percent to 12.34 percent, while the physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences, and architecture each lost ground.
Share of bachelor’s degrees conferred by discipline, 2020-21 graduates against 2023-24 graduates. Source: Carnegie Mellon Common Data Set filings, section J.
Source: Carnegie Mellon University Common Data Set filings, section J, degrees conferred in the year preceding each filing. Percentages use majors rather than headcount, so a student with a double major appears in two rows. Categories follow federal CIP coding, and reassignment of a program between codes moves share between rows without any change in student behavior. The 2025-26 filing left section J blank, so 2023-24 graduates are the most recent year reported.
Those shares describe graduates, not applicants, and they understate the pressure at the front door. Carnegie Mellon does not publish admit rates by college, which leaves a gap that the consulting industry has filled with a widely repeated estimate that the School of Computer Science admits under five percent of its applicants. That figure is not an institutional disclosure and should be treated as an approximation, but the direction is not seriously disputed by anyone who works with Carnegie Mellon applicants. An 11 percent university-wide rate is an average of doors ranging from roughly one in twenty to roughly one in four.
The consequence for applicants is structural. Because admission is to a college rather than to the university, a student admitted to Dietrich or the Mellon College of Science who intends to move into computer science after enrolling faces a selective internal transfer process with no guarantee attached. The choice made on the application is close to permanent, and it is the single decision that shapes an applicant’s odds more than anything in the essay.
Beyond the numbers
The largest development in this period is not in any filing. In August 2024, Provost James H. Garrett Jr. announced that beginning with Fall 2026 applicants, Carnegie Mellon’s Pittsburgh campus would run a testing policy that varies by college. The School of Computer Science requires an SAT or ACT score. The College of Fine Arts remains test-optional and continues to require portfolios or auditions. The College of Engineering, the Dietrich College, the Heinz College information systems program, the Mellon College of Science, and the Tepper School of Business became test-flexible, meaning a score is required but applicants may choose among the SAT, ACT, International Baccalaureate exams, Advanced Placement exams, Cambridge A-Levels, and the French Baccalaureate.
Three different testing regimes inside one university is unusual, and it is the strongest available evidence that Carnegie Mellon treats its colleges as separate admissions operations. The provost’s letter attributes the framework to a summer committee of leadership and faculty representatives from each college that reviewed the effect of test-optional admission on the applicant pool. The Fall 2025 jump in score submission, from 52.6 percent to 65.5 percent, is the applicant pool responding to that announcement a year before it took effect.
Two institutional pressures sit behind the enrollment record. In his March 2026 State of the University address, Jahanian named a shrinking pool of college-age students, geopolitical forces affecting international student enrollment, and pressure on federal investment in research and education among the structural headwinds facing the university. International first-year enrollment at Carnegie Mellon fell 28 percent in the most recent cycle, which is what that second pressure looks like in a single number. In the same address Jahanian put the current undergraduate aid budget at $166.3 million, covering 80 percent of all undergraduate aid, and described selectivity as stable near 12 percent across five years. The university opened its Robotics Innovation Center in February 2026 and has the Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences under construction, consolidating biological sciences, chemistry, and the Neuroscience Institute into one complex.
What the five-year record means for applicants
Choose the college before writing anything. Carnegie Mellon’s 11 percent headline rate is an average across six admissions operations that use different rubrics, different testing requirements, and different definitions of a strong file. An application that reads as computer science shaped in the Dietrich pool, or as generically strong in the School of Computer Science pool, works against itself. Internal transfer into the most crowded programs is possible and competitive, and a student who applies to an easier door intending to walk through a harder one later is making a bet the university has not agreed to.
The testing question has an answer now, and the college supplies it. From Fall 2026, a School of Computer Science candidate submits an SAT or ACT. A Tepper, Engineering, Dietrich, or Mellon College of Science candidate submits one of six accepted exams. Only the College of Fine Arts leaves the choice open. Applicants who spent the last five years deciding whether to send a score are deciding which exam to sit instead.
Treat the early decision figures with care. The 20.63 percent early rate for Fall 2025 came from a pool that shrank by 1,743 applications, not from a policy change, and Carnegie Mellon admitted fewer early applicants that year than in any of the three preceding cycles. The early advantage is real but modest, around two to three points in a normal year, and early decision has never filled more than 36 percent of a class. A student who needs to compare aid packages should apply in the regular round and accept a rate near 10 percent.
Run the net price calculator early. Carnegie Mellon meets full demonstrated need for domestic students, and the non-need awards it still makes reached 32 first-year students with no demonstrated need in 2024-25, at roughly $13,000 each. A family above the need threshold should plan on the published price of $87,670. International applicants receive no institutional grant aid at all under section H6 of every filing in this window, and should budget the full amount across four years.
And the waiting list is not a second chance. Carnegie Mellon has admitted an average of 44 students a year from lists that between 4,652 and 10,062 students accepted. The decision arrives in April, and for practical purposes it arrives once.
