Picture a student sitting down in October to decide whether to apply to Tufts under early decision. The commitment is binding, it arrives before any aid offer, and the sensible first move is to find out what the early round is actually worth. Until this year, Tufts gave that student nothing to work with. The university left the early decision application and admit counts blank in four consecutive filings, from 2021-22 through 2024-25, while dutifully printing the deadlines for both of its binding rounds in every one of them.
The 2025-26 filing finally supplies the numbers, and they are large. Tufts admitted 1,071 students through early decision for the Fall 2025 class out of 3,344 early applicants, a rate of 32.03 percent. Those 1,071 admits equal 60.68 percent of the 1,765 students who enrolled. Everything left for the regular round works out, by subtraction, to 2,542 admits from 30,071 applications, or 8.45 percent. A student weighing the binding round was choosing between roughly one-in-three odds and roughly one-in-twelve, and for four years the filings would not say so.
This report covers the Fall 2021 through Fall 2025 entering classes as published by Tufts’ Office of Institutional Research. It works through an applicant pool that peaked in 2022 and has drifted down since, a yield that broke a three-year pattern, a waiting list that swung from zero admits to 354 and back to 71, a test-optional policy that has drawn more submitters every year, the demographic record before and after the 2023 Supreme Court decision, and a published price approaching $93,000 against an aid program that changes fundamentally for the class entering after this window closes.
What Tufts reports, and what it leaves blank
The early decision gap is the largest omission, and it is not the only one. Tufts reports no high school grade point average in any of the five years: sections C11 and C12 read zero or blank throughout, so no GPA row appears below. The residency breakdown in section C1 exists only for Fall 2023 through Fall 2025, because the item was added to the form partway through the window.
One row deserves a warning label. Section H5 in the 2025-26 filing reports 396 borrowers at an average of $25,584, against 382 federal borrowers at $15,190, 158 institutional borrowers at $3,658, and 58 private borrowers at $64,668. Every one of those figures is identical to the 2024-25 filing, down to the dollar, while the graduating class it describes grew from 1,539 students to 1,715. Five matching values across two years is not a coincidence, and the borrowing figures for the Class of 2025 are read here as carried forward rather than newly measured.
Two smaller notes. The first-year counts in sections C1, B1, and H2 disagree by a handful of students in most years, by eleven for Fall 2025, and the tables below use C1 for admissions arithmetic and B1 for enrollment composition. And the factor grid in section C7 is machine-readable in only one of the five filings, the 2023-24, so the ratings reported later come from that year.
A pool that peaked in 2022
Tufts received 31,198 applications for Fall 2021, climbed to 34,881 for Fall 2022, and has come down in each of the three years since, reaching 33,415 for Fall 2025. The admit rate moved inversely and without a trend, running 11.43 percent, then 9.69, 10.13, 11.49, and 10.81.
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | |
| Entering class | Fall 2021 | Fall 2022 | Fall 2023 | Fall 2024 | Fall 2025 |
| Applications | 31,198 | 34,881 | 34,003 | 34,432 | 33,415 |
| Admitted | 3,566 | 3,381 | 3,444 | 3,957 | 3,613 |
| Admit rate | 11.43% | 9.69% | 10.13% | 11.49% | 10.81% |
| Enrolled | 1,804 | 1,695 | 1,739 | 1,801 | 1,765 |
| Yield | 50.59% | 50.13% | 50.49% | 45.51% | 48.85% |
| First-year retention | 96.70% | 96.10% | 96.00% | 95.50% | 95.21% |
Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, sections C1 and B22, entering classes of Fall 2021 through Fall 2025. Admit rate = students admitted divided by applications. Yield = students enrolled divided by students admitted. The Fall 2025 retention figure is calculated from the 1,710 of 1,796 students the filing reports as retained.
Applications, admitted students, and admit rate, Fall 2021 through Fall 2025. Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, section C1.
Fall 2024 breaks the pattern. Tufts admitted 3,957 students that year, 513 more than the year before and the largest admitted group in the window, from a pool that had barely moved. Then yield fell to 45.51 percent, five points below the level it had held for three straight years, and the entering class landed at 1,801.
First-year students enrolled and yield rate, Fall 2021 through Fall 2025. Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, section C1.
Yield recovered to 48.85 percent for Fall 2025 without returning to the earlier plateau. A university converting half its offers has considerable control over its class size, and the entering class has stayed between 1,695 and 1,804 across all five years, a band of 109 students. Retention has moved in one direction over the same span, from 96.70 percent down to 95.21 percent, a small decline that has not reversed in any year.
The early round, disclosed once
Tufts runs two binding early decision rounds, the first closing in early November and the second in early January, and has done so throughout this window. What the filings withhold is how much of the class those rounds account for.
| Fall 2025 entering class | Applications | Admitted | Admit rate | Share of class |
| Early decision, both rounds | 3,344 | 1,071 | 32.03% | 60.68% |
| Regular decision, derived | 30,071 | 2,542 | 8.45% | n/a |
| All applicants | 33,415 | 3,613 | 10.81% | 100% |
Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filing 2025-26, sections C1 and C21. Early decision figures combine Early Decision I and Early Decision II, which Tufts reports as a single pair of counts. Regular decision figures are derived by subtracting the early counts from the C1 totals. Share of class = early decision admits divided by the 1,765 first-year students enrolled; because the plans are binding, admitted early applicants enroll except in rare release cases. The 2021-22 through 2024-25 filings left both early decision counts blank.
A 32.03 percent early rate against an 8.45 percent regular rate is a wider spread than Duke discloses for its own binding round, and it sits at a university that also fills three-fifths of its class before the regular round is read. Both numbers deserve a caveat that applies at every institution with a binding round: early pools are self-selected toward students with strong records and recruited athletes, so the gap overstates the advantage available to any individual applicant. It does not overstate the arithmetic of seats. Regular applicants for Fall 2025 were competing for roughly 694 places against 30,071 applications.
A waiting list with no settled policy
Tufts admitted nobody from its waiting list for Fall 2021, then 183, then 200, then 354, then 71. Measured against the students who accepted a place, the rate ran 0.00 percent, 13.78, 15.11, 35.72, and 5.95.
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | |
| Offered a place on the list | 2,579 | 2,664 | 2,565 | 2,800 | 3,061 |
| Accepted a place | 1,264 | 1,328 | 1,324 | 991 | 1,193 |
| Admitted from the list | 0 | 183 | 200 | 354 | 71 |
| Admit rate off the list | 0.00% | 13.78% | 15.11% | 35.72% | 5.95% |
Source: Tufts 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. The waiting list is unranked.
Waiting list offers, acceptances, and admissions, Fall 2021 through Fall 2025. Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, section C2.
The Fall 2024 figure lands in the same year yield collapsed. Tufts admitted 354 students from the list that spring, roughly one in three of those waiting, which is what an admissions office does when the deposits do not arrive as expected. The following year, with yield partly recovered, the number fell to 71. Three signals from that one cycle point the same direction: the largest admitted group in the window, the lowest yield, and the heaviest use of the list. Three readings from one cycle point the same way, and the list is where the shortfall shows up.
Massachusetts residents hold the best odds
Tufts began reporting the residency split in the 2023-24 filing, and the three years available show a pattern that runs against the usual assumption about private universities. Students applying from Massachusetts are admitted at a higher rate than out-of-state applicants, and international applicants at less than half the domestic rate.
| Fall 2025 entering class | Applications | Admitted | Admit rate | Enrolled |
| Massachusetts residents | 4,733 | 659 | 13.92% | 364 |
| Out of state | 19,414 | 2,422 | 12.48% | 1,132 |
| International | 9,260 | 531 | 5.73% | 268 |
| Total | 33,415 | 3,613 | 10.81% | 1,765 |
Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filing 2025-26, section C1 residency table, reported by known physical address at time of application. Admit rate = admits divided by applications. Totals include eight applicants and one enrolled student of unknown residency. For Fall 2024 the same table reports Massachusetts at 14.97 percent, out of state at 13.10 percent, and international at 6.26 percent; for Fall 2023, 13.09, 11.49, and 4.73 percent.
The composition of the pool moved more than the rates did. Out-of-state domestic applications fell from 21,408 for Fall 2023 to 19,414 for Fall 2025, a decline of 9.3 percent across two cycles. International applications went the other way, rising from 7,935 to 9,260, and now account for 27.7 percent of everyone who applies to Tufts while filling 15.2 percent of the class. The shrinking piece of the pool is the domestic out-of-state one, which is also the piece that supplies nearly two-thirds of the entering class.
Test-optional, with more submitters every year
Tufts has been test-optional across this entire window, rating standardized test scores as considered, the third of the four levels the form offers. Submission behavior has moved anyway. The share of enrolled first-year students submitting an SAT rose from 31 percent to 42 percent, while ACT submission fell from 23 percent to 16 percent.
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | |
| Submitted SAT | 31% (568) | 37% (631) | 35% (616) | 38% (687) | 42% (749) |
| Submitted ACT | 23% (416) | 19% (315) | 18% (309) | 18% (318) | 16% (279) |
| SAT composite, 25th to 75th | 1450-1530 | 1460-1540 | 1470-1530 | 1480-1540 | 1460-1520 |
| SAT math, 25th to 75th | 730-790 | 740-790 | 750-790 | 750-790 | 730-780 |
| ACT composite, 25th to 75th | 33-35 | 33-35 | 33-35 | 33-35 | 33-35 |
| Share submitting a class rank | 24.88% | 26.61% | 26.29% | 25% | 21% |
| Share in top tenth of class | 82% | 87% | 82% | 85% | 87% |
Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, sections C9 and C10, enrolled first-time first-year students. Percentages express submitters as a share of the enrolled class; students submitting both tests appear in both rows. Top-tenth figures are calculated only on students who submitted a rank, a base that has fallen to roughly one enrolled student in five.
Share of enrolled first-year students submitting each test, Fall 2021 through Fall 2025. Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, section C9.
The score bands tell a quieter story than the submission shares. The SAT middle 50 percent climbed from 1450 to 1530 in Fall 2021 up to 1480 to 1540 in Fall 2024, then slipped to 1460 to 1520 for Fall 2025, its lowest reading since the window opened. More students submitted and the band came down in the same year.
Tufts publishes unusually direct guidance on the submission decision, which the Common Data Set does not capture. Its admissions site encourages applicants with an SAT of 1300 or higher, or an ACT composite of 28 or higher, to include scores, and reports that students who did submit were admitted with SAT scores ranging from 1240 to 1600 and ACT composites from 26 to 36. The university also states that it will not assume an unsubmitted score falls below those ranges, and adds the line: we are test-optional, really.
The one year of section C7 that extracts cleanly, the 2023-24 filing, shows six factors at the top rating: rigor of the secondary school record, class rank, academic grade point average, recommendations, the application essay, and character and personal qualities. Extracurricular activities and talent sit one rung down at important. Test scores sit with the interview, first generation status, alumni relation, geographical residence, volunteer work, work experience, and demonstrated interest in the considered tier. Racial and ethnic status appears in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 grids and is gone from the form thereafter.
Who enrolls
White students made up 39.2 percent of the Fall 2025 entering class, down from 42.2 percent, and remain the largest group by more than twenty points. The movement worth attention sits in two rows further down.
| First-year students | Fall 2021 | Fall 2022 | Fall 2023 | Fall 2024 | Fall 2025 |
| White | 760 (42.2%) | 690 (40.7%) | 709 (40.9%) | 751 (41.7%) | 696 (39.2%) |
| Asian | 276 (15.3%) | 275 (16.2%) | 308 (17.8%) | 312 (17.3%) | 302 (17.0%) |
| International | 217 (12.1%) | 220 (13.0%) | 206 (11.9%) | 238 (13.2%) | 211 (11.9%) |
| Hispanic or Latino | 198 (11.0%) | 164 (9.7%) | 161 (9.3%) | 181 (10.1%) | 184 (10.4%) |
| Two or more races | 154 (8.6%) | 134 (7.9%) | 160 (9.2%) | 121 (6.7%) | 138 (7.8%) |
| Race or ethnicity unknown | 67 (3.7%) | 88 (5.2%) | 76 (4.4%) | 123 (6.8%) | 133 (7.5%) |
| Black or African American | 122 (6.8%) | 123 (7.3%) | 111 (6.4%) | 73 (4.1%) | 109 (6.1%) |
Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, section B2, degree-seeking first-time first-year students. Percentages are calculated against class totals of 1,800, 1,694, 1,735, 1,799, and 1,776. American Indian or Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander counts, never above four 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: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, section B2.
Black enrollment fell from 111 students to 73 in the first class admitted after race-conscious admission ended, a drop of 34 percent, then recovered to 109 for Fall 2025. Students declining to report race doubled across the window, from 67 to 133, and the sharpest single-year jump in that row, from 76 to 123, arrived in the same Fall 2024 cycle. Part of the apparent decline that year and part of the apparent recovery afterward may sit inside the unknown column rather than in any reported group.
Price, and an aid program that arrives after the window closes
Published cost rose from $82,002 for 2022-23 to $93,182 for 2025-26, an increase of 13.6 percent across the four billed years the filings cover. Tuition alone went from $63,804 to $71,982.
| Academic year billed | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 |
| Tuition | $63,804 | $66,358 | $69,146 | $71,982 |
| Required fees | $1,418 | $1,486 | $1,558 | $1,634 |
| Food and housing | $16,780 | $17,660 | $18,588 | $19,566 |
| Total published cost | $82,002 | $85,504 | $89,292 | $93,182 |
Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, section G1. Each filing reports costs for the following academic year, so the column headings give the year the prices apply to. Tufts reports the same tuition for first-year and continuing undergraduates in every year.
Published cost of attendance by component against the average need-based grant for first-year aid recipients. Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, sections G1 and H2.
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | |
| Determined to have need | 661 | 684 | 682 | 683 | 665 |
| Awarded a need-based grant | 627 | 633 | 638 | 638 | 644 |
| Share of class with a need grant | 34.8% | 37.4% | 36.8% | 35.5% | 36.3% |
| Average need-based grant | $54,301 | $55,283 | $55,617 | $58,196 | $64,788 |
| Average total aid package | $54,954 | $56,540 | $56,797 | $59,574 | $66,244 |
| Share of need met | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Institutional need-based grants | $115.3M | $121.8M | $128.2M | $139.7M | $143.6M |
| Institutional non-need grants | $0.13M | $0.15M | $0.16M | $8.06M | $3.46M |
Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, sections H1 and H2, first-time full-time first-year students. Share of class = need-grant recipients divided by first-year enrollment of 1,800, 1,694, 1,735, 1,799, and 1,776. Each filing reports aid for a different reference year, which the form states on its face; the columns follow the filing rather than the aid year.
The average need-based grant to a first-year recipient rose 19.3 percent, from $54,301 to $64,788, outpacing the 13.6 percent increase in published cost, with most of that gain arriving in the final year. Tufts reported meeting 100 percent of demonstrated need in all five years. Roughly 36 percent of each entering class receives a need-based grant, a share that has barely moved.
The non-need row jumps by a factor of fifty between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 filings, from $163,000 to $8.06 million, then falls back to $3.46 million. The average non-need award to a first-year student with no demonstrated need moves alongside it, from $1,000 to $45,237 to $23,157. The filings offer no explanation, and a move of that size in a single year can come from a genuinely new award program or from a change in how existing dollars are classified. Applicants should not read it as merit money they can compete for until Tufts says what it is.
The change that will actually reach applicants sits outside this window entirely. On September 9, 2025, Tufts announced the Tufts Tuition Pact, under which U.S. undergraduates from families earning under $150,000 with typical assets attend tuition-free, beginning with the Fall 2026 entering class. Families under $60,000 typically receive packages with no loans, and Tufts says many families up to $200,000 will also see tuition covered depending on circumstances. None of the five classes in this report were admitted under it.
Borrowing, completion, and the classroom
Borrowing has eased. The share of each graduating class leaving with any loan debt moved from 26.97 percent for the Class of 2021 to 23.09 percent for the Class of 2025, though the most recent figure rests on carried-forward borrower counts as noted above.
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | |
| Graduating class | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
| Share who borrowed | 26.97% | 24.74% | 27.08% | 25.73% | 23.09% |
| Average amount borrowed | $28,313 | $24,468 | $27,162 | $25,584 | $25,584 |
| Graduation cohort | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |
| Four-year graduation rate | 89.0% | 89.8% | 85.6% | 82.6% | 82.7% |
| Six-year graduation rate | 93.8% | 93.7% | 93.4% | 93.6% | 93.6% |
| Undergraduate class sections | 1,334 | 1,251 | 1,325 | 1,326 | 1,323 |
| Sections under 20 students | 63.2% | 60.4% | 63.5% | 59.1% | 59.8% |
Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, sections H4, H5, B4 through B11, and I3. Borrowing figures cover students who started at Tufts as first-time students and received a bachelor’s degree in the reporting year, excluding transfers and parent loans; averages are calculated only across students who borrowed. Four-year and six-year rates are derived from the cohort grids. Section counts for the 2025-26 filing are labeled Fall 2024 but differ from the prior filing and are read here as Fall 2025.
Six-year completion has been remarkably fixed, moving between 93.4 and 93.8 percent across six consecutive cohorts. The four-year rate has not been fixed at all. It ran 89.0 and 89.8 percent for the 2015 and 2016 cohorts and then fell to 85.6, 82.6, and 82.7 percent, a decline of about seven points. Those later cohorts are also the larger ones, growing from 1,336 students to 1,611, and they are the cohorts whose middle years fell inside the pandemic.
The classroom has tightened alongside the growth. Sections enrolling fewer than twenty students accounted for 63.2 percent of the total in Fall 2021 and 59.8 percent in the most recent term, while the total section count barely moved. Instructional faculty grew from 1,170 to 1,213 and the reported student-to-faculty ratio held at 10 to 1 in four of five years, reaching 9.69 to 1 in the most recent.
What Tufts students study
The category that defines Tufts academically is also the one losing ground fastest.
Share of bachelor’s degrees conferred by discipline, 2020-21 graduates against 2024-25 graduates. Source: Tufts University Common Data Set filings, section J.
Source: Tufts 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. Disciplines below 2 percent in both years are omitted for space.
Social sciences produced 27.4 percent of Tufts bachelor’s majors in 2020-21 and 20.04 percent in 2024-25, a fall of 7.4 points. The category houses international relations and political science, the programs most associated with Tufts, and it remains the largest by a comfortable margin. It is simply a good deal less dominant than it was.
What grew took the space in small pieces. Visual and performing arts rose from 5.4 percent to 8.27, interdisciplinary studies from 9.4 to 11.48, biological sciences from 9.6 to 10.51, computer and information sciences from 9.6 to 10.46, and engineering from 9.4 to 10.04. Foreign languages moved the other way, from 4.3 percent to 2.45, the steepest proportional fall of any category on the list.
Beyond the numbers
Section F1 records zero percent of first-year men in fraternities and zero percent of first-year women in sororities in every one of the five filings, while the shares among undergraduates overall climbed from 6.3 and 11.9 percent in Fall 2021 to 12 and 15 percent in Fall 2025. Greek membership at Tufts is an upperclass phenomenon in the data, without exception across the window. Effectively all first-year students live on campus, against roughly 60 percent of undergraduates.
One procedural quirk sits behind the testing numbers. Tufts suppresses submitted SAT and ACT scores on the Common Application, so an applicant who elects to send scores cannot see them in the submitted application or its PDF preview, though the admissions committee does. The choice to submit is also locked once the application is filed.
Three quarters of each entering class comes from outside Massachusetts, a share that has drifted down from 77.6 percent to 76 percent. Tufts offers institutional aid to international students, with 214 nonresident recipients sharing $17.95 million in the most recent filing at an average of $83,901. And Tufts awards no athletic scholarships in any year, consistent with Division III membership.
What the five-year record means for applicants
The early round is the largest lever, and now there is a number attached to it. Early decision filled 60.68 percent of the Fall 2025 class at a 32.03 percent admit rate, against a derived regular rate of 8.45 percent. Some of that gap reflects who applies early rather than what applying early does. The rest reflects seats, and by the time regular decisions are read, three-fifths of the class is gone.
The counterweight is the same one binding decision always carries, and at Tufts it is about to get lighter. A student who commits in November accepts whatever aid Tufts offers without a competing package to compare. For families under $150,000 entering in Fall 2026 or later, the Tuition Pact makes the tuition portion of that answer knowable in advance, which is precisely what binding commitment requires. For families above the threshold, the published $93,182 remains the number to plan against.
Send a score if it clears the bar Tufts itself publishes. The university encourages applicants at 1300 or above on the SAT, or 28 or above on the ACT, which sits well below the 1460 to 1520 middle 50 percent of the most recent enrolled class. Fewer than half that class submitted an SAT at all. A student under the published threshold can leave the score off without inventing a disadvantage, because Tufts says in writing that it draws no inference from a missing score.
Treat a waiting list place as a real if unreliable possibility. Tufts took nobody from the list for Fall 2021 and 354 students for Fall 2024, and the swing tracks how the class filled rather than anything about the students waiting. That figure moves with how the deposits land, which no applicant can forecast in April.
Finally, read the filings knowing what they withhold. Tufts published no GPA in five years, no early decision counts in four, and a set of borrowing figures in the most recent year that repeat the prior year exactly. Those are three separate gaps in one document, and an applicant calibrating expectations from Tufts data has less to work with than the page count suggests.
