The University of Georgia is one of the more legible institutional case studies in American public higher education. It is the flagship of a state-mandated, scholarship-financed system; it holds roughly 80 percent of its first-year seats for Georgia residents by stated policy; it kept requiring the SAT or ACT through all five of the past admissions cycles while most peers went test-optional; and it publishes unusually candid commentary on its own practices through its admissions-office blog. Over the five years from Fall 2021 to Fall 2025, first-year applications climbed from roughly 39,100 to about 47,500, a new record nearly every cycle, while the entering class held steady near 6,200 students by design. The overall admit rate fell from 40 percent to about 33 to 34 percent, score profiles climbed, in-state sticker price stayed enviably low, and out-of-state sticker price rose into territory that increasingly competes with private peers on net cost.
The headline admit rate, though, means little without accounting for residency. A Georgia resident and an out-of-state applicant are effectively applying to two different universities, with admit rates that differ by roughly fifteen points and yields that differ by more. What follows is a five-year read of UGA’s Common Data Set filings, supplemented by the admissions office’s own announcements where the CDS forms were filed without values, with attention to the threads that make UGA unusual among large public flagships: the residency math, the five-year testing requirement, the HOPE and Zell Miller scholarships that make the school close to tuition-free for strong Georgia residents, and the short essay that does more work than its formal weighting suggests.
Applications, admits, and yield
The volume story at UGA is sustained growth on top of an already-large base. The university went from roughly 39,000 applications five cycles ago to nearly 48,000 in the most recent year, with each annual increment a meaningful step up. The admit rate fell as a result, even though the absolute number of offers held in a tight 15,300-to-16,700 band. The class itself has been the steadiest number on the page, between 5,800 and 6,275 students each fall by stated design.
| Fall 2021 | Fall 2022 | Fall 2023 | Fall 2024 | Fall 2025 | |
| Applications | 39,090 | 39,354 | 43,700 | 43,090 | 47,464 |
| Admits | 15,689 | 16,730 | 15,340 | 16,100 | 16,257 |
| Admit rate | 40.1% | 42.5% | 35.1% | 37.4% | 34.3% |
| Enrolled | 5,819 | 6,273 | 6,200 | 6,175 | 6,195 |
| Yield | 37.1% | 37.5% | 40.4% | 38.4% | 38.1% |
Sources: UGA Common Data Set, Sections C1 and C2, for Fall 2021, Fall 2022, and Fall 2025; UGA admissions news releases and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions for Fall 2023 and Fall 2024, whose CDS PDFs were filed with unfilled form fields. Admit rate and yield are calculated. UGA’s published Class of 2029 release reported roughly 47,860 applications, about 15,800 admits, and a 33 percent overall rate; the CDS-derived counts here run slightly higher.
One feature of these numbers stands out. The 11 percent application jump between Fall 2022 and Fall 2023 came in a policy environment that should have suppressed demand at UGA, not amplified it. UGA was one of the only large public flagships still requiring the SAT or ACT that cycle, while most peers extended test-optional review. Applications rose anyway, which suggests families were filtering into UGA in spite of the testing requirement rather than around it. Edison Prep, an Atlanta test-prep operation that has tracked UGA closely for over a decade, notes that early action applications more than tripled between the Class of 2012 and the Class of 2025, against state and national population growth well under ten percent.
UGA’s institutional yield sits in the 37 to 40 percent band, unusually strong for a large public flagship without binding Early Decision. It is also an average across two very different populations. Per UGA’s director of undergraduate admissions, yield runs near 52 to 55 percent for Georgia residents and 19 to 21 percent for out-of-state students. The math of who enrolls is, in the end, residency math, which is the next section.
The in-state premium: residency is the whole story
UGA is unusually explicit about who its first-year class is for. The stated goal, reaffirmed in the 2024-2028 strategic enrollment plan, is a first-year class that is roughly 80 percent Georgia residents and 20 percent out-of-state, including international students. The applicant pool is far more evenly split, running roughly 45 percent in-state and 55 percent out-of-state and international. To land at 80 percent in-state enrollment from a 45 percent in-state pool, the office must admit a substantially larger share of Georgia applicants and a substantially smaller share of everyone else.
| Fall 2025 | In-state (GA) | Out-of-state | International |
| Applications | 21,110 | 25,261 | 1,092 |
| Admitted | 8,893 | 7,044 | 319 |
| Admit rate | 42.1% | 27.9% | 29.2% |
| Enrolled | 4,859 | 1,291 | 45 |
| Yield | 54.6% | 18.3% | 14.1% |
Source: UGA Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C1 residency table, the only year in the five-year window with a clean residency breakdown filed. UGA’s Class of 2027 release reported an in-state admit rate near 48 percent against a non-resident and international rate near 26 percent.
The mechanics are plain. A Georgia resident faced roughly a 42 percent admit rate for Fall 2025; an out-of-state applicant faced roughly 28 percent. This is a persistent gap, and it is institutional policy rather than statistical noise. An out-of-state applicant should not read UGA’s published overall admit rate near 33 percent as a meaningful predictor of individual odds; it overstates competitiveness for residents and understates it for non-residents.
The yield side runs the other way, and for a simple reason. HOPE and Zell Miller, which together make UGA close to tuition-free for academically strong Georgia residents, do not extend to students from other states. Most admitted non-residents, offered a seat, enroll elsewhere. The cost section below works through what that means in dollars.
Testing required: UGA’s unusual five-year posture
Through all five years covered here, UGA required the SAT or ACT for first-year admission. The policy is set by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents, which mandates testing for all four of the system’s research universities. The institutional floor is low, at a 480 SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing paired with a 440 SAT Math, or a 17 ACT English or Reading paired with a 17 ACT Math. The admitted pool sits far above it.
What makes the posture notable is how few peers held it. Through Fall 2023, most large public flagships ran some version of test-optional or test-blind review. Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Texas, Florida, Ohio State, and others stayed test-optional through the height of pandemic-era policy, and the University of California system went test-blind permanently in 2021. Within the Southeast, UGA, Georgia Tech, Florida, and later Auburn formed a small cluster of large flagships that kept the requirement. Most peers have re-introduced testing only in the past two cycles.
| Fall 2021 | Fall 2022 | Fall 2023 | Fall 2024 | Fall 2025 | |
| SAT Composite, mid-50% | 1280–1430 | 1270–1440 | 1280–1470 | 1270–1470 | 1250–1420 |
| ACT Composite, mid-50% | 28–32 | 28–33 | 29–34 | 29–34 | 27–33 |
| % submitting SAT | 36% | 68% | 70% | 70% | 70% |
| % submitting ACT | 31% | 48% | 47% | 46% | 44% |
Source: UGA Common Data Set, Section C9, for enrolled first-year students. UGA’s published admitted-student profile runs higher; the Class of 2029 admitted middle 50 percent was 1300–1470 SAT and 30–34 ACT.
Two things stand out in the test data. The admitted-student score profile climbed steadily even as the floor stayed fixed; the 75th-percentile SAT moved from 1430 in Fall 2021 toward 1470 by Fall 2024 before easing slightly, and the 75th-percentile ACT moved from 32 to 34. Whether that reflects stronger applicants self-selecting in or UGA admitting from the higher reaches of a growing pool, the practical effect is the same. A competitive UGA file in 2026 is meaningfully stronger on tests than a competitive file in 2021 was.
What UGA weighs: the C7 factors
Section C7 of the Common Data Set, where every institution rates the factors it weighs in admission, is unusually blunt at UGA. Only two factors sit in the Very Important tier, and the office says as much in plain language on its blog.
| Very Important | Considered | Not Considered |
| Rigor of secondary school record Academic GPA | Standardized test scores (rated Important) Application essay Recommendations Extracurricular activities Talent / ability Character / personal qualities First-generation status Geographical residence State residency Volunteer work Work experience | Class rank Interview Alumni/ae relation Religious affiliation Level of applicant’s interest |
Source: UGA Common Data Set, Section C7. Only rigor of curriculum and GPA are rated Very Important; standardized test scores are the lone factor rated Important; the application essay is rated Considered, though the admissions office treats the short supplement as a tiebreaker in marginal cases.
A few points stand out. Rigor of curriculum and GPA are the only Very Important factors, and UGA rates rigor above GPA; the office states that a student with a 4.0 who avoided the hardest courses available may lose to a student with a lower GPA and a more demanding transcript. Standardized test scores are the lone factor rated Important, a notch below rigor and GPA, and UGA is explicit that what a student does over four years outweighs three hours on a Saturday morning. The application essay is formally rated only Considered, but that understates its role in practice. UGA requires a short 200-to-300-word supplement alongside the personal statement, and the admissions office has said repeatedly that the short answer is read and carries weight in marginal decisions; the compressed length is deliberate, meant to test whether a student can answer a question well in a small space. Recommendations are Considered but optional, with up to two letters accepted. Class rank is Not Considered, so students at schools that do not rank are not disadvantaged. And demonstrated interest is Not Considered outright. There are no points for attending an information session, no benefit to a campus visit beyond its own value, and no advantage to a letter of continued interest after a deferral. UGA treats filing an application as interest enough, which is one fewer worry for an out-of-state applicant who cannot travel to Athens.
The C8 testing grid has listed the SAT or ACT as required in every filing across the five years, with the most recent CDS confirming the requirement for Fall 2027 admissions. Whatever else shifts in the landscape, UGA’s test requirement has not.
Early action, platforms, and the round structure
UGA runs a non-restrictive Early Action plan and Regular Decision, with no Early Decision. EA applications are due October 15 with decisions in late November; RD is due January 1 with decisions in mid-March. Per UGA, the review standard is identical between rounds, and many students deferred at EA are admitted in March.
The application menu has narrowed. UGA began accepting the Common Application for Fall 2021 (Class of 2025), having previously used its own application and the Coalition Application, and that addition produced an immediate increase in volume north of twenty percent on top of an already-growing pool. The Coalition Application has since wound down, and as of the Fall 2026 cycle UGA requires first-year applicants to use the Common Application. The UGA Application is now reserved for transfers, spring-term applicants, and a few other non-first-year categories.
Early action has grown nearly as fast as the overall pool. A record 30,490 students applied EA in the Fall 2025 cycle, up 14.6 percent year over year, and roughly 9,500 were admitted, against a target of filling about 80 percent of the class through EA. Regular Decision now carries a tougher admit rate than EA, because most seats are committed before March and the RD pool competes for a smaller residual.
Tuition, HOPE, and what families actually pay
UGA’s tuition story is two stories in the same row of the CDS. For Georgia residents, posted tuition and required fees ran $11,180 in 2022–23 and $11,450 in 2024–25, single-digit-percent movement well below national tuition inflation. For non-residents, the same figure climbed from $30,220 to $31,688, with annual increases generally in the three-to-five percent range. Add housing, food, books, and personal expenses, and the in-state total cost of attendance now sits near $29,000 while the out-of-state figure is close to $50,000.
| 2021–22 | 2022–23 | 2023–24 | 2024–25 | |
| In-state tuition + fees | $11,180 | $11,180 | $11,180 | $11,450 |
| Out-of-state tuition + fees | $30,220 | $30,220 | $30,220 | $31,688 |
| Room and board | $10,904 | $11,246 | $11,772 | $12,272 |
| Total COA, in-state | $25,460 | $26,150 | $26,800 | $28,872 |
| Total COA, out-of-state | $44,510 | $45,190 | $45,840 | $49,110 |
Sources: UGA Common Data Set G1–G5 for years filed with values (2021–22 and 2022–23); UGA Office of the Bursar and Student Financial Aid schedules for 2023–24 and 2024–25. The CDS reports cost figures for the academic year following the survey year; this table aligns each column to the actual academic year.
Those numbers understate the in-state picture, because for Georgia residents the decisive line is HOPE and Zell Miller. Both are administered by the Georgia Student Finance Commission and funded by the state lottery, and both are statutory entitlements rather than aid awarded from an institutional pool. HOPE pays a fixed credit-hour rate that covers the bulk of in-state tuition (historically around 90 percent, funded at 100 percent in recent years, with the exact share set annually) for students who maintain a 3.0 GPA. Zell Miller pays full in-state tuition for students who graduated high school with a 3.7 GPA and a 1200 SAT or 26 ACT and who maintain a 3.3 in college. Neither extends to non-residents.
The practical result is that the typical admitted Georgia resident receives Zell Miller and pays essentially no tuition. The admitted in-state profile, a recalculated GPA near 4.0 and a 1300-plus SAT or 30-plus ACT, comfortably clears Zell Miller’s thresholds. Room, board, books, and personal expenses are not covered, so an in-state student living on campus is generally looking at $15,000 to $17,000 out of pocket, before any Pell or institutional grant aid narrows it further. For an out-of-state student the math is different. HOPE and Zell Miller do not apply, UGA’s non-need-based grant pool is finite (the 2021–22 CDS put the average non-need award near $3,900), and outside the Foundation Fellowship and a handful of other competitive scholarships, a non-resident family should expect net cost to sit close to sticker.
The cost table shows three things. The in-state tuition freeze that has defined Georgia public higher education for most of a decade held through this window; the 2.4 percent in-state increase between 2023–24 and 2024–25 was the largest single-year jump for residents. Non-resident increases have been steeper, both because the Board of Regents has more latitude on non-resident pricing and because out-of-state demand absorbs them. And the in-state-versus-out-of-state gap in total cost is now above $20,000 a year, which compounds to roughly $80,000 across a four-year degree before aid.
Class composition, retention, and the Honors College
UGA’s entering class has shifted modestly over five years. The most recent class with detailed demographic reporting (Class of 2028, entering Fall 2024) was about 80 percent in-state, with first-generation students at 21.6 percent. The undergraduate population runs roughly 56 percent female, and by race and ethnicity roughly 64 percent White, 11 percent Asian, 8 percent Black, 7 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent two or more races, with a small international share. Asian and Hispanic shares have grown modestly across the period; the Black share has held roughly flat.
Retention and graduation are strong. First-year retention for the Fall 2021 cohort was 95 percent, and the six-year graduation rate reported in the 2021–22 CDS was 87 percent for the Fall 2015 cohort, with four-year rates climbing across the period. By the standards of large public flagships, UGA’s persistence and completion figures are among the strongest in the country, and they run nearly identical for Pell and non-Pell recipients.
The Honors College is worth a separate mention. Admission is a more selective process layered over general admission, and the academic profile is sharply higher, with recent Honors mid-50 ranges of a 4.31-to-4.48 GPA, a 1500-to-1510 SAT, and a 34-to-35 ACT. Honors manages its own housing, advising, and seminar-style classes, along with the Foundation Fellowship and other major scholarship competitions. For a strong in-state applicant, Honors is a meaningful credential; for a strong out-of-state applicant, it is the most reliable route to a substantial aid package outside the residency-restricted state programs.
Takeaways for applicants and counselors
For families weighing UGA, the data points to a handful of specific conclusions. The published admit rate is the wrong number to plan around without knowing residency. The Fall 2025 overall figure near 33 to 34 percent conceals an in-state rate around 42 percent and an out-of-state rate around 28 percent. A strong Georgia resident with a recalculated 4.0 and a 1300 SAT or 29 ACT can treat UGA as a target with real margin, especially through Early Action; a strong out-of-state student with the identical profile should treat it as closer to a reach, where competitive-admissions thinking applies even though the headline number suggests otherwise.
The testing requirement is real and the floor is generous. UGA requires the SAT or ACT, but the institutional floor sits well below the admitted middle 50 percent range, and the school superscores within either test. Because scores are read alongside curriculum rigor and actual grades, a strong transcript paired with a modest test score is a common admit profile in UGA’s own description, and students whose scores lag their grades should still report them.
For in-state families, UGA’s net cost is hard to beat. HOPE or Zell Miller, the Board-set in-state tuition rate, and reasonable room and board leave a typical in-state net cost under about $17,000 a year, and even families well above federal aid thresholds see real tuition relief. For out-of-state families the calculation is sharper. Institutional aid for non-residents is modest, sticker sits close to net outside competitive scholarships, and UGA should be priced next to private peers that offer larger institutional grants.
Two application specifics carry more weight than families expect. UGA does not consider demonstrated interest, so the short 200-to-300-word supplement does the work that interest signaling does elsewhere; the office says a thoughtful, UGA-specific answer helps, and a generic one lifted from another school’s prompt is the failure mode it sees most. And the platform has consolidated to the Common Application for first-year applicants, so students should plan around one personal statement, UGA’s short supplement, and an October 15 EA deadline that lands early enough to be the first real deadline of the cycle.
Read across five years, the institutional posture is consistent. UGA has chosen to grow its applicant pool, hold its class size flat, hold its in-state tuition floor, and admit harder rather than larger. The result is a flagship that has become more selective at the top of the pool, kept its commitment to Georgia residents intact, and managed cost in a way that is unusual for a public university of its size. A caution on the data itself is warranted. UGA’s 2023–24 and 2024–25 CDS forms were filed with several fields blank, so some figures here draw on the admissions office’s own releases rather than the CDS, and where the CDS-derived numbers diverge from UGA’s published headline (its release reported a 33 percent overall admit rate for Fall 2025 against the roughly 34 percent the residency counts imply), this report notes the gap rather than papering over it. Where judgment was required, it errs toward the conservative read.
