University of Maryland: Inside the Numbers

In the fall of 2025, 67,101 students applied to the University of Maryland, College Park. Four years earlier the number was 50,146. A one-third increase in applications over four years would strain any admissions office, and it arrived at a university that was already one of the most sought-after public campuses on the East Coast. Yet the class that resulted was only modestly larger than before, and most of the students in it came from a single state. The gap between who applies to Maryland and who enrolls is the most important story in its five-year record.

Everything here comes from Maryland’s own Common Data Set submissions for the 2021-2022 through 2025-2026 cycles. The University of Maryland is the state’s public flagship, a research university of roughly 31,000 undergraduates in College Park, a few miles from Washington. Its identity runs through science, technology, and engineering, its location near federal agencies and the defense and cyber economy, and a student body that has become one of the most racially diverse of any top public university. Those features shape almost every figure below.

An applicant pool that raced ahead of the class

Applications climbed in every year of this period, from about 50,000 for Fall 2021 to more than 67,000 for Fall 2025, a rise of 34 percent. The admit rate tells a two-part story. It fell sharply between Fall 2021 and Fall 2022, from 52 percent to about 45 percent, then held almost flat for the next three years. Maryland became meaningfully harder to enter in one step and has stayed there, absorbing tens of thousands of additional applications without loosening its standards or letting the rate drift back up.

Source: University of Maryland Common Data Set filings, section C1.

Applications and offers of admission, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Source: University of Maryland Common Data Set filings.

The entering class barely moved by comparison. It ran between about 5,800 and 6,200 students for four years before rising to 6,559 for Fall 2025, an increase of less than 9 percent across the same span that added 17,000 applications. A public flagship has physical and legislative limits on how large its freshman class can grow, so a surge in demand shows up almost entirely in the admit rate and in the composition of the pool, not in the size of the class. Reading the admit rate alone would miss most of what changed.

Several forces sit behind the surge. Maryland dropped its testing requirement in 2021 and never brought it back, which lowered the barrier to applying for students who might once have self-selected out. The university sits on the Common Application, draws national attention for its computing and cyber programs and its move to the Big Ten, and benefits from a broader flight of strong students toward large public universities as private admission has grown less predictable. The applications came from everywhere. The enrolled class did not.

The out-of-state paradox

The clearest way to understand Maryland’s numbers is to split the pool by residency, which the university began reporting in detail for Fall 2023. In each of those years, roughly 72 to 73 percent of applications came from outside Maryland. Out-of-state students drove almost the entire application surge. Yet they made up a minority of the enrolled class, because they enroll at a fraction of the rate that Marylanders do.

Applications by residency, Fall 2023 to Fall 2025. Source: University of Maryland Common Data Set filings.

The Fall 2025 figures show the pattern starkly. Maryland received about 18,500 in-state applications and 48,600 from out of state. It admitted 8,075 in-state applicants and 22,143 out-of-state, but only 4,133 Marylanders and 2,426 non-residents enrolled. That works out to an in-state yield near 51 percent and an out-of-state yield of about 11 percent. The typical out-of-state admit uses Maryland as a strong backup to a private university or a home-state flagship, while the typical in-state admit sees the best public option in the state at a fraction of the price. The result is a national applicant pool feeding a class that remains about 63 percent in-state.

That said, the out-of-state share of the enrolled class has grown, from 30 percent for Fall 2024 to 37 percent for Fall 2025, and the university admitted out-of-state applicants at a slightly higher rate than Marylanders for the most recent class. Maryland appears to be leaning into out-of-state demand at the margin, which brings both a more national student body and the higher tuition revenue that out-of-state students pay. For an out-of-state applicant, the practical reading is that admission is realistic but far from certain, and the university knows most admits will enroll elsewhere.

A yield that slipped

Yield, the share of admitted students who enroll, held near 23 percent for three years and then eased to about 21.6 percent for Fall 2024 and 21.7 percent for Fall 2025. A yield in the low twenties is normal for a public flagship with a large out-of-state pool, because so many admitted non-residents have a cheaper option at home. The slight decline tracks the growing out-of-state share of admits, whose low enrollment rate pulls the overall figure down even as the in-state yield stays strong. Maryland has to extend a large number of offers, more than 30,000 for Fall 2025, to fill a class of about 6,600.

Who enrolls

No public flagship of Maryland’s rank has a more balanced racial composition, and it shifted further during these years. The white share of the entering class fell from about 44 percent for Fall 2021 to 38 percent for Fall 2025, moving Maryland to a campus with no racial majority in its first-year class. Asian students made up between 23 and 28 percent across the period, the single largest non-white group and among the highest shares at any flagship. Black enrollment held between about 10.5 and 12.7 percent, and Hispanic enrollment rose past 10 percent. International students remained a small presence at around 3 percent, low for a research university of this size and a reflection of Maryland’s role as an in-state option first.

Source: University of Maryland Common Data Set filings, section B2, first-time first-year students. American Indian and Pacific Islander categories, each well under one percent, are omitted here. Shares are computed on the section B2 first-year total, which differs slightly from the section C1 enrolled count in some years.

First-year class composition, Fall 2021 versus Fall 2025. Source: University of Maryland Common Data Set filings.

The decline in the white share is not the product of any single admissions decision so much as the arithmetic of a growing and diversifying applicant pool sorted heavily by intended major. Maryland’s pull in computing and engineering draws the Asian and international populations that concentrate in those fields, while its role as the state’s affordable flagship keeps its Black and Hispanic enrollment among the strongest at any public university of its selectivity. The classes entering in Fall 2024 and Fall 2025 were the first admitted after the 2023 Supreme Court decision on race-conscious admission, and Maryland’s Black and Hispanic shares held steady or rose across that line rather than falling.

Geography reinforces the pattern. College Park sits inside the Washington metropolitan area, one of the most educated and diverse regions in the country, and the university draws heavily on the high schools of Montgomery, Prince George’s, and the surrounding counties. That local base, more varied than the applicant pool of almost any peer flagship, is a large part of why Maryland enrolls a first-year class with no racial majority while many public flagships of similar standing remain well over half white.

Testing, high grades, and a low submission rate

Maryland suspended its testing requirement during the pandemic and has stayed test-optional since, and the submission figures show how thoroughly that policy reshaped the file. The share of enrolled students submitting an SAT rose to 47 percent for Fall 2022, then settled near 37 percent, while ACT submission dwindled to six or seven percent. Under a policy that treats scores as considered when submitted, only about a third of the class now sends an SAT and fewer than one in ten sends an ACT.

Source: University of Maryland Common Data Set filings, sections C9, C10, and C11. GPA figures use the university’s weighted scale.

SAT composite, middle 50 percent of submitters, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Source: University of Maryland Common Data Set filings.

Among students who submit, the scores rose steadily. The middle 50 percent of SAT composites climbed from 1340-to-1490 for Fall 2021 to 1410-to-1520 for Fall 2025, with the median reaching 1470. What carries most files is the transcript. Maryland reports the rigor of the secondary school record and grade-point average as very important, and the grades it enrolls are extraordinary. In every year, more than 85 percent of the class arrived with a weighted GPA of 4.0 or higher, and the reported average weighted GPA sat above 4.3. The reading for applicants is that a demanding course load with near-perfect grades is the price of entry, and a test score below the published band is a reason to apply without one.

Share of enrolled first-year students submitting each test. Source: University of Maryland Common Data Set filings.

What students study, and the majors that admit separately

Maryland’s degree data show a university tilting hard toward computing. Computer and information sciences rose from about 16 percent of bachelor’s degrees to nearly 25 percent in five years, making it by a wide margin the largest field on campus and one of the largest computer science programs in the country. Engineering, long a Maryland strength, drifted down from about 13.5 percent to 10.5 percent as computing absorbed much of the STEM demand. The social sciences slipped from 14 percent to 11 percent, business held near 12 percent, and biology and psychology together accounted for roughly 13 percent.

Bachelor’s degrees conferred by field, share of all degrees. Source: University of Maryland Common Data Set filings.

Source: University of Maryland Common Data Set filings, section J, share of bachelor’s degrees conferred. Degrees lag admission by roughly four years.

The single application to the university hides where the real competition sits. Maryland runs a set of Limited Enrollment Programs, and the most popular of them, computer science, engineering, and the business school, admit under standards far higher than the university-wide bar. A student can be admitted to Maryland and still be denied the major they want, and computer science in particular has become one of the most selective undergraduate programs at any public university, with gateway grade requirements that thin the field after enrollment. For an applicant whose goal is a computing or engineering degree, the 45 percent admit rate badly overstates the odds, and the choice of intended major on the application is not a formality.

The concentration has consequences beyond admission. As computing has grown toward a quarter of all degrees, the university has managed the demand through course capacity and gateway grade requirements rather than through the front door alone, and a student who enters undecided or in an adjacent field can find the popular majors difficult to switch into later. An applicant set on computing should treat the intended-major question as the most consequential line on the form, and should read the published university-wide rate as the ceiling on the odds rather than the floor.

Price, and the value that drives the whole system

The engine underneath Maryland’s numbers is price. In-state tuition rose from $9,000 for 2021-22 to $10,490 for 2025-26, one of the lowest sticker prices among the nation’s strongest public universities. Out-of-state tuition ran roughly four times higher, from $36,683 to $40,253. Add required fees and on-campus housing and food, and the full cost of attendance for the most recent year sits near $32,000 for a Marylander and around $60,000 for a non-resident. That gap explains the entire residency pattern in the admissions data.

In-state and out-of-state tuition by academic year. Source: University of Maryland Common Data Set filings.

Unlike the wealthiest private universities, Maryland does not meet the full financial need of its students. It met between 65 and 74 percent of demonstrated need across these years, with the figure rising to about 74 percent for the most recent class, and the average financial aid package for a first-year aid recipient grew from about $13,600 to more than $19,400. Merit awards exist but are modest and reach a limited group, with the average institutional non-need scholarship running between about $7,000 and $8,600. For most families the deciding number is the in-state tuition itself, which is low enough that Maryland can leave a share of need unmet and still be the best financial option in the state.

Average financial aid package for first-year aid recipients. Source: University of Maryland Common Data Set filings.

Staying and finishing

Retention and completion improved steadily underneath the admissions churn. First-year retention rose from about 95 percent to 96.6 percent, among the highest at any public university, and the six-year graduation rate held near 88 to 89 percent. Those figures came while the university enlarged and diversified its class, and while national completion rates were disrupted by the pandemic. The student-to-faculty ratio held near 17 or 18 to one, higher than at a private university of similar selectivity and a reminder that Maryland delivers its outcomes at public-university scale.

What the five-year record means for applicants

Maryland is harder to enter than its 45 percent admit rate suggests, and the difficulty depends heavily on two things the rate hides. The first is residency. An out-of-state applicant faces a genuinely competitive read and, if admitted, joins a pool where most peers enroll elsewhere, while a strong in-state applicant is looking at the best public value in the state. The second is the intended major. Admission to the university is not admission to computer science, engineering, or business, and those programs sort applicants under their own far stricter standards.

The rest of the record rewards a clear-eyed reading. The grades that enroll are near perfect, so the transcript is the application, and a test score helps only if it sits at the top of the published band. The price is the reason the applicant pool is national while the class stays local, and it is why a Marylander should weigh Maryland against far more expensive private options with clear eyes. And the university an applicant would join is changing fast, toward computing, toward a more national student body, and toward a class with no racial majority. The student who reads only the admit rate will have measured the one number about Maryland that moves least.