Harvard College announced Thursday that offers of admission to the class of 2017 had been sent to 2,029 students, 5.8 percent of the applicant pool of 35,023. During the prior admissions cycle, 2,032 prospective freshmen were offered places in the class of 2016—5.9 percent of 34,302 applicants.
The figures for both years reflect the resumption of early-action applications and admissions; because those applicants are considered highly likely to attend if admitted, the “yield” on offers of admission has risen compared to prior years, and so the number of offers has been decreased to assure that the freshman class is not over-enrolled.
For the class of 2017, some 895 early-action applicants were offered admission last December; 4,856 students filed early applications. (For the prior year, 774 of 4,228 early applicants were offered admission.) That means that the admission rate for applicants following the regular, spring calendar has fallen below 4 percent.
As The New York Times and Bloomberg reported, admissions rates almost universally headed in the same direction: downward. Columbia and Yale admitted less than 7 percent of applicants, and Princeton neared that threshold.
