Harvard Admission Rate Drops below 5 Percent

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Harvard’s staggeringly low admission rate managed to get even lower this year.

Just 1,962 of the 42,749 hopefuls who applied to be part of Harvard College’s class of 2022 earned a spot. The corresponding 4.59 percent admission rate is the lowest in school history and marks the first time the college accepted less than 5 percent of applicants, according to the Harvard Crimson. Last year, 5.2 percent of Harvard hopefuls were offered admission. 

In December, the college announced it had accepted 14.5 percent of students who applied early action and offered 964 hopefuls admission. The 998 remaining admits who secured a spot at Harvard in the regular decision round compose just 2.43 percent of the later applicant pool.

The admitted applicant cohort is demographically distinct in several ways, the Crimson reports. Not only do women make up the majority of accepted students for the first time in a decade, but 17.3 percent of the admitted pool is made up of first-generation college students, and 20.3 percent of accepted students are eligible for federal Pell Grants designated for low-income students.

An increasing percentage of Harvard admits are also non-white this year. The 15.5 percent of admitted students who are African American marks a school record, according to the Crimson, and the percentage of accepted students who are Latino, Native American, or Asian American also increased. William Fitzsimmons, the dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard, told the Crimson that the students admitted to the class of 2022 come “from the widest range of economic and ethnic backgrounds in our history.”

Students have until May 1 to decide where they’ll enroll. Harvard’s sticker price climbed to $67,580 this year, according to the school’s website, though roughly 70 percent of students receive some form of financial aid.