Yale Daily News
2,272 students were accepted to Yale’s class of 2021 out of a record-breaking applicant pool of 32,900, becoming Yale’s then-largest first-year class to date.
The overall acceptance rate for the class of 2021 was 6.9 percent, higher than the 6.27 and 6.49 acceptance rates for the class of 2020 and class of 2019, respectively. Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions announced in November 2016 their intention to admit about 15 percent more students to the class of 2021, which became the first class to enter Yale’s newest residential colleges, Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray.
“Although we were thrilled to send out offers of admissions this year, I remain humbled by the selectivity of our admissions process,” Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan told the News. “Virtually all of the students we denied will be successful students at other great colleges and universities.”
The acceptance rate for early admission was 17.1 percent, with 871 students accepted early out of 5,086 students who applied. Of the early applicant pool, 53 percent of applicants were deferred to the regular admission process, while 28 percent were denied admission.
Early applications for the class of 2021 saw an increase, with an applicant pool that was nine percent larger than the year prior. This marked the first significant rise in early applications following three years of stagnant application rates.
“The admissions committee was very impressed with this year’s early applicant pool across every dimension,” Quinlan said. “We are very pleased to offer admission to this first group of students in the class of 2021, but we also look forward to admitting a much larger group of students through our regular decision process this spring,”
In addition to the 871 students admitted from the standard early action pool, Yale also accepted 48 students from the QuestBridge National College Match Program, which offers full scholarships to low-income students.
During the regular decision admission round, 1,181 students were offered a place on the waiting list.
“I actually opened [the decision] on my bus home from a badminton match, and everyone was cheering me on because they know how much I love Yale,” Cory Zhou ’21 told the News. “When I opened it I saw a video that was buffering, and I started shaking because I was like, ‘Is this real?’ And I finally got the singing bulldogs and literally exploded, and the entire bus exploded with me. I was crying, and everyone was so happy for me.”
Similarly, Amy DelaBruere ’21 told the News that her first reaction to her acceptance was “complete and utter disbelief.”
DelaBruere, who received her acceptance while walking her dog, explained that she “stopped dead” while opening her decision, and was nearly pulled over by her dog, who continued walking down the road.
“Who would have guessed that I could go from small-town northern Vermont to New Haven, Connecticut?” DelaBruere said.
Despite the slightly increased acceptance rate, the yield rate for the class of 2021 remained consistent with the year prior, with 68.3 percent of students electing to come to Yale, compared to 70.5 percent of students in the class of 2020. The larger class size aligned with the planned student population expansion that came with the opening of Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin residential colleges.
“Our yield rate was just as high this year as it was last year — I was particularly pleased to see this, given the smaller percentage of students we admitted through the early action process, and our continued admission of a larger proportion of high-achieving STEM candidates and a larger proportion of minority students,” Dean Quinlan said.
Yale’s student body expansion was announced in 2008 by former University President Richard C. Levin.