Yale College welcomes 1,267 newly admitted students to the Class of 2024, joined by 568 returning from gap year
The Class of 2024 boosted Yale's undergraduate body to 6,250 students and features an increase in diversity and a historic number of gap year deferrals.

Yale News
On March 26, 2020, Yale College admitted 2,304 applicants out of a pool of 35,220 applicants, who joined 796 admitted students admitted via restrictive early action on Dec. 16, 2019, out of a total of 5,777 early action applicants.
The Class of 2024 were accepted throughout various admission pools including restrictive early action, Questbridge, and regular decision, resulting in an overall acceptance rate of 6.54 percent for the year. The 1,267 newly enrolled students grew the undergraduate body to 6,250 total.
“The world has never been more in need of intelligent, strong, committed, energetic and visionary young people, and I am delighted so many of those young people decided to apply to Yale College,” said Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan.
The early action applicant pool of that year was smaller than the Class of 2023’s 6,020 applicants. For the early action round, there was a 13.8 percent admission rate compared to the class of 2023’s 13.19 percent. On Dec. 2, 2019, Yale also offered admission to 87 students through the QuestBridge National College Match program, a nonprofit that helps low-income students apply to leading colleges — a 58-percent increase from last year’s record of 55 matches.
The Class of 2024 is also diverse, as the cohort is composed of 21 percent Pell Grant recipients, an increase of 50 percent in the past four years. 55 percent of the class of 2024 also identify as members of a minority group, higher than class of 2023’s 51 percent. 19 percent are first-generation students and there is an eight percent legacy affiliation.
The Class of 2024 also set record breaking numbers of students who chose to take gap years. Originally a class of 1,608 students, the cohort shrank as 335 students took gap years due to learning restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“[The resilience of students who elected to enroll] in the face of disappointment at not being able to visit campus in person and their creativity in finding new ways to connect with each other make them well-equipped to make the most of their Yale education with this year’s unprecedented changes to campus life,” said Associate Director of Admissions Hannah Mendlowitz ’12.
Students faced challenges due to online learning and social distancing as they postponed their entrance into Yale and battled with a different type of learning and accommodations. Both Bulldog Days, a three-day program for incoming students to learn all about Yale and Bulldog Saturday, a one-day version of Bulldog Days for students in the surrounding area, were canceled due to COVID-19 concerns.
To explore what Yale had to offer, the class of 2024 instead used an Admitted Students Network and digitally attended online master classes taught by Yale faculty, video panels about aspects of campus life and explored virtual content from student campus groups, Mendlowitz said in 2020.
“While it won’t be like the original, I think seeing it online will be really cool … to see all of the different student groups Yale has to offer,” Bernice Wang ’24 told the News in 2020.
The Yale Undergraduate Admissions Office is located at 38 Hillhouse Ave.