Early Decision and Early Action Acceptance Rates, Class of 2031

Early decision and early action acceptance rates for the Class of 2031 -- students applying this fall to start college in fall 2027 -- come out in mid-December, and only some schools publish them. This page collects each school's official number from its own admissions office or news release, starting with last cycle's Class of 2030 results so you have a real baseline now. When schools announce this year's numbers, they'll be added here next to last year's.

Every figure below comes from the school's own announcement, not an admissions-consulting roundup. Where a school published admit counts but no applicant count, the rate is left blank rather than estimated.

Early decision and early action acceptance rates by school (Class of 2030 baseline)

Class of 2031 results aren't out yet. Last year's announcement dates are the best guide to when each one will land.

A few rows need a caveat to read correctly:

• "About" means the school gave a rounded figure. UVA and Georgia Tech reported approximate applicant counts, and UGA reported "more than" figures for both applicants and admits, so those rates are approximate too.
• QuestBridge admits are listed separately. Duke and Rice both admit students through the QuestBridge National College Match on the same day as Early Decision, but it's a different program with its own applicant pool, so it isn't folded into the ED rate.
• Georgia Tech's and UNC's rows cover in-state applicants only. Both release out-of-state early decisions later and didn't publish a matching nonresident count in the same announcement. At UNC, the 1,039 assured-admission offers (business, nursing and other programs) were counted separately from the 5,903.

Duke's early decision acceptance rate is 11.9%, not 13.8%

The most-quoted Duke figure is off. Duke admitted 847 students on its first release day, but only 731 of them came through Early Decision -- the other 116 were QuestBridge Match admits. Dividing 847 by the 6,159 ED applicants gives the 13.8% you'll see on consulting sites and in student-newspaper headlines. Dividing the actual ED admits by the ED applicants gives 11.9%, the same rate as Vanderbilt's combined ED rounds. It's a small-sounding difference, but it's the gap between "roughly 1 in 7" and "roughly 1 in 8."

Schools that don't publish early acceptance rates

A lot of the most-searched schools aren't in the table because they don't release early numbers at all:

• Dartmouth said explicitly, in its own Class of 2030 announcement, that it was "declining to release information on how many students had applied or been accepted" in the early round.
• Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Stanford, Northwestern and Barnard didn't publish early-round admit numbers for the Class of 2030 either, per College Kickstart's cycle roundup.
• Tufts reported a record early decision pool but published only its overall admit rate (about 10%), not an early-round one.

This is part of a longer trend toward less disclosure -- see which Ivy League schools still report early and regular rates separately. A number you find for any of these schools on a third-party site is an estimate, not an official figure.

What's different for Class of 2031 applicants

• USC now has binding Early Decision for nearly all of its undergraduate programs, expanded from a Marshall School of Business pilot. Applications are due November 1, 2026, and decisions come out in mid-December 2026. The dance, music and dramatic arts schools are excluded and stay on the Regular Decision timeline. That makes USC's December release worth watching for the first time.
• Application volume kept climbing last cycle at most schools here: UVA's total applications rose 27%, Vanderbilt's ED applications 14.3%, UGA's early applications 12.8%, Emory's ED I pool nearly 8% and Notre Dame's early pool 6%. Bigger pools with roughly fixed class sizes usually push early admit rates down, so don't assume last year's rate is a floor.

What this means for you

• Compare like with like. A binding ED rate and a non-binding EA rate measure different things, and an in-state-only EA rate (Georgia Tech, UNC) says little about out-of-state odds. See what's actually different between early decision and early action before comparing schools across plan types.
• A higher early rate isn't the same as an easier admission. Early pools skew toward stronger, more committed applicants and recruited athletes, so part of the gap over Regular Decision is who applies. How much early decision really boosts your odds breaks down the ED-vs-RD gap at the schools that publish both.
• Expect the class to be partly full by spring. Early rounds can fill a large share of the class before Regular Decision opens -- see how much of an incoming class early decision actually fills.
• Check back in mid-December. This table gets the Class of 2031 numbers as each school posts its own.

Sources

• MIT Early Action decisions now available online — MIT Admissions
• Yale admits 779 early action applicants — Yale News
• Notre Dame welcomes the Restrictive Early Action Class of 2030 — Notre Dame Admissions
• Duke announces first members of Class of 2030 — Duke Today
• Class of 2030 – Early Decision by the numbers — Vanderbilt Admissions
• UVA welcomes first members to Class of 2030 — UVA Today
• UVA admits record number of students in early action round — UVA Today
• Brown admits 890 early decision students to the Class of 2030 — Brown University
• Emory admits first students in the Class of 2030 — Emory News
• Georgia Tech admits 2,640 Georgia students to the 2026 first-year class — Georgia Tech Enrollment Management
• UGA fall 2026 early action admissions — UGA Today
• UNC-Chapel Hill expedites Early Action admission decisions — UNC News
• Rice welcomes record early-decision Class of 2030 — Rice News
• Dartmouth welcomes first members of Class of 2030 — Dartmouth
• Introducing the admitted undergraduate Class of 2030 — Tufts Now
• Introducing new Early Decision admissions options for Fall 2027 applicants — USC Office of the Provost
• Class of 2030 Early Decision and Early Action results — College Kickstart (used only for which schools didn't publish)