Search "[school] early decision acceptance rate" for almost any Ivy and you'll find a confident-looking number. Check where it actually comes from, though, and for six of the eight Ivies, it doesn't trace to anything the school itself published this cycle at all. This uneven disclosure isn't unique to early-vs-regular splits, either -- our full explainer on what "Ivy League" actually means covers several other places these eight schools diverge sharply in what they choose to publish.

The 2 that disclose both rounds

Brown admitted 890 of 5,406 Early Decision applicants (16.5%), compared to 1,674 of 42,531 Regular Decision applicants (3.94%) -- a real, round-specific gap reported directly by its own student paper. Our broader piece on the ED admission boost covers Brown's numbers alongside Vanderbilt, Duke, and Emory's in more depth.

Yale admitted 10.9% of Single-Choice Early Action applicants -- "similar to last year," per its own reporting. Its Regular Decision round is reported separately too, with its own headline stating the regular admit rate "dips below 3 percent" this cycle -- a real, disclosed decline, even though the exact decimal isn't confirmable beyond that. Yale is a genuine step up in transparency from the cycle before, when its own reporting gave the early round a clean rate but folded the regular round into one combined final number instead of breaking it out on its own.

The 6 that don't

Harvard has now withheld all round-specific and overall admissions data for two consecutive cycles. Its own student paper reported it directly: the school is "once again withholding data on acceptance rates and applicant demographics for the second straight year," with Harvard stating it "will not release demographic information...until next October, when it is required to do so by federal law" -- a policy shift traced to the 2023 Supreme Court ruling ending race-conscious admissions.

Princeton hasn't published a Single-Choice Early Action rate since the Class of 2024, and its policy is older than Harvard's -- dating to the Class of 2022, before the affirmative-action ruling. Its own admissions office states the reasoning directly: acceptance-rate data "shouldn't influence a prospective student's decision about whether to apply."

Cornell announces a single combined admit count each March -- 5,776 for the most recent cycle -- with no applicant count, no overall rate, and no early-vs-regular split anywhere in that release. Its own student paper's coverage confirms early decision applicants were simply "notified of their acceptances" in December, with no number attached.

Dartmouth, Columbia, and Penn round out the list -- as covered in more depth in our general ED-advantage piece, all three stopped publishing a round-level breakdown, with Penn stating outright that it "did not disclose a regular decision acceptance rate, continuing its policy of withholding detailed admissions results since 2022."

Why this matters more than it used to

This isn't a static picture -- it's a trend, and it's moving toward less disclosure, not more. Our piece on the 2011-2024 acceptance-rate trend already notes that Harvard, Princeton, Penn, and Cornell withheld even their overall Class of 2030 rate; this piece shows the round-specific picture is worse still, with Dartmouth and Columbia joining the blackout on the ED/RD split specifically even where an overall number eventually surfaces.

That means most of the specific "Ivy X's ED rate is Y%" figures circulating on admissions-consulting sites for 6 of the 8 schools are not real disclosures for the current cycle -- they're either stale numbers from an older class quietly relabeled, or modeled estimates presented with a precision the school itself never provided. Treat any such number for Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, Columbia, or Penn with real skepticism, and check the date and source before repeating it.

What this means for you

  • Only Brown and Yale's own reporting currently gives a real, round-specific acceptance rate for both early and regular decision. For the other 6 Ivies, no such number exists this cycle -- don't trust one that claims otherwise without checking its source and date.
  • A school going dark on round-specific data doesn't mean the underlying early-round advantage disappeared -- it means you can no longer verify its exact size from that school's own public reporting. The general economics of why ED admits more easily still apply everywhere binding ED exists, Ivy or not.
  • Every school's Common Data Set (Section C21) is still the fallback for a real, if delayed, number -- it just won't arrive until well after decisions go out, the same pattern covered in our piece on what the Common Data Set does and doesn't disclose about Ivy League waitlists.
  • This is a trend, not a settled state -- expect the list of schools disclosing round-specific data to keep shrinking rather than stabilize, based on the shift already visible between the last two cycles alone.

Sources