#Brown2024 Profile & Waitlist Acceptances

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
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Brown posted the Admissions rate for the Class of 2024 on the Undergraduate Admissions website: https://admission.brown.edu/explore/admission-facts .

“36,793 applications to the Class of 2024 (2nd largest applicant pool ever,) and a 7.7% acceptance rate for the Class of 2024.”

This means that 2,833 students were admitted this year, an increase of 94 students from the Class of 2023; which had 2,739 acceptances out of 38,674 total applications (largest applicant pool ever,) for a 7.1% acceptance rate.

Class of 2023 Profile: https://admission.brown.edu/sites/g/files/dprerj526/files/2019-11/Counselor%20Newsletter.pdf

However, the march Brown Admissions news article (https://www.brown.edu/news/2020-03-26/admitted) states that 2,533 students were admitted Early Decision and Regular Decision. This, and the revised number, leaves a deficit of 300 students admitted off the wait-list.

The march Admissions article from the Brown Daily Herald (https://www.browndailyherald.com/2020/03/26/brown-admits-6-9-percent-applicants-amid-covid-19-crisis/) states that ~800 students are on the wait-list, with “anywhere between two to 300 students [admitted] off the wait-list.” With the 300 students admitted from the wait-list this year, that’s a 37.5% acceptance rate; however, it’s surprisingly not unusual for the Admissions Office.

My Thoughts: By admitting 1000 more students during both the Early and Regular Decision rounds, Brown Admissions was able to mitigate the impact of a potential increase in deferral requests. There was likely also a higher actual yield rate than the Admissions Office had predicted for this year, coupled with a lower number of deferral requests: likely because of Brown’s strong financial aid policies (& the Brown Promise) given that 70% of admitted students intended to apply for financial aid (this number is definitely lower than the actual percentage of recipients, but still represents an increase.) At Brown at least, there likely won’t be as huge of an impact on the potential available seats for the Class of 2025, though applying ED is playing an increasing role in enrollment management: ED admits by percentage of the class increased to 48% from 46% last year with ~30 additional admits (this is assuming that every student admitted ED committed, though the actuality is that a few will withdraw from the ED commitment due to finances.)

Also, I found it interesting that Brown ended up not pulling as many students from the wait-list as previously predicted at most similar schools. This is more informative than a discussion, but feel free to comment down below any thoughts about the admissions cycle this year. :smile:

Class of 2024 ED Profile: https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-12-12/early

Class of 2023 ED Profile: https://www.brown.edu/news/2018-12-13/admit

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Clarification: ~100 MORE STUDENTS were admitted this student (94 to be exact) NOT 1000 more students as mistakenly stated. :sweat_smile:

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Update: According to Brown President Christina Paxson during the Opening Convocation, there are 1,769 First-Years in the Class of 2024, which means that Brown is currently over-enrolled by 104 students (projected enrollment is 1,665 First-Years.) More students than expected likely accepted Brown’s RD offer, coupled with the number of wait list offers on the higher-end of past years.

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Interesting. But they must have planned this if they took quite a few off the waitlist. I think somebody said up to 300?

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@River65 In my original post, I calculated they accepted 300 off the wait list based on the Ivy Day news release and the actual numbers released on the end of the cycle on the Undergraduate Admissions website. According to the Ivy Day Brown Daily Herald article, taking 300 off the wait list isn’t unusual for the Admissions Office. Looking at the Brown Wait list thread on CC, they’ve been taking applicants off it since May, however, First Years had until June 15th to request a gap year.

IMO it’s probably a combination of the two scenarios below:

  1. The Admissions Office had projected more students taking gap years than actual and offered the bulk of their wait list acceptances before the gap year deadline, and then realized after the numbers were finalized that they had admitted more students than their class can hold. Admissions has had a long history of enrollment management, so this is probably unlikely, although the pandemic completely changed admissions this year.
  2. Brown lost a lot of students off the wait list to other schools, and had to accept more from their wait list to compensate, although they admitted more students than their class can hold.

No one but Brown’s Admissions Office knows the truth, and even don’t know what factor exactly caused their class to over-enroll. I’m assuming they’ll have to accept less students next year, unless they decide to increase their yearly class size (according to the Gatekeepers, Brown’s class size was ~2000 undergrads,) which is probably unlikely. However, they also admitted ~1/2 the number of transfer students they usually do, so that might have been because of the first-year class’ over-enrollment.

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  • > Looking at the Brown Wait list thread on CC, they've been taking applicants off it since May < Here's a snippet from what Admissions sent to alumni interviewers on May 13 regarding the waitlist situation, FWIW:

“On March 26, Brown University made 1736 regular decision offers of admission to the prospective members of the Class of 2024. These students joined the 800 early decision applicants offered admission last December. A total of 36,793 students applied to the University this year. We recently offered admission to a small number of students from the waitlist and anticipate being able to make further offers in the coming weeks.”


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    According to the Ivy Day Brown Daily Herald article, taking 300 off the wait list isn’t unusual for the Admissions Office. < It can be zero some years and hundreds others. Just depends on yield reality vs yield prediction (the latter of course being far from an exact science).

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    Admissions has had a long history of enrollment management, so this is probably unlikely < Yes, a long tortured history ; ) One year mid/late-70’s, they got it so wrong that sophomores with the worst housing lottery numbers were assigned cots in dorm lounges with footlockers for their personal belongings. As I understand it (there, but not personally involved), this dissipated over a month or so as Housing presumably granted off-campus permission to interested Juniors as fast as they could. Of course, this year everything from the past goes out the window with single-occupancy-only rooms and a host of other changes. May you live in interesting times.

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Not sure if we are allowed to link but in yesterday’s Brown Daily Herald there is a good article on enrollment. There was a record high yield of 66% this year:

“The admission yield rate for the class of 2024 reached a record high 66 percent, a 5 percent increase from the previous year, according to Dean of Admission Logan Powell.”

"The yield rate for every class is calculated annually on May 1, the day that admitted students must reply to offers of admission. But while the Office of Admission met their enrollment targets by that date, Powell and his colleagues accepted a greater number of students from the waitlist than in previous years.

The University had anticipated a greater number of leaves of absence from current students than in a normal given year, Powell said. To account for this shift in class sizes, the Office of Admission temporarily increased its target class size for the class of 2024 from 1,665 students to 1,765 students for this year only.

This waitlist activity coincided with discussions about the potential for a trimester plan during the 2020-21 academic calendar. Under the tri-semester model, the University will enroll first years in the spring and summer semesters, allowing international students more time to resolve any struggles in obtaining a visa for study in the United States. As such, the Office of Admission began enrolling a higher number of international students off the waitlist, who had struggled with visa issues in months prior.

The Office of Admission also doubled the number of approved gap years from 40 last year to 80 this year, Powell said."

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@River65 That makes sense, thank you for sharing this information! I believe we can link to outside sources on CC, as long as they are informative.

For future applicants reading this thread, here’s the article in question: https://www.browndailyherald.com/2020/09/10/66-percent-students-accept-admission-brown-record-high-year/

@Brown79 WOW I can’t believe that the university had to do that one year. It sounds similar to the following photo, but much, much worse: http://blogdailyherald.com/2015/01/15/new-dorm-debacle-goodbye-lounges/

I wonder how they’ll be able to house students for the upcoming year, they’re likely banking on a good number of upperclassmen (or Sophomores studying in the Summer instead of the Spring) electing remote enrollment, b/c IIRC at a webinar they told us that they wanted First-Years to all start together on-campus in the Spring.

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August? It seems like that was copy + pasted from previous summer assignment emails. < Like a few years ago, when I notified Brown with only a few months to go before commencement weekend that the date they had for it on their Reunion Classes web page was wrong (can you say “airline ticket change fee”?). They obviously hadn’t updated it from the previous year’s text they were working from.

similar to the following photo, but much, much worse < Yes, those photos depict a far more deluxe version of the “where can we stick them?” genre.

they’re likely banking on a good number of upperclassmen … electing remote enrollment, < Literally banking: They’ve been writing checks to private apartment complexes in the area to house upperclassmen, given the mandate of single-occupancy-only for campus dorms. Mostly (solely?) seniors slated for these apartments, as I recall.

IIRC at a webinar they told us that they wanted First-Years to all start together on-campus in the Spring. < From the most junior Brown administrator to the creakiest old check-writing alum, all of us in this enterprise understand that those First-Years who are present in Providence need to be together on campus. I would be shocked if that doesn’t happen, and there’s not much about the Brown bureaucracy which can shock me. Brown is working equally hard to brainstorm ways for making the non-resident First-Year experience meaningful and community-inclusive. Students will likely come up with good ideas of their own for navigating this uncharted/evolving territory, so it is fortunate that Brown is good at listening to its undergrads… not that undergrads necessarily see it that way ;

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That makes sense, thanks @Brown79 !

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For those interested in Brown, the 2020-21 Counselor Newsletter’s been released:

https://admission.brown.edu/sites/g/files/dprerj526/files/Counselor%20Newsletter%202020-21.pdf