Class of 2023 REA applications up 17% -- 1,534 admitted out of 7,334 applications

This article was posted this morning on the Notre Dame Admissions site. https://admissions.nd.edu/connect/news/notre-dame-admits-1-534-early-action-applicants-to-the-class-of-2023/

Interesting points are:

Quest Bridge Admissions doubled from last year

Students of Color and First Generation Admissions also up by 15% and 16% respectively

Quote from Don Bishop: “Our admitted students have surpassed our prior class profiles with their academic accomplishments, but they were selected due to their motivation for scholarship as well as their exceptional levels of achievement in leadership and service to others. We are inspired by the creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, humility, and ambition of the students who aspire to join the Notre Dame family. It is a powerful group of young students who possess an amazing capacity to become dynamic leaders.”

Thanks @WineLover for posting this. I’ve been on CC for almost 4 years and each year the resumes in the Notre Dame forum keep getting better and better. Many of the posters on CC that have been denied or will be denied, would’ve been offered admittance 4 years ago. You should all be proud of your accomplishments and I wish you success wherever you choose to attend.

I’m feeling charitable to ND Admissions right now, but something is off with their math in the announcement linked above. The story says that REA applications were up by 17% this year. However, if there were 7,334 REA applicants for the Class of '23 vs. the 6,598 REA applicants for the Class of '22, that represents Year-over-Year growth of 11.15%.

And for any future ND REA applicants, the Compound Annual Growth Rate in REA applications over the last 5 years is 11.77% annually. Assuming I did the calc correctly based on how we learned it in AP Stats.

By the way, this was something that caught my attention: 68% of last year’s REA admits ended up enrolling at ND. Last year, 1,636 students were accepted in REA, so that means about 1,112 enrolled. The total incoming Class of 2022 last year was 2,070, so that means that REA acceptances comprised just under 54% of the class.

Notice that ND accepted only 20.9% of the REA applicants for Class of 2023, vs. 24.8% for Class of '22. I wonder if the extremely high yield last year on REA admits made ND pull back on the REA acceptance rate a bit this year. That could also explain the extremely high number of deferrals this year – 1,375. In recent years, ND typically deferred more like 1,000 or so from REA into RD. The smaller number of REA acceptances combined with the higher number of REA deferrals will give ND more flexibility in the Regular Decision cycle this spring.

Well, not surprisingly, the REA trend from previous admissions cycles has continued this year:

ND REA applications up from 6,596 last year to 7,334 this admission cycle.

ND REA admission down this year, at 1,534, from 1,634 last admission cycle.
ND REA acceptance rate @ 20.9% this year vs. 24.8% in last year’s admission cycle.

Good catch @GeronimoAlpaca . Your math is correct. I am also calculating a 11.15% increase over last year. In order for ND to have had an increase of 17%, they would have had to have had an additional 385 applications. Either the Class of '22 number is wrong, or they got the math wrong. I think you should call admissions and ask them what the story is LOL.

I agree that the small number of admits may be due to the high yield. Your analysis makes sense!

Again, congrats to you on your acceptance!

“By the way, this was something that caught my attention: 68% of last year’s REA admits ended up enrolling at ND.”

“so that means that REA acceptances comprised just under 54% of the class.”

The increasing importance of the early round (regardless of whether it is ED, SCEA, REA, etc.) continues year after year. Early is now the front door into almost every top 20 college. RD is now the little door located around in the back.

Even though ND REA (and HYPS style SCEA) are not binding, the effects are quite similar to binding ED. Since going REA means choosing NOT going ED/SCEA to another school. Early is now the front door into almost every top 20 college. With RD becoming the smaller door around in the back.

Overall, it probably isn’t actually getting any harder to get into ND (or other top 20 schools) year over year. Because the number of HS students comprising the top 1-2% of applicant is flat, and each of those kids can still only attend one school. But the numbers make it look that way.

Kids and parents who are wise to the yield inflation game increasingly jump into the early round. Which leaves fewer RD seats. Which drives down the RD admit rate. Which means kids playing the RD round logically put in more RD applications. Which drives down the RD admit rate even more. Rinse and repeat.

Eventually every top 20 school’s RD admit rate will be less than 1%. But if you play in the preferred early round, your overall chances of admission would stay about the same.

Congrats to all admitted REA!

@northwesty Your argument certainly has merit, nevertheless I am not quite convinced yet, specifically as the University of Notre Dame is concerned. If one considers the number of recruited athletes, approx. 200 students/cycle, many of them applying early, as well as strongly hooked donor, legacy, employee, relatives of HC brothers etc. applicants, a perceived advantage for the general REA applicant population, may quite quickly disappear and respective average admission chances, talking round numbers, may therefore level out at an average of around 15% either way - both for unhooked ND REA and RD. Just my 2 cents worth…

Another thing to keep in mind are the deferrals that end up on the RD pool. Would ND look upon those applicants as more committed and more likely to enroll vs. the back door RD applicants who may have submitted REA or ED applications to other top 20 schools? I would hope that those who were deferred have some sort of advantage.

@GeronimoAlpaca, I think you might be right about last year’s REA yield causing ND to pull back a bit on admissions this REA cycle. That should give some hope to those deferred this time around IMO.

@hpcsa – You can certainly argue (at ND and elsewhere) that some/most/all of the differing admit rates between early and regular is explained by the characteristics of the early pool (stronger applicants, athletes, legacies, other hooks).

Whether there’s an admissions advantage or not, the trend year over year is clear. More and more kids are opting to target a preferred school early, and the schools are filling 50% or more of their seats early.

Since the effect of that is to drive down RD admit rates into the single digits (and ND may be getting close to that this year), it is hard to argue the smart play is to wait for RD. When the admit rates get that low, it starts to look like Powerball rather than college admissions.

@northwesty 's comment above about Powerball got me thinking about what ND’s 2023 Regular Decision pool will look like.

We know from the past 4 full cycles of admissions data (Classes of '19, '20, '21, '22) that the compound annual growth rate in Notre Dame’s total undergraduate applications received is 3.91%. (I start with the data for the entering Class of '19, as that was the first class admitted under the REA / RD process that ND now uses.) Applying that compound annual growth rate to this year’s class, we’d expect the Class of 2023 cycle to result in ND receiving 21,168 applications (+/- a few).

We know from the earlier REA link that ND received 7,334 REA applications for the Class of 2023, so we could estimate that ND will receive 13,834 Regular Decision applications (ie., 13,834 = 21,168 Total Apps minus 7,334 REA Apps). We also know that a total of 1,375 REA applicants were deferred for further consideration, so the total pool of applicants competing for a slot in the “regular pool” is arguably 15,209 (i.e., 13,834 RD + 1,375 REA deferrals). However, not all deferred REA students will take the necessary steps to show “continued interest” with their regional admissions rep. Let’s assume that most applicants who apply REA are relatively educated about college admissions and understand how the “game is played.” For argument’s sake, assume 75% of the REA deferrals continue to show some degree of continued interest. That tells me that roughly 14,865 students would still be fighting for a spot in the Regular cycle.

The questions then become (A) how many total slots is ND looking to fill in an incoming class, and (B) how many of those slots will be filled by the REA acceptances? Assume that ND intends to keep the incoming class flat to last year, so 2,070 enrolled freshman would be the objective from the perspective of the Admissions Office. We know that the yield rate on the Class of '22 REA acceptances was roughly 68%, but that was a higher yield than normal on REA admits. Since the yield rate on the Class of '21 REA acceptances was closer to 64%, let’s just assume ND enrolls, on average, about 66% of its REA acceptances. This would suggest that of the 1,534 REA students who got the good news last Friday evening, 1,012 of them will choose to enroll. That would also tell us that there should be about 1,058 remaining slots still to be filled in the RD cycle.

So, how many of the 14,865 applicants still “alive” in the combined RD + “Continued Interest” Deferred pool does ND need to admit to fill the remaining the 1,058 slots? Once again, reverse engineering the math based on historic admissions data might give us a general sense for the answer. Over the trailing 3 years, ND’s Total Yield (on all applications) has averaged 56.3%. Last year’s yield was actually slightly higher at 57.4%, but using the 3-year average is more predictive for modeling purposes. So if ND once again yields at the trailing 3-year average of 56.3%, that would tell us that ND would accept a total of 3,676 students in order to fill 2,070 freshman seats in the Class of 2023. However, we already know that 1,534 students were accepted in REA, which would suggest that 2,142 students will likely receive good news in the RD+Deferred pool.

By my calc, I believe the acceptance rate in the Regular Decision pool would be about 14.4% (i.e., 2,142 / 14,865). Better than Powerball, and still better than most other Top-20 peer institutions, but still low. All of this is just a long-winded way of saying that @northwesty 's comment about the early pool being the front door to highly selective schools is spot on, and the RD pool is the increasingly smaller back door. For some schools, the RD pool is probably better described as being about the size of a cat door – Vanderbilt’s RD admissions rate, for example, looks to me to be somewhere in the 6-7% range.

I need to quit analyzing this admissions stuff. This is why I now have a B in Spanish IV this quarter. Si Senor!

“By my calc, I believe the acceptance rate in the Regular Decision pool would be about 14.4% (i.e., 2,142 / 14,865). Better than Powerball, and still better than most other Top-20 peer institutions, but still low.”

2022 overall admit rate was 17.6%; 2022 REA admit rate was 24.8%. So RD admit rate last cycle was probably about 14-15%?

Since 2023 REA admit rate was down 4 points, you’d think the RD rate will also go down a few points too? So Lotto rather than Powerball?

Notre Dame in particular, and the top catholic schools in general, have far lower total applicant numbers than equivalent academic institutions. This leads to acceptance rates that seem relatively “high” compared to non-Catholic peer schools - though it does not necessarily suggest that it is any easier for any one applicant to gain admission from a qualifications standpoint as the quality of the applicant pool is pretty comparable to peer schools. Don Bishop speaks a lot about how quality of the ND applicant pool is increasing at a higher rate than the overall growth in applications, as ND is increasingly seen and valued for its academics. Having a son in the class of 2022 who graduated from a very competitive private high school (in California) that sends the overwhelming majority of its students to top 25 schools nationally, you would be surprised (or maybe not) how ND is routinely dismissed from consideration - due to its strong Catholic heritage, perception of ND as primarily a “sports” school, and a complete lack of understanding of the quality and breadth of ND’s academics. This is before even addressing the community aspect of ND, which is hard to fully believe unless you visit the school. So you have a lot of kids applying a host of ivies and many of ND’s peer schools who never even give ND a thought. On the other hand, you have a strong core of ND applicants who demonstrate enlightened self selection in seeking to apply to ND, for whom ND truly is their first choice (while having student qualifications that could gain admission to ivies and ND peer schools). This results in the exception yields that ND achieves each year, particularly among schools who don’t have a binding ED option.

ND is truly a unique school. But for all of the points noted above (most particularly, the size of the total application pool), it will be a while before ND sees single digit acceptance rates - despite sky high yields that hold back the number of accepted students. And that is just fine with me. As has been famously said by Lou Holtz, “for those who know ND, no explanation is necessary. For those who don’,t no explanation will suffice”. So true.

Morning CC friends!!! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Many blessings to all of you.

The number of acceptances caught my attention. My DS is Class of '22 and applied RD. There will be a huge applicant pool for less than 1000 seats. Last year total admits was 3608. So, roughly 1100 slots left! Yikes!

Does anyone know where ND Gateway students fall? They were not rejected or deferred and are told to consider themselves as ND Class of 2023. Just curious…I know we have some smart and very knowledgeable ND parents, future and past students on here!! Happy New Year everyone!!!

“The number of acceptances caught my attention. My DS is Class of '22 and applied RD. There will be a huge applicant pool for less than 1000 seats. Last year total admits was 3608. So, roughly 1100 slots left! Yikes!”

3600 total admits less 1500 REA admits would leave about 2100 admit slots for the RD round.