Surge in applications --> Class of 2023 acceptance rate likely 16%

Notre Dame Admissions posted a wait list story today on its website that said that 22,199 applications were received for the Class of 2023. That represents growth of 8.97% over the 20,371 applications that were received for the Class of 2022. Starting with the Class of 2019 – which was the first class impacted by ND’s move to REA in 2015 – the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in total applications for the past 4 classes was 3.91%. This year’s application count is a noticeable uptick, with a growth rate more than 2x the trailing 4-year CAGR. Who knows whether this surge in apps was the result of a concerted effort by ND Admissions to drum up more apps, or just a byproduct of a strong football season!

If last year’s admitted class is any indication, ND will accept around 3,600 students to fill about 2,050 - 2,070 incoming freshman slots. When ND publishes its admissions update on the Class of 2023, the acceptance rate could be ~ 16.2% (3,600 accepted / 22,199 applications). That’s 1.5% lower than last year’s record-low acceptance rate of 17.7%. This data may help explain why we’ve seen so many posts in recent days in which highly qualified students with 4.4 wGPAs and 1540 SAT / 35 ACT test scores and good ECs did not get accepted.

I know it gets increasingly competitive every year, but given this year’s surge in apps, this year in particular must have been brutally competitive. Don Bishop will probably utter his annual statement along the lines of “X% of last year’s admitted class wouldn’t have gotten in this year.” I can now better appreciate the reality of that claim.

Good to hear from you! Thanks for sharing this. I would be curious about the stats, which will probably be shared in early April. Last year there was an article in the Observer on April 4.

My son has some friends who applied to ND and also BC. BC released their decisions yesterday and I was startled to see how many very high stats students were being rejected/waitlisted and then coupled with many low stats kids being admitted. I am not sure what is going on over there, but people are very upset about it. I know BC got a lot more applicants because of switching to EA from REA, but it just seems chaotic the way the decided this year. One of my son’s friends with very high stats was waitlisted, and his school typically has a 60% acceptance rate at BC. Crazy year for admissions…I feel bad for these kids who worked so hard only to get this bad news. I know they will be fine, but kids will need to have new strategies for applying to colleges going forward.

GA…you’ve been around for a while and a good and intelligent interpreter of all of these stats. I think you are probably right but…if ND was not viewed as a serious Catholic university (and perhaps not located in northern Indiana), the admit rate (a function of application numbers) would be half that. In reality, whether you are rejecting 2 or 4 candidates from an equally strong application pool for each one you accept makes little practical difference in the quality of the enrolled class - which is why ND’s class profiles match up with schools that have much lower admit rates. ND’s application pool is VERY STRONG, if smaller than peer universities.

@CCSavant No doubt that you’re correct that ND’s application pool is somewhat smaller than similar peer institutions like, say, WashU, Vanderbilt, or Emory. All those schools get between ~ 25,000 - 32,000 applications, whereas ND got 20,371 last year and 22,199 this year. I also think that ND’s Catholicism and faith-based approach may turn off a segment of students who might otherwise apply to ND if it were just a typical nonsectarian Top-20 school. Not every student wants the religioso feel, and notice how ND uses its Supplemental essays to help weed out those who are only lukewarm on attending a faith-based school. Not to mention your other point about the northern Indiana location (not cosmopolitan, rust belt, winters) not appealing to those “on the fence” about applying.

The other issue is, of course, the size of the enrolling class. ND enrolls 2,050-2,070 students each fall, whereas the other schools (like the peer schools mentioned above) are often about 1,500 to 1,700 per entering class. On average, ND’s incoming class is about 1/3 larger than the enrolled class at those places.

So, the combo of a smaller applicant pool (likely due to the reasons you noted) and a relatively larger class size puts ND’s overall acceptance rate at ~ 16-17%, whereas Vanderbilt’s at 10% and Wash U is at 14%. But your central point still stands: there are probably about 8,000-10,000 applicants in ND’s pool that are relatively “interchangeable parts” – the types of students who could easily be admitted without hurting the middle-50% ranges and who would thrive at ND. There are no issues with the quality of ND’s applicant pool, it’s just a smaller applicant pool overall to begin with.

@GeronimoAlpaca Fair point on enrolled class size though, to some extent, ND’s sky high yield helps keep total admits down relative to class size. While certainly Emory, Wash U and Vanderbilt can be considered “peer” institutions to ND, I would not put these in the category of “Top 20 Non Sectarian Universities” that are viewed as most attractive to applicants casting a wider net (Vandy less so than Emory or Wash U which, without ED, have significant yield challenges for their “ranking” - reflecting relative attractiveness). Take Northwestern or UPenn, for example.These schools have enrolled classes similar to ND but generate application numbers between 40,000 and 45,000! I would argue that the enrolled student bodies are broadly similar in terms of quality, yet admit rates at Northwestern and Penn are about 8% - half of ND’s, a function of an applicant pool twice as large. But this is not unique to ND. Georgetown suffers from exactly the same issue, with an applicant pool and enrolled class size about the same as ND - and an admission rate of 16%.

I would go further and state that, not only is there no issue with the quality of BD’s applicant pool, I might argue that it may be superior (on average) to many of ND’s peers - reflecting a high degree of self selection on the part of applicants and a view that ND is their first choice school. While as you note, the applicant pool is growing, the quality of the pool (per Don Bishop’s remarks) is likely increasing at a faster rate! And yield is among the highest in the country for schools without ED.

Notre Dame is a great school, and is only getting better. But recognition in many sectors of the potential applicant pool lags well behind reality.

“ND”…not “BD”

Regardless of this debate, ND is still a top 20 school and is fantastic.

Yes…totally…which is to say that, at least in this case, USNWR and other sources get ND correctly! And not a debate, just observations…

@WineLover I think many people fall into a trap thinking that just “high stats” guarantees universal high acceptance. While there is a correlation, you have to respect the other criterion / variables.

Interesting story in today’s student newspaper, The Observer, about the admitted Class of 2023. 15.4% acceptance rate is an all-time low for Notre Dame, 2.3% lower than last year’s previous all-time low of 17.7%. It’ll probably creep up just a bit when ND works its waitlist after May 1 confirmations are finalized. ND’s yield rate last year was so high (57.4%) that I suspect Admissions probably was a bit cautious on how many offers it extended so that they don’t over-enroll this year’s incoming class.

https://ndsmcobserver.com/2019/04/notre-dame-admits-3410-students-in-most-selective-year-yet/

Do we know how many of the 3410 plan to accept? My son is on the wait list and this gives me a little bit of hope. It sounds like ND did a great job. Regardless of the outcome we have no regrets for taking the chance. Still sure that no matter where these kids end up they will do great things!!!

@PopUpZone1921 Last year’s yield rate (57.4% of admitted students enrolled) was slightly higher than ND’s historic average. Over the past 3-4 years, ND’s yield has been about 56.5%. If 56.5% of 3,410 enroll, that would be a total of 1,926 enrollees. Given that ND shoots for an incoming class of 2,050 freshmen, I think they held back a bit on RD acceptances, with the intent of working their waitlist in May to enroll another 100-125 students. Obviously, this is just an educated guess based on recent history, but note that the Admissions Office accepted 200 fewer students this year vs. last, so I think they want more flexibility to control their class size and yield and avoid over-enrolling.

If anything, I believe this may be a good year for your son to be on the waitlist, since it feels like ND wants to actively “fill out” the class from that waitlist in May. Good luck to him!

@GeronimoAlpaca thank you…he so wants to go to ND. He has very high functioning autism so when he gets stuck on something - well its hard to redirect no matter the good choices. He just loves the dorm life there…we have not found it any other place. Housing is causing him the most stress- but he has some good ideas about what he thinks will work for him no matter where he lands. He felt so at ease while we were walking on campus and all that he has read about ND has made him want to find the courage to leave the comfort of home and FLY!! I think he will be able to do this no matter where he goes, but I can’t deny how much he related to ND. so we are still hopeful He is on 5 waitlists so that is also messing with him. The irony of a person with autism having to deal so much uncertainty during this process has been a bit much, but he has been handling it like a champ - growing stronger and more determined. He is learning even more to be patient and understand the unpredictability of the world that is out there. All good things for him to experience before he leaves the nest. Thank you for your encouragement!!!

@PopUpZone1921 – I’d tend to agree with GA’s math. Last year only 20 kids got accepted off of ND’s wait list as compared with 85 and 96 for the prior cycles.

So I could see them trying to get back to using their WL more. And for schools that are obsessed with their yields (as most top 20s are) using the WL more is an increasingly popular way to manage the numbers.

But you also have to be realistic. For one of the recent cycles the numbers were 1508 offered WL; 901 accept the WL spots; 96 admitted from WL. It is what it is.

Good luck to your family.

This isn’t an official statistic, but my junior daughter told me yesterday that admissions for her friends’ younger siblings was “brutal”. That they were all outright denied, not even waitlisted. She was pretty surprised by that, considering how talented her friends’ siblings were.

It seems to me that in previous years that the admissions graphic with admissions data included a bullet point with legacy student admit percentages, that is missing from the graphic posted by @GeronimoAlpaca above. Here’s the one from the class of 2020: https://ndsmcobserver.com/2016/04/class-2020-statistics/ . This makes me wonder if there is a shift away from admitting family members.

@Ruby789 I noticed too that they didn’t share legacy stats. I suspect that was a calculated omission given the current scandal. The admissions decisions were by and large already made when the scandal broke, so I doubt this year’s class was impacted by that. It’s the upcoming admissions cycle, of which my legacy son will be part, that has me anxious about potential changes.

@Libby1901: Your post brings up the question, was there already an admissions shift in legacy admissions in the last cycle, will there be in the next cycle, or is leaving the legacy admit percentages off just related to the current scandals. I don’t think the answer is clear.

Is your son is considering applying in REA? I do believe that is ideal as a legacy applicant.

@Ruby789 Exactly! I have been wondering the same. We have a daughter who is currently a first year at ND, and she applied REA and was accepted. We plan to encourage our son to do the same if ND is still his first choice after our spring/summer college tours.

My son is a first year as well. His younger brother got admitted REA this year and will be joining him next year. We feel very lucky considering all of the qualified legacies who got denied. I think it’s the best route if you’re a legacy with good stats. Good Luck!! @Libby1901

@Libby1901 If there is a shift in Notre Dame’s legacy policy (and I’m not yet sure there is since the Class of 2022 was 23% legacy), I suspect it will be driven more by college rankings and less by “bad” publicity. The US News & World Report college rankings have started to emphasize “socio-economic mobility” in the methodology, and now account for Pell Grant recipients and other socio-economic considerations in the weightings that impact the rankings calculation. ND’s legacy applicants most likely do not tend to come from Pell Grant recipient families or from families on the lower end of the income scale. I know that’s a fairly sweeping generalization, but my guess is that most ND graduates end up doing ok for themselves. ND’s brand name (heavily impacted by athletics), its religious affiliation, and its Top-20 ranking are 3 keys things that it will maintain in order to enroll the high-caliber classes it enrolls. Dropping the legacy percentage even just 1 or 2 percentile each year could allow ND to enroll an additional 20-40 lower income applicants in each class. Notice also that ND’s Don Bishop in the linked article from the student newspaper cites the growing number of students applying to ND through Questbridge, Cristo Rey, and other organizations that typically help lower-income applicants get into college.

There is now a backlash against legacy admissions in the mainstream media. Obviously ND knows this, and it’s surely a reason not to publicly call attention to the legacy percentile in the classes anymore. Whereas in the past ND might have been more open about stating the legacy percentile in each class in order to signal to the alumni base that ND loved the long-term family ties to the school, maybe now the mainstream backlash is strong enough against legacy preference that ND is choosing not to publicly disclose that statistic.