New Harvard Policy on Acceptance Rate Reporting: What Prospective Students Need To Know

This blog post explores a significant change in Harvard University's admissions data reporting, impacting reporting timelines for acceptance rates and other admissions statistics. Starting with the Class of 2029, Harvard will shift from multiple annual releases to a single comprehensive report each October/November. Below we highlight what prospective students need to know about the new timeline and how it impacts their ability to track acceptance rates for Harvard’s early and regular decision application rounds.

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Breaking with years of tradition, Harvard University is changing its policy governing the release of acceptance rates and admissions statistics.

This change will alter your opportunities to get timely updates about acceptance rates, limiting how soon you can access information about Harvard's Restrictive Early Action acceptance rate and their Regular Decision acceptance rate during the year-long admissions cycle.

With getting into Harvard the dream of so many prospective students around the world, this announcement is significant. It means that prospective students and our team members at Crimson Education won’t have early access to Harvard acceptance statistics after the end of each admissions round, as in the past.

Going forward — beginning with the 2024-25 admissions cycle (class of 2029) — Harvard will only release information on its overall admissions statistics at the end of the full admissions cycle, in October or November, when all enrollments are completed.

The End of Multi-Year Admissions Reporting

For many years, Harvard has adhered to a multi-phase release schedule for its admissions data, sharing statistics at multiple intervals each year — in the winter, following the Early Action application cycle, and again in the spring, after Regular Decision offers were extended.

A final release would take place in October or November, after all enrollments were finalized, and including a more comprehensive demographic profile of the incoming class.

This approach provided a steady stream of information throughout the admissions cycle. Now Harvard watchers will have to wait till the full admissions cycle to track acceptance rates and other admissions and class profile data.

The New Annual Release Schedule

Starting with the Class of 2029, Harvard will release only one annual admissions report in the October/November timeframe — at the end of the admissions and enrollment cycle. This change means that admissions statistics will no longer be released in the winter and spring.

Why the Change?

Harvard officials say restrictions on the use of some demographic data, resulting from the ban on affirmative action in college admissions, played a role in the policy change:

Due to the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision, we are unable to access all information about Harvard’s applicants, admitted students, and enrolling students, while the application review process is still underway.

During the 2023-2024 admissions cycle, for example, Harvard already began making adjustments to its reporting practices due to the new legal landscape, by omitting racial data breakdowns from its early round admissions statistics.

What Will Be Reported?

Despite the change in timing, **Harvard **says it will continue to share detailed admissions statistics. These statistics include:

• number of applications, admitted students (including those from the waitlist)
• enrolled students
• the distribution of enrolled students by geography
• the percentage of enrolled students by chosen major
• breakdown by race and ethnicity

This information will be consistent with Harvard’s mandatory reporting to the U.S. Department of Education and will be available through the IPEDS fall admissions survey and the Common Data Set.

In the past, Harvard has reported on its Early Action acceptance rate numbers in the Common Data Set, so we presume that data will continue to be provided, but only on the new timeline and when available in the Common Data Set.

Implications for Prospective Students

For students considering applying to Harvard, this change means that acceptance rate data and admissions statistics will no longer be available in the winter and spring. Instead, all relevant information will be released only in October or November but will allow the university to share a more complete profile and data set for the incoming class, all in one annual report.

Students, high school counselors, and Crimson Education team members will still be able to track acceptance rates at Harvard, and other admissions data, but there will be several months of lag time — after the end of the Early Action round (winter), and after the end of the Regular Decision round (spring) — before Harvard releases any data, not until October/November.

As a leading college admissions consultancy, we understand the importance of staying informed about changes. Many of our students are keen to know as much as possible about acceptance rates as they plan their college journeys, especially in today’s very competitive admissions landscape marked by historically low acceptance rates at Ivy League schools.

Stay tuned for more updates, informative articles, and expert insights valuable for young scholars heading to Harvard and other top-ranked schools, free to access in new posts appearing every week on our Crimson Education blog pages.

If you want to know how to be a top applicant at Harvard or any top-ranking university, our team members are world leaders in admissions counseling and our students are 7x more likely to get offers, thanks to our personalized, team-based approach. Have questions? Schedule a free feedback session with one of our friendly admissions strategists!

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