Every admissions season, prospective grad students submit their application data to share with the community. We review this data and look for trends.
The Most Selective University on Record
Here’s something that caught our eye. With the latest data, Yale University’s rejection rate is higher than ever.
Yale has never been an “easy” school for potential graduate students, but we’ve never seen acceptance rates this low from this University.
Let’s explore the findings.
Historical Data: Yale Acceptance Rate Increasing Selective
We parsed more than 15 years of data. Yale’s acceptance rates for the full range of graduate programs usually hover around 30%. This is based on surveys submitted to The GradCafe, the largest repository of graduate admission surveys online.
However, that number plummeted in 2023—even lower than the especially competitive years of 2010, 2015, and 2020.
The above chart shows lower-than-average acceptance rates during those years.
In 2023, the acceptance rate fell to around 23% for graduate programs. That’s the lowest on record.
Interestingly, we’re close to rounding out the application window for 2024, so it will be intriguing to see whether this trend continues.
Remember: This chart focuses on Yale University admissions rates, not total enrollment.
How We Evaluated the Data
With a dataset that spans from 2006 to the present day, one of our biggest challenges is the sheer scale of the data. So, we started by focusing on US-based applicants to apply an initial filter to the international dataset.
After making this first pass, we used Machine Learning to standardize labeling within the dataset. This was essential to ensure we captured all variants of Yale University grad applications, including the Law School, Economic School, etc.
At this stage, it was possible to use aggregate statistics to determine the percentages of acceptances and rejections for each academic year.
We plotted these results to demonstrate the trend and the large deviation towards greater selectivity in 2023.
We also validated our data with the data provided by Yale itself. Here’s where they track their first-time first-year admissions. Notice the trend. The percentage of applicants who become admitted students continues to decline each year.
And the statistics from 2020 through the present are especially grim for most applicants.
As with the data submitted by community members at The Grad Cafe, Yale’s data shows a trend toward more selectivity.
Interested in the current trends? You can view up-to-date Yale grad application data on the survey results page at The GradCafe.
Impacts of COVID-19: Admissions Data Breakdown
Did COVID impact Yale acceptance rates? The data shows a higher percentage of rejections starting in 2020 and continuing through the current admissions season. A wider view incorporates acceptance rates from other universities with popular graduate programs.
This chart shows how Yale stacks up against other universities during the pandemic.
While graduate admission rates at MIT and Princeton bounced back after COVID, Yale turned even more selective.
Conclusion: Yale Stands Out for Selectivity
Even among other prestigious universities, Yale stands out for its low acceptance rate for graduate programs. We evaluated data from the past 15 years and confirmed that the average acceptance rate across all grad programs has declined to its lowest point on record.
Dr. Johns is the Technical Editor for Hackr.io. He has two PhDs (structural and blast engineering) and worked for years as a data scientist.
