From 34% to 7%: Six takeaways from Northwestern admissions data since 2000

Regular Decision admissions results for Northwestern’s Class of 2029 will be released in late March.

Scott Hwang, Polling Editor

March 3, 2025

As Northwestern prepares to release its final admissions decisions for the class of 2029, The Daily is looking back at how admissions and enrollment have changed in the quarter century since 2000. Here are the main takeaways.

1. Applications have skyrocketed since 2000, while the number of admitted students has decreased.

If you applied to join Northwestern’s class of 2004, you would have been competing in a pool of just under 15,000 for about 5,000 acceptances.

In recent years, the applicant pool has surpassed 50,000 — more than three times higher.

Meanwhile, the size of the enrolled first-year class has stayed essentially unchanged the entire time, never deviating from 2,000 slots by more than 200. In fact, the number of admitted students has decreased, from a peak of 6,887 in 2009 to 3,739 in 2023. That shift coincides with an increase in NU’s yield rate (the proportion of admitted students who end up enrolling) over the last decade.

The largest single jump in applicants came between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 admissions cycles (that’s the classes of 2024 and 2025, respectively), when NU saw more than 8,000 additional applicants. The class of 2025 was the first class to apply during the COVID-19 pandemic, when NU adopted a test-optional admissions policy.

2. Therefore, the admissions rate has been falling.

The rise in applicants has led to a corresponding drop in admissions rate, from a peak of 34% in 2001 to 7% in 2023.

The admissions rate differs significantly by application round. For NU’s class of 2027, 23% of Early Decision applicants were admitted — less than half of the ED admissions rate in 2000, when over half of ED applicants received admissions offers.

Meanwhile, less than 6% of Regular Decision applicants were admitted in each of the three admissions cycles for the classes of 2025, 2026 and 2027.

NU says that the difference between ED and RD admissions rates does not reflect a difference in admissions standards.

“To take statistics at face value and assume it’s ‘easier’ to get into Northwestern early would be a mistake that overlooks a great deal of nuance,” a University spokesperson told The Daily. “Our early pool is smaller than our overall pool, and it is highly concentrated with very strong candidates who convey a clear understanding of why Northwestern is a good fit for them and why they are a good fit for Northwestern.”

3. The rise in applications is driven by the expanding RD pool, while NU is increasingly filling its classes with ED applicants.

By proportion, the rise in ED applicants since 2000 is actually larger than the rise in RD applicants: over six times as many students applied ED in 2023 (5200) as did in 2000 (800). That’s compared to 14,000 RD applicants in 2000 and 47,000 in 2023 — slightly more than a threefold increase.

But in absolute terms, the increase in total applicants is largely attributable to the rise in RD applications by 32,000, which accounts for most of the 35,000-person increase in total applicants.

At the same time, 1,174 of the 2,111 enrolled students who made up the incoming first-year class of 2027 were admitted in the ED round. That’s 56%, significantly up from 21% in 2000. (A methodological note: this analysis assumes that every admitted ED applicant ends up enrolling. Class makeup by admission round is not directly reported in the Common Data Set.)

A University spokesperson attributed the increase in students admitted ED to an increasingly strong and diverse pool of ED applicants, citing applications from more secondary schools worldwide and new financial aid tools that allow families to estimate how much need-based aid they will receive before applying.

“With this growth in candidate strength and the widening scope of perspectives, experiences and socioeconomic backgrounds across our ED pool, we have increased the number of students we admit from our early decision pool,” a University spokesperson said.

4. Standardized test scores for enrolled students are approaching perfection.

As applying to NU becomes increasingly competitive, the benchmark for standardized test scores has risen.

Even in 2000, ACT and SAT scores for enrolled students were significantly higher than the national averages, which were 21 out of 36 and 1020 out of 1600, respectively. That year, the 25th percentile among NU first years was 29 for the ACT and 1290 for the SAT — meaning that at least three in four students scored better.

The national averages are about the same today as they were in 2000, but NU students’ have continued to rise. In 2023, the 25th percentile for enrolled Northwestern first-years was 33 for the ACT and 1500 for the SAT. That means that at least three-fourths of Northwestern first-years who submitted tests scored above the 98th percentile nationally.

Not all applicants submit test scores. In the 2022-23 cycle, 50% of applicants submitted an SAT score, and 29% submitted an ACT score. But those that did — and were admitted — left little room for error.

5. The student body has become more racially diverse.

In 2000, three in five NU undergraduates were white, almost one in five were Asian and the remaining fifth was split between Black, Hispanic/Latino and international students (who are counted separately in NU’s Common Data Set reports).

Today, the numbers have shifted significantly. In the most recent class of 2028, white students made up 43% of the NU undergraduate population, while Asian students made up over a fourth of the total population at 26% (an increase from 16% in 2000). Meanwhile, the proportion of Hispanic/Latino students increased significantly from 4% to 18%, and the proportion of Black students increased from 6% to 15%.

(Data on the class of 2028 comes from the NU University Enrollment website, which counts multiracial students in more than one racial/ethnic category. Data from other years comes from the Common Data Set, which began counting multiracial students as a separate category in 2010.)

The class of 2028 showed a slight increase in historically underrepresented groups compared to the prior classes of 2026 and 2027 — despite shifting legal requirements surrounding the use of race in college admissions.

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that universities could consider race as part of their admissions process. That decision was overturned in 2023. At the time, NU said it would continue to affirm diversity as part of its holistic admissions process while abiding by the new legal requirements.

Data in the coming years — including the full Common Data Set report covering the class of 2028, which has not been released yet — will determine whether that trend continues.

6. The cost of attending NU has increased steadily, while financial aid has risen to cover it.

The sticker price for attending Northwestern and living on campus — as first-years and second-years are required to do — was almost $90,000 in 2023-24. That number comprises $67,000 in tuition, $21,000 in room and board and an additional $1,000 in required expenses.

Those numbers represent consistent yearly increases since 2000, when tuition cost $26,000 and room and board cost $8,000. That made a total cost of $34,000 — or $59,000 when adjusted to 2023 prices.

The rises in tuition and housing costs have been accompanied by a rise in financial aid.

Approximately 60% of students receive some form of financial aid, according to a University spokesperson, who also noted that while tuition has risen by 3.7% on average annually, financial aid support from NU has risen at an average annual rate of 8.1%. The most common financial aid type that students receive is scholarships or grants from NU.

“The total amount of aid awarded to undergraduates has grown considerably in the past decade, as has our share of lower-income students given initiatives to socioeconomically diversify our student body,” the University spokesperson told The Daily.

For students who receive financial aid, the average financial aid package has increased significantly, from $20,000 in 2000 to $66,000 in 2023. Accounting for the rise in tuition, that means that the average financial aid package has risen from covering 77% of tuition to 98%.

Regular Decision admissions results for Northwestern’s Class of 2029 will be released in late March, according to the NU University Enrollment website.

Email: [email protected]