Late last month, Northwestern officials directed some of the University’s graduate programs to cap their incoming class sizes by deferring enrollment for applicants who had yet to accept their admission offers, according to interviews with faculty and students and emails obtained by The Daily.
The latest saga comes as universities nationwide have been pitted against federal research cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration. Some of the cuts have already been enforced at NU. In recent weeks, the National Institutes of Health canceled nearly a dozen NU project grants worth millions of dollars, targeting those related to LBGTQ+ health.
The growing pressure has led universities to resort to cost-cutting measures like reducing class sizes and pausing further admissions primarily among its graduate schools.
Citing the uncertainty in federal funding ahead, NU has already instructed programs across the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and Feinberg School of Medicine to delay the enrollment of some prospective students until 2026.
In late March, many faculty leaders, whose programs were close to hitting their target enrollment numbers, received emails from University officials instructing them to defer the rest of students’ pending offers within hours.
At this time, students who already accepted their offers will still enroll for the 2025 academic year, according to faculty members.
The Daily was not able to confirm how many department programs were instructed to defer student enrollments. A University spokesperson told The Daily that because the University saw a higher than usual rate of Ph.D. acceptances across its schools and programs “likely due to complicated factors in the national higher education landscape,” they’ve resorted to deferring enrollments for some students to prevent over-enrollment this year. The spokesperson denied that the University is reducing class sizes.
Prior to the University’s order, one Feinberg professor, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, said their program had intended to cut its number of acceptances in half, after reaching a higher than usual yield rate in 2024.
Last year’s high admission yield also coincided with the collective bargaining agreement established by the Northwestern University Graduate Workers union, which prompted increased graduate student stipends.
This year, the professor said their program’s yield was even higher, potentially due to other universities rescinding students’ offers.
“Due to rescinding offers and the climate in the rest of the country, we had many very early acceptances,” the professor said.
Once the class yield hit a certain number, the professor said school leaders told them to soon defer the remaining outstanding offers to reach the official target enrollment they had set.
“We didn’t want to be in a situation where we have a bunch of students who are accepted to our program where we can’t find labs that have funding for them,” the professor said.
An email obtained by The Daily also revealed that Weinberg’s Political Science Graduate Studies program deferred most of its outstanding admissions to the 2026 cohort. The email attributed the decision to the college’s admissions being “well ahead of its target numbers” in the face of “overall budget uncertainty” in the University.
Another email indicated that prospective students who had not yet accepted their offers to Weinberg’s Graduate Chemistry Ph.D. program saw their enrollment deferred until Fall 2026.
One Weinberg professor, who asked to remain anonymous in fear of retribution, said they were told to defer about the rest of their program’s pending offers after nearing their program’s target enrollment number. Almost half of their graduate program offers for this admission cycle were deferred to 2026.
“They’re trying to cap uncertainty,” the professor said. “This isn’t the shrinking of the graduate program or adding class sizes or anything like that, but it is pretty turbulent for some of the students.”
The professor said one student who had been accepted to their program was supposed to visit campus. But they cancelled the plans after receiving a deferral email.
Some NU graduate students said it was highly uncharacteristic of the University to finalize its offers so early on. April 15 is a common nationwide deadline for graduate students to accept offers of admission with financial support.
Gracie Siffer, a third-year Ph.D. student in biology, remembered accepting her offer from NU close to the last day of the deadline. Up to that point, she said she needed time to weigh her options before eventually committing to NU.
Siffer said she imagined that most students were likely caught off guard about their deferred enrollment and now must reassess their graduate plans.
“They were making a really difficult decision, and now they have the added layer of like what if both of your options rescinded your offer at the same time?” Siffer said. “It’s very concerning for people that might have been planning on doing this and banking on it.”
Email: jerrywu2027@u.northwestern.edu
X: @Jerrwu
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