Just Released: Harvard’s Acceptance Rate

See highlights from Harvard’s official announcement below:

Harvard College admitted 3.41 percent of applicants to the Class of 2027, marking the second-lowest admissions rate in the College’s history.

The College’s Admissions Office notified 1,220 students of their acceptances in the regular decision cycle at 7 p.m. Thursday. The admitted students join 722 applicants accepted through the College’s early action program in December, totaling 1,942 admitted students from a pool of 56,937 applications.

This year’s acceptance rate reflects a slight increase from last year’s record-low acceptance rate of 3.19 percent, with a 7 percent decrease in the total number of applications from last year’s all-time high of 61,220 applicants.

African American or Black students comprise 15.3 percent of applicants admitted to the Class of 2027, a decrease from 15.5 percent last year. The proportion of Latinx students admitted dropped to 11.3 percent from 12.6 percent in the year before. Just over 2 percent of admits are Native American, a drop from 2.9 percent last year. Native Hawaiian students made up 0.5 percent of accepted students this year, a drop from 0.8 percent last year.

Harvard admitted the highest ever proportion of Asian American applicants at 29.9 percent, marking a 2.1 percentage point increase from the 27.8 percent accepted to the Class of 2026.

“It’s been part of a long-term trend,” Fitzsimmons said. “The percentages have been going up steadily. It’s not a surprise.”

The uptick comes in advance of the Supreme Court’s decision on a lawsuit against Harvard brought by Students for Fair Admissions, an anti-affirmative action group that claims the College’s race-conscious admissions policies discriminate against Asian American applicants.

Legal scholars widely expect the Court’s strong conservative majority to overturn affirmative action, with a decision expected in late spring or summer.

For the sixth consecutive year, women make up at least half of the admitted class. 53.6 percent of students identify as women, a decrease from 54.2 percent last year. 32 admitted students identify as nonbinary.

This marks the College’s third test-optional admissions cycle, which allows students to apply without submitting standardized test scores. The Admissions Office lifted its testing requirement in June 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and announced in December 2021 that the policy will extend through applicants to the Class of 2030.

When asked about the future of Harvard’s test-optional policy, Fitzsimmons said it is “too early to tell.”

“We put it out there that we would be test-optional through the Class of 2030 and that seems realistic,” he added. “We continue to look at what’s been happening and we’ll have plenty of evidence to make a good decision when the time comes.”

TTA Takeaway: We can already see in this announcement how Harvard is addressing the Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision on affirmative action. See our blog post for more of our thoughts on "The Future of Race-Conscious Admissions" by Maria Laskaris, former Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Dartmouth.