The Middlebury College Class of 2025 admissions statistics are in the books. 2020-2021 marked a banner year for Middlebury College’s admissions office. In all, 11,908 students applied to the Middlebury, Vermont-based institution. It marked the largest applicant pool in the school’s long history. Of these students, 1,446 earned admission (a figure that includes 425 students who earned admission through Early Decision I or Early Decision II). By our arithmetic, this means that approximately 15.7% of students who applied to Middlebury’s Class of 2025 earned admission. To put the application figure for the Class of 2025 in perspective, for the Class of 2024, a grand total of 9,165 students applied to Middlebury. Applications thus rose nearly 30% year over year — quite the spike indeed!

Breakdown of Admits to Middlebury’s Class of 2025

As Middlebury reports in a press release about their incoming class entitled “Middlebury Admits 1,446 Students from College’s Largest-Ever Applicant Pool,” “Students of color represent 47 percent of all students admitted, including early and regular decision candidates. Nearly 13 percent are international students while 35 percent are first-generation or students who are the first in their families to attend college. Students seeking admission to Middlebury this year were also the first to apply under Middlebury’s pilot test-optional policy, a three-year trial that will remain in place through fall 2023. Nearly half of the total number of applicants chose not to submit standardized test scores. ‘Removing testing from the equation didn’t alter our focus,’ said Dean of Admissions Nicole Curvin. ‘Our staff continued to concentrate on what truly matters—assessing academic potential, gaining insight into the character of students through letters of support, hearing their voices in the essays, and gathering information about their commitments to friends, family, and community.'”

Middlebury Should Show Rather Than Tell When It Comes to Testing

But you see how Middlebury made a point of expressing the percentage of students who applied without test scores? You see how easy it was to cite this statistic? Wouldn’t it be just as easy for Middlebury’s Dean of Admissions Nicole Curvin to cite the percentage of students who earned admission without test scores? After all, everyone knows that when a school is “test-optional,” one can apply without test scores. But until admissions officers start releasing the data on the percentage of students not who apply but who earn admission without test scores, well, it sounds like mere virtue signaling. Now, don’t get us wrong. We believe Middlebury is being more honest than many other highly selective universities about their test-optional admissions policy since it didn’t take a worldwide pandemic for them to drop the testing requirement in admissions. Yet even so, Middlebury’s failure to release this single data point is telling. Come on, Middlebury admissions. Show, don’t tell. Release the number and give the public the power to decide if you’re being truthful — that students with great test scores enjoy no advantage over students with no test scores under your policy.

Congratulations to Ivy Coach’s students who earned admission to the Middlebury College Class of 2025!