As of two years ago, Virginia Tech elected to offer only Early Action admissions rather than both Early Action and  Early Decision I and II. In their own words, they made the choice to terminate their Early Decision application process in order to minimize the advantage that students who don’t need to concern themselves with financial aid were gaining in their admissions process. The change came right after Affirmative Action was struck down, which indicates to us that Virginia Tech wanted more flexibility to ensure they were still able to bring a diverse class of students into their school if they were no longer allowed to consider race in their admissions process. 

Now, this doesn’t mean they’re not still secretly continuing to incorporate a student’s race into their admissions decision-making process, as many schools continue to do in the wake of Affirmative Action coming to an end. But, Virginia Tech did state that the changes to their admissions policy in 2023 included the following: “discontinuing the early decision option, formally eliminating legacy as a factor, and complying with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to remove race and ethnicity as an explicit factor in the admissions decision process.” 

Virginia Tech Early Decision and Early Action Admissions Statistics

Virginia Tech doesn’t publicize data associated with their Early Action acceptance rate and hasn’t since they made the switch, though they did used to publish their Early Decision admissions data. And those numbers are bizarre to us, namely because we’re not sure Virginia Tech fully understands the point of Early Decision. Their ED acceptance rate, up until the Class of 2025, two years before they terminated their Early Decision enrollment option altogether, was always drastically lower than their Regular Decision acceptance rate. Huh? We’re scratching our heads over here! 

How is that possible? The only year the Early Decision admission rate appears to be higher than the Regular Decision admission rate was the Class of 2017, but almost a 100% ED acceptance rate for that year makes even less sense than the RD rate consistently being a double digit amount higher than the ED rate. We’re thinking there may have been a typo in their Common Data Set for that year, because a 95.85% Early Decision acceptance rate is pretty out of the ordinary for any school.

We’re genuinely curious, if the acceptance rate was so much lower for Early Decision applicants (when it should be higher, because those students are willing to make a binding commitment to Virginia Tech), what was the point of preparing an ED application for this school? You were much more likely to get in Regular Decision. Some years, like the Classes of 2023 and 2020, it was around 25% more likely! Perhaps that’s another part of the reason they did away with their Early Decision application. And these past numbers only make us even more curious about the Early Action statistics, which they only began offering for the Class of 2022.

Admissions Cycle	Virginia Tech Class Year	Early Action Admission Rate	Early Decision I and II Admission Rate	Regular Decision Admission Rate
2025-2026	Class of 2030	Not Yet Published	Not Offered	Not Yet Published
2024-2025	Class of 2029	Not Yet Published	Not Offered	Not Yet Published
2023-2024	Class of 2028	Not Reported	Not Offered	55.00%
2022-2023	Class of 2027	Not Reported	Not Offered	57.03%
2021-2022	Class of 2026	Not Reported	49.68%	56.98%
2020-2021	Class of 2025	Not Reported	57.96%	56.47%
2019-2020	Class of 2024	Not Reported	58.55%	65.78%
2018-2019	Class of 2023	Not Reported	44.12%	70.04%
2017-2018	Class of 2022	Not Reported	45.42%	64.85%
2016-2017	Class of 2021	Not Offered	63.06%	70.06%
2015-2016	Class of 2020	Not Offered	46.68%	70.87%
2014-2015	Class of 2019	Not Offered	57.40%	73.41%
2013-2014	Class of 2018	Not Offered	Not Reported	72.63%
2012-2013	Class of 2017	Not Offered	95.85%	70.28%
2011-2012	Class of 2016	Not Offered	52.24%	70.38%
2010-2011	Class of 2015	Not Offered	50.94%	66.55%
2009-2010	Class of 2014	Not Offered	55.41%	67.01%

Waitlisted or Rejected for Virginia Tech admission? Let’s Make a Game Plan!

Virginia Tech doesn’t defer applicants in the Early Action round, but they do place applicants on the waitlist for both Early Action and Regular Decision. As a quick reminder, being waitlisted at Virginia Tech means you are qualified to be admitted to the school for your major, and if a spot opens up within your major, they could still accept you! But if you were waitlisted or even rejected from Virginia Tech, don’t panic. Reach out to us today to set up a complimentary consultation so you can learn the crucial next steps in the college admission process. 

For waitlisted candidates, our PostMortem session is complemented by working with us to craft a powerful Letter of Continued Interest that will catch admissions officers’ attention.

For rejected candidates, we provide a PostMortem application review to figure out what went wrong before our team of former elite college admissions officers helps you pivot to a new, highly competitive strategy.