Yale Early Action Statistics for Class of 2022

There’s a piece in “The Yale Daily News” on this year’s record number of Yale Early Action applicants.

The Yale Early Action application numbers are in for the Class of 2022. In all, 5,733 students applied under Yale’s Single Choice Early Action policy this admissions cycle. This figure compares to 5,086 for the Class of 2021, 4,662 for the Class of 2020, 4,693 for the Class of 2019, and 4,750 for the Class of 2018. By our math, this marks the largest Early Action pool for Yale in its history. Ivy Coach is a purveyor of Ivy League admissions statistics dating back many years so do check out the figures for Yale to understand just how significant this rise in applications is this year for the New Haven, Connecticut-based university.

Yale Early Action Statistics for the Class of 2022

As reports Anastasiia Posnova for “The Yale Daily News” in a piece entitled “Yale sets new early app record,” “Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan said this year’s pool reflects a continuation of some positive trends the Admissions Office has witnessed for several years. ‘Although the single-choice early action pool offers only a limited glimpse into what this year’s overall applicant pool will look like, the strength and diversity of the pool is very encouraging as we plan to enroll our second first-year class of 1,550 students that builds on the positive trends of the past several years,’ Quinlan said. Quinlan added that, as the early action pool has grown, it has become ‘increasingly diverse,’ with a larger number of applicants from groups traditionally underrepresented at Yale and in higher education more broadly.”

In fact, applicants to Yale in this year’s Early Action round hail from 49 of the 50 states (you bet Yale wishes they had an applicant from that single missing state to be able to say they had applicants from all 50 states — just as Secretary Clinton wishes she campaigned harder in Wisconsin). Prospective students from 98 nations also submitted Early Action applications to Yale’s Class of 2022.

Rest Easy, Yale Early Action Applicants

We imagine these figures are not welcome news to Yale Early Action applicants to the Class of 2022. You never want to apply in a year of record applications to a given institution. While not everyone has a crystal ball to know how many students will apply to a school in the course of an admissions cycle, there are some trends we’ve pointed out over the years. As but one example, applications to Duke tend to spike the admissions cycle after the school’s men’s basketball team reaches the Final Four (something that happens quite frequently over Coach K’s reign). We always alert our prospective Duke applicants to this trend so they weigh this factor in their decision-making when choosing which school to commit to Early.

But we feel obliged to reassure Yale applicants this admissions cycle that the fact Yale received more applications does not in itself mean that it will be more difficult to get in. Every highly selective college — including Yale — gets better and better each year at getting students to apply. This includes even unqualified students. We’re not saying that there are more ‘C’ students in this year’s Early Action applicant pool to Yale. And we’re just going to an extreme to make a point. But more ‘C’ students in an applicant pool do not make an applicant pool more competitive. Again, we’re not at all suggesting that there are more ‘C’ students in this year’s Yale applicant pool — or in any highly selective college’s applicant pool. But you hopefully get the point of what we’re conveying. As Mark Twain taught the world, the numbers don’t always tell the full story.

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