Yale University has never had a bigger student body. With 1,789 enrollees in the Yale Class of 2025, it’s the school’s largest incoming class since World War II. There are about 240 more students enrolled in the first-year class than in a typical year. And why? You guessed it. Because of the approximate 335 students admitted to the Class of 2024 who opted to take gap years because of the pandemic. And the Class of 2024’s numbers are up, too since many students from the Yale Class of 2023 took a year off school during the pandemic.

So does this mean the Yale Class of 2026 will be larger than normal? Not so fast. As Julia Bialek and Amelia Davidson report for The Yale Daily News in a piece entitled “Classes of 2024 and 2025 set record numbers for enrollment,” “Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan told the News that the current size of the undergraduate student body will not impact the size of future classes and that the admissions office is expecting to admit a typically-sized class of 2026. Forty-five students admitted to the class of 2025 took a gap year, which is on par with a typical year, so the admissions office is not expecting the class of 2026 to be larger than normal.”

So after a couple of increased class sizes, it looks like a return to normalcy is around the corner with respect to Yale’s enrollment figures. And here applicants to the Class of 2026 counting their chickens might have been getting excited there would be more seats in the latest incoming class! Not so much.