Harvard University has announced that 85% of students admitted to its Class of 2025 will be matriculating. This marks a record yield for the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based institution. To put the figure in context, for the Class of 2024, 81% of admits chose to matriculate. The previous record high yield was for the Class of 2021 when 84% of admits chose to attend Harvard. And in addition to the 85% of admits to the Class of 2025 who will be on campus next fall, 349 students who opted to take a gap year after earning admission to the Class of 2024 will join them this fall.

As Vivi E. Lu and Dekyi T. Tsotsong report for The Harvard Crimson in a piece entitled “College Expects 1,962 Freshmen This Fall As Record-High 85% of Admits Will Join Class of 2025,” “Women make up the majority of the Class of 2025 at 52.6 percent, while men comprise the remaining 47.4 percent. Asian Americans make up 25.3 percent of the class, a slight increase from last year’s 24.6 percent, but close to the record-high 25.6 percent from the Class of 2023. African Americans comprise 14.3 percent of the Class of 2025, a slight increase from last year’s 13.9 percent. The percentage of Latinx students remained steady at 11.7 percent compared to the previous year’s 11.8 percent, and Native Americans and Native Hawaiians make up 1.5 percent of this year’s` incoming class, a decrease from the 2 percent enrolling last year. First-generation college students make up 18.6 percent of the Class of 2025, similar to last year’s 18.7 percent. The Class of 2025 also has 18 veterans, a slight increase from the 12 veterans from the Class of 2024. Approximately 55 percent of the Class of 2025 students will receive need-based aid.”

Congratulations to all students who will be members of the Harvard University Class of 2025. 85% of you chose to accept your offers of admission. And the rest? Where will you be? Stanford? Yale? MIT? As we’ve long articulated on the pages of this college admissions blog, the vast majority of students who are admitted to Harvard and Stanford choose Harvard. The vast majority of students admitted to Harvard and Yale choose Harvard. The vast majority of students admitted to Harvard and any other elite university choose…yes…Harvard.