The College offered admission to 2,092 students for the Class of 2021 on Thursday. The College received 20,034 applications and the acceptance rate was 10.4 percent, the lowest rate of admissions at the College since 2013.
Ninety-six percent of accepted students from high schools that rank their students are expected to graduate in the top 10 percent of their class. Of the accepted students, 547 are currently ranked as the valedictorian or salutatorian of their high school class, which is a 25 percent increase from the accepted students in the Class of 2020 and an all-time high for admissions at the College. Of these valedictorians and salutatorians, 46 percent are students of color and 13 percent are foreign citizens. Accepted students’ mean SAT score of 1495 also demonstrated an all-time high, increasing 19 points over last year’s cohort.
California is the most represented home state, followed by New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Florida.
The group includes 255 students from 63 foreign countries, a 38 percent increase from the accepted students in the Class of 2020 and the largest cohort of international students ever, another all-time high for admissions at the College. Of international students’ home countries, the United Kingdom, Canada and South Korea are the most represented. Nearly half of international students will be offered need-based financial aid, after the College ended its policy of-need blind admissions for international students in 2015.
Fifty-one percent of accepted students from the U.S. are students of color, which continues a trend from last year in which 51.6 of accepted students from the Class of 2020 were of color, then the most racially diverse class in the College’s history.
Fifteen percent are first-generation college students and 9 percent have at least one parent who attended Dartmouth as an undergraduate, and 10 percent are recruited athletes.
Sixty-three percent of accepted students applied for need-based financial need, with initial data placing the average need based grant at $46,237, and the College expects to offer more than $27 million in scholarships for the next first-year class.
Of the anticipated majors, engineering, economics, biology, government or international relations and English are the most common.
