With a yield of 50.4 percent for the Class of 2019, the proportion of students accepting the College’s offer of admission has declined from last year’s yield of 54.5 percent but is up from 48.5 percent in 2013. For the past decade, the yearly yield rate has hovered around 50 percent, according to a College statement.
To date, 1,115 students have accepted offers of admission to the Class of 2019, a decrease from the 1,210 students that accepted admission offers for the Class of 2018 — which exceeded class size projections — but marking an increase from the 1,093 students who committed to the Class of 2017.
The College has admitted 93 students from the waitlist, and the admissions office is using the waitlist to ensure the Class of 2019 is the size it wants, admissions director Paul Sunde wrote in an email. He wrote that admissions expects to enroll about 20 transfer students.
Fourteen percent of the Class of 2019 are first-generation college students, an eight-year high and increase from 11.2 percent of the Class of 2018. Sunde wrote that the College has been working with community-based organizations across the U.S. to encourage high-ability, low-income students to consider Dartmouth.
The class is also made up of the largest proportion of Asian American students ever at 19.6 percent. Sunde wrote that there has been an overall increasing trend in the percentage of Asian American students per class at the College, and this year’s numbers are in line with that trend.
The Class of 2019 also has the largest West Coast contingent ever at 23.6 percent of the class. Sunde wrote that there has been a national demographic shift with more students graduating from high school in the West, which would logically be reflected in the Class of 2019.
Fifty-one percent of the class will be granted need-based financial aid and about 14 percent qualify for Pell Grants. The average award for 46 percent of the class will be $44,161.
Ninety-one percent of the students are in the top 10 percent of their graduating classes, a slight decline from last year’s 94 percent. Mean SAT scores for the class are 717 for critical reading, 722 for math and 722 for writing. About 56 percent of the class went to a public high school, similar to last year’s 55.3 percent, which was an increase from the year before.
More than eight percent of students are international.
Last year’s entering class saw the highest-ever percentage of Latino students and first-generation college students, the latter record which the Class of 2019 has now surpassed.
The Dimensions of Dartmouth program, now split into three dates, saw higher attendance than past years, as it did last year when additional dates were first added, Sunde wrote. This year’s on-campus program was similar to last year’s, but more off-campus events were held than in the past and early feedback on those events have been positive, he wrote.
About 20,500 students applied to the Class of 2019 and 2,213 were accepted, for an acceptance rate of 10.8 percent. There was a more than 10 percent increase in early decision applications for the Class of 2019 last fall.
The University of Pennsylvania saw a 66 percent yield for its 2019 class, while Harvard University saw an 81 percent yield. Princeton University saw a 68.6 percent yield for its 2019 class, after the yield was lowered from a record-high 69.4 percent yield due to 14 students deferring their admission to the Class of 2020.
