Bates Admits Domestic Applicants at About 27% — International Applicants at Just 3%

Bates College's published acceptance rate for the Fall 2025 entering class was 14.83%, from 1,433 admits out of 9,660 first-year applicants. That single number describes an average applicant who, depending on where they're applying from, doesn't really exist. Break the pool out by residency and two very different admissions stories appear. In-state applicants were admitted at 26.69%. Out-of-state applicants were admitted at 27.64% — close enough to call it one domestic rate. International applicants were admitted at 3.18%. That's not a shading of the odds. It's a different admissions environment, and it held in the same shape a year earlier.

The Decomposition

All figures are from Bates College's Common Data Set, Section C1 residency supplement, for the Fall 2025 entering cohort, filed by the Bates Office of Institutional Research, Analysis & Planning.

Show the math: 95 of 356 in-state applicants were admitted, and 95 / 356 = 26.69%. Out-of-state, 1,178 of 4,262 applicants were admitted, and 1,178 / 4,262 = 27.64%. Subtract the two and the gap is 27.64 − 26.69 = 0.95 percentage points — essentially the same odds no matter which U.S. state an applicant calls home. International applicants are a different calculation entirely: 160 of 5,039 were admitted, and 160 / 5,039 = 3.18%.

Where the Real Gap Is

The number worth paying attention to at Bates isn't residency — domestic applicants land within a single point of each other. It's international status. Both domestic groups cleared 26%; international applicants were admitted at 3.18%, less than a ninth of either domestic rate. The gap held in Fall 2024, too: 20.06% in-state, 24.59% out-of-state, 2.98% international.

Bates's Common Data Set doesn't explain why the international rate sits so far below the domestic rates, and this series doesn't speculate about admissions criteria the college hasn't published. What the data shows is the size of the gap, repeated across two entering classes. If you're applying to Bates from outside the United States, 14.83% is not a reasonable estimate of your odds — 3.18% is a far more accurate starting point for building your list.

What Bates Doesn't Publish: A Reliable Early Decision Rate

Bates offers two binding Early Decision rounds — ED I closes in mid-November, ED II in mid-January, both confirmed on the college's own admissions apply page. But Bates's Common Data Set collects only one combined Early Decision figure covering both rounds together, and in the most recent filing, that figure doesn't check out against Bates's own prior filing.

The 2025-2026 Common Data Set — the filing whose Section C1 covers the Fall 2025 class described above — prints its Section C21 Early Decision block under the header "For the Fall 2024 entering class," reporting 949 ED applications and 318 ED admits. But Bates's own 2024-2025 Common Data Set, filed while Fall 2024 was the actual current cohort, reports a different figure for that same stated cohort: 1,128 ED applications and 306 ED admits. Two of Bates's own filings disagree about the same entering class.

That's a filing-template problem, not an attempt to conceal anything — Bates isn't withholding an Early Decision figure so much as its own paperwork has stopped agreeing with itself year over year, and it isn't unique to Bates. We found the same stale, self-contradicting section at several colleges using the same Common Data Set template; see the Common Data Set Early Decision problem for the full pattern across 15 schools. Because neither number can be trusted on its own, we're not publishing an Early Decision admit rate for Bates this cycle, for either year. If you see an ED rate for Bates elsewhere, ask which of the two conflicting filings it came from.

What Bates Doesn't Publish: A Test-Optional Admit Rate

Bates has been test-optional since 1984 — the longest-running test-optional policy of any college in this series. But that doesn't mean Bates publishes an admit rate broken out by score submission. Its Common Data Set Section C9 reports only that 12.98% of the enrolled Fall 2025 class submitted SAT scores and 8.32% submitted ACT scores — that's the composition of students who already enrolled, not an admit rate for submitters versus non-submitters. No such split exists in anything Bates has published; if a resource claims one, it isn't coming from Bates's own data.

What This Means for Your Application

A domestic admit rate near 27%, with almost no daylight between in-state and out-of-state applicants, means Bates is a genuine reach for any U.S. applicant regardless of home state — residency simply isn't the lever here. For international applicants, the calculus is starker: a 3.18% admit rate belongs in the same planning bucket as the most selective schools in the country, and it should shape how many similarly selective reaches you're willing to carry elsewhere on your list.

Because Bates's own Early Decision data can't be verified this cycle, timeline planning has to lean on what is confirmed: Bates runs ED I and ED II as separate binding rounds with real deadlines, even though we can't tell you what edge, if any, either carries. Our application deadline tracker can help you keep both binding deadlines lined up against the rest of your list without guessing at an admit-rate advantage that isn't verifiable right now. If you're weighing how a 3%-to-27% spread like this should shape your overall list, our free college list builder is built for exactly that kind of balancing. And if you want to talk through where a school like Bates fits in your strategy, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to work through it.

The Pattern Held in Fall 2024

Both domestic rates rose four to seven points between the years, and the domestic gap widened slightly — 4.53 points in Fall 2024 versus 0.95 in Fall 2025. What didn't move: international applicants stayed under 3.2% in both years, while every domestic rate cleared 20%. The divide that matters at Bates is international status, not which U.S. state an applicant calls home.