Baylor Admits Out-of-State Applicants at 54.50%, In-State at 51.51% — But Yield Tells the Real Story

Baylor University's published acceptance rate for the Fall 2025 entering class was 52.22%, from 23,459 admits out of 44,924 first-time, first-year applicants. That blended number hides a residency split that runs backward from what most people expect: out-of-state applicants were admitted at 54.50%, slightly ahead of in-state Texas applicants at 51.51%. International applicants came in lowest, at 49.59%. Admit rate alone, though, is a misleading way to read this data. Once you follow the same students through to enrollment, the story flips — and Baylor's own Common Data Set gives every number needed to see both halves of it.

The Decomposition

All figures are from Baylor's Fall 2025-2026 Common Data Set, Section C1 residency supplement, for the Fall 2025 entering cohort, published by Baylor's Office of Institutional Research. The three rows sum exactly to Baylor's own published totals — 44,924 applied, 23,459 admitted, 3,552 enrolled — with nothing left over, so no "Unknown" residency category exists in this data and none is shown.

Show the math: 14,636 of 28,416 in-state applicants were admitted, and 14,636 / 28,416 = 51.51%. Out-of-state, 7,061 of 12,955 applicants were admitted, and 7,061 / 12,955 = 54.50%. Out-of-state applicants were admitted 2.99 percentage points more often than Texans. But admit rate is only half the picture. Of the 14,636 in-state admits, 2,430 enrolled — a 16.60% yield. Of the 7,061 out-of-state admits, only 991 enrolled — a 14.03% yield. And of the 1,762 international admits, just 131 enrolled — a 7.43% yield, less than half the in-state rate. Admitted students who live in Texas show up at more than double the rate of admitted international students.

Why This Happens

Baylor's Common Data Set doesn't state a reason for either pattern, and none is asserted here. What can be shown is where the two patterns pull in opposite directions. On the admit-rate side, out-of-state and in-state applicants are admitted at close to the same rate — a 2.99-point gap, smaller than the residency gaps published for a number of other schools in this series. Baylor's own Section C7 filing lists "geographical residence" and "state residency" as factors it merely "considers," not factors marked "very important," which is consistent with a modest admit-rate gap.

On the yield side, the gap is larger, and it moves the opposite direction from admit rate. In-state admits enroll at 16.60%, out-of-state at 14.03%, and international at 7.43%. Baylor admits out-of-state and international applicants at rates close to or above the in-state rate, but a much smaller share of those admits actually choose Baylor. That's a pattern about where admitted students end up, not about who Baylor prefers to admit. Baylor doesn't explain why non-resident and international admits yield lower, and this article won't guess — distance, in-state aid structures, and competing offers are all plausible, but none is confirmed in Baylor's filings, so none is claimed as fact here.

The Early Decision Question — and Why It's Incomplete

Baylor's Common Data Set publishes a full, direct Early Decision figure for Fall 2025: 566 applicants, 453 admitted, an 80.04% admit rate. That's a real, independently reported number, not a derived one.

What Baylor does not publish is any Early Action count. Baylor's Common Data Set confirms it offers Early Action — November 1 closing date, February 1 notification — but the standard template used for that section only asks whether a school offers the plan and whether it's binding. It has no field for Early Action applicant or admitted counts, and no other Baylor-published page states one. So the only comparison possible is Early Decision against everyone else combined, not a clean three-way split.

The "all other plans" row is Baylor's own C1 total minus its own published Early Decision counts (44,924 − 566 = 44,358 applied; 23,459 − 453 = 23,006 admitted). It is not an Early Action number and should never be read as one — it necessarily blends Early Action applicants with Regular Decision applicants, because Baylor doesn't separate them anywhere. Baylor also doesn't publish an enrolled or yield figure specific to Early Decision, so that comparison isn't possible. What the table does show: applying Early Decision at Baylor corresponds to an admit rate 28.18 points higher than any other plan — but Early Decision is binding and drawn from a much smaller pool (566 applicants versus 44,358).

What Baylor Doesn't Publish

Beyond the missing Early Action counts, two other gaps are worth knowing, especially if you're weighing a specific program at Baylor.

Baylor's Louise Herrington School of Nursing admits students separately from the university's general undergraduate population — that much Baylor's own admissions pages confirm. What isn't published anywhere checked is any applicant count, admit count, or admit rate specific to that nursing program. Baylor's Institutional Research office publishes enrollment-by-program reports, but those show headcounts of currently enrolled students, not how many applied or were admitted. If you're applying to Baylor nursing specifically, no version of "the nursing acceptance rate" exists in Baylor's public data — don't trust a number that claims otherwise.

By intended major more broadly, Baylor publishes nothing that breaks applicant or admit counts out by field of study, and the Common Data Set format doesn't include that field. Whatever your intended major, the residency-based rates above are the most granular admit-rate data Baylor makes public.

What This Means for Your Application

The headline gap between Baylor's residency groups is small enough — 2.99 points between in-state and out-of-state — that admit rate alone shouldn't drive your strategy the way it might at a school with a double-digit residency split. What should inform your planning is the yield data: if you're weighing Baylor against several other offers, you're not unusual — most admitted out-of-state and international students at Baylor make the same choice, since yield outside Texas runs well below the in-state rate. And if Early Decision fits your situation, the 80.04% admit rate is real, but remember it's binding and drawn from a pool of only 566 applicants, not a shortcut available to everyone.

Our free college list builder can help you see how Baylor's residency and round-based rates stack up against your full list, rather than relying on the single blended 52.22% headline. Once Baylor is on your list, our application deadline tracker keeps its Early Decision and Regular Decision dates alongside every other school's. And if you're trying to decide whether Baylor's binding Early Decision plan makes sense for you, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to work through it before you commit to anything.