Brandeis Admits Out-of-State Applicants at a Higher Rate Than In-State — the Real Gap Is International

Brandeis University's Fall 2025 Common Data Set shows an overall acceptance rate of 45.41%, from 4,430 admits out of 9,756 first-time, first-year applicants. Split that number by residency and an unusual shape appears: out-of-state domestic applicants were admitted at 63.67%, nearly eight points higher than the 55.76% rate for in-state Massachusetts applicants. That's the reverse of what many families expect — a home-state applicant usually assumed to have some edge — and Brandeis doesn't publish a reason for it, so this piece reports the pattern without assigning one. International applicants sit far below both domestic groups, admitted at just 17.95%, even though they made up more than a third of all applications. If your mental model of Brandeis is "45%, tough but doable," the real range underneath that number runs from nearly two-thirds admitted for out-of-state applicants down to fewer than one in five for international applicants.

The Decomposition

All figures are from Brandeis University's Common Data Set, Section C1 residency supplement, for the Fall 2025 entering cohort (Class of 2029), filed by Brandeis's Office of Institutional Research.

Show the math: 1,036 of 1,858 in-state applicants were admitted, and 1,036 / 1,858 = 55.76%. Out-of-state, 2,752 of 4,322 applicants were admitted, and 2,752 / 4,322 = 63.67%. Subtract the two and the gap is 63.67 − 55.76 = 7.91 percentage points, with out-of-state applicants admitted at the higher rate. International applicants: 642 of 3,576 were admitted, and 642 / 3,576 = 17.95%.

Where the Real Gap Is

Combine the two domestic groups and 3,788 of 6,180 applicants were admitted — 61.29% — against 17.95% for international applicants, a gap of more than 43 points. That's by far the largest divide in Brandeis's data, dwarfing the smaller but real 7.91-point gap between out-of-state and in-state domestic applicants. Brandeis's Common Data Set marks both "geographical residence" and "state residency" as factors it does not consider in admission decisions, so the out-of-state advantage over in-state applicants isn't explained by a stated residency preference — and Brandeis doesn't publish any explanation for either gap. Report the shape as it is: out-of-state domestic applicants had better odds than in-state Massachusetts applicants, and international applicants had odds far below both.

What Brandeis Doesn't Publish

Two gaps in Brandeis's public data are worth flagging before you rely on this number.

First, no by-school breakdown exists. Brandeis's "Fast Facts: Schools and Enrollment" page reports enrolled headcounts by school — the School of Arts, Humanities and Culture; School of Business and Economics; School of Science, Engineering and Technology; School of Social Sciences and Social Policy; and Rabb School of Continuing Studies — but that's a snapshot of who's already enrolled, blending undergraduate and graduate students, not an applicant or admit count, and not something an applicant's odds can be computed from. No school-specific admit rate is published anywhere in Brandeis's Common Data Set or admissions materials.

Second, a reliable Early Decision breakdown isn't published. Brandeis's Common Data Set records only one combined Early Decision figure, and the newest filing's version of it is labeled "Fall 2024" (680 applied, 242 admitted) — but Brandeis's own prior-year filing reports a different Early Decision count for that same "Fall 2024" label: 765 applied, 323 admitted. Two Brandeis filings disagree about what happened in the class they both call Fall 2024, which makes the newer number unusable for either cohort. This isn't concealment — we've now found the same mislabeled-year filing pattern at six schools in this series, and it reads as a template error carried forward in the Common Data Set process rather than anything specific to Brandeis. Whatever Brandeis's real early-round admit rate is, it isn't reliably in the public record.

Brandeis also ran a waitlist for Fall 2025: 1,717 students were offered a spot, 771 accepted the offer, and 206 were ultimately admitted off it — already folded into the 4,430 total above, though Brandeis doesn't publish which residency group those 206 students belonged to.

What This Means for Your Application

A 45.41% headline rate hides real range: if you're an out-of-state domestic applicant, your reference point is closer to 63.67%; if you're an in-state Massachusetts applicant, it's 55.76%, still meaningfully better than the blended number suggests. International applicants face a much harder path at 17.95%, and should build a list with more reach and target schools around Brandeis rather than treating the 45% headline, or even the domestic figures, as representative of their own odds. Because no reliable by-school data exists, don't assume Brandeis's overall selectivity tells you anything specific about how competitive admission is to a particular school within Brandeis — that number isn't public. And because a real Early Decision figure isn't published either, don't plan around an assumed ED boost you can't verify from Brandeis's own filings. Our free college list builder can help you place Brandeis correctly relative to your residency and profile, and our application deadline tracker keeps Brandeis's deadlines lined up against the rest of your list. If you want to talk through how a school with this much internal variance should factor into your strategy, a free strategy call is a good next step.