Claremont McKenna's Early Decision Applicants Are Admitted at Three Times the Regular Rate

Claremont McKenna College's published acceptance rate for the Fall 2025 entering class was 9.44%, from 655 admits out of 6,939 first-year applicants. That headline number blends together two groups with very different odds. Applicants who applied binding Early Decision were admitted at 22.09%. Everyone else — the much larger pool applying Regular Decision, since CMC doesn't offer Early Action — was admitted at a derived 7.36%. Binding Early Decision applicants were admitted at roughly three times the rate of everyone else, and unlike most schools in this series, CMC's own records let us verify that number with confidence.

The Decomposition

Early Decision figures are from CMC's Common Data Set, Section C21, "For the Fall 2025 entering class." The Non-ED row is derived, not published by CMC directly — see the math below.

Show the math: 216 of 978 Early Decision applicants were admitted, and 216 / 978 = 22.09%. CMC's Common Data Set doesn't publish a Regular Decision-only figure, but it does publish the Section C1 total (6,939 applied, 655 admitted) alongside the Section C21 Early Decision figure, so the non-ED pool can be derived by subtraction: 6,939 − 978 = 5,961 non-ED applicants, and 655 − 216 = 439 non-ED admits. That gives 439 / 5,961 = 7.36%. Because CMC has no Early Action plan — Section C22 of its Common Data Set answers "No" — this derived figure represents Regular Decision applicants specifically, not a mix of two non-binding early rounds.

Why a Working Early Decision Figure Is Worth Remarking On

Most of the highly selective schools we've checked in this series publish an Early Decision section in their Common Data Set that fails a basic consistency test: their newest filing prints an Early Decision figure labeled for the prior entering class, but that figure doesn't match what the prior year's own filing reported for the same class. We've documented that exact defect at more than a dozen schools — see the Common Data Set Early Decision problem for the full pattern. CMC is one of the few schools in this series where the check actually passes.

CMC's 2025-2026 Common Data Set labels its Section C21 Early Decision block "For the Fall 2025 entering class," reporting 978 applied and 216 admitted. CMC's prior 2024-2025 filing independently reports its own contemporaneous Section C21, "For the Fall 2024 entering class," as 967 applied and 226 admitted — a genuinely different figure from a genuinely different year, confirming the newer filing was actually updated rather than copied forward. The Section C1 totals show the same pattern: 6,939/655/335 for Fall 2025 versus 6,529/626/337 for Fall 2024's own filing. Both sections moved together and correctly, year over year.

One quirk is worth flagging honestly: the body-text footer on nearly every interior page of the 2025-2026 PDF reads "Common Data Set 2024-2025," even though the cover page correctly reads "2025-2026." That looks like a leftover template artifact rather than a data problem — the actual data fields in Sections C1 and C21 both say "Fall 2025" inline, and both differ numerically from the 2024-2025 filing's own Fall 2024 figures, which is what confirms the content itself is current even though a footer wasn't updated.

What CMC Doesn't Publish

CMC's Common Data Set collects only one combined Early Decision figure, even though the college's own admissions instructions confirm ED I (due November 1, notified December 15) and ED II (due January 10, notified February 15) are separate binding rounds with different deadlines. No source breaks the 978 applicants or 216 admits into an ED I count and an ED II count, so no round-by-round comparison is possible from this data. CMC also doesn't report admissions data by intended major, and its Common Data Set Section C9 reports only that 34% of the enrolled Fall 2025 class submitted SAT scores and 14% submitted ACT scores — that's the composition of enrolled students, not an admit rate broken out by whether an applicant submitted test scores.

The Residency Picture, for Reference

CMC's Common Data Set also includes a residency breakdown, and it shows a much smaller spread than the Early Decision figures above.

In-state and out-of-state applicants sat within 3.4 points of each other for Fall 2025, while international applicants were admitted at under half the in-state rate. CMC's Common Data Set doesn't explain why the international rate sits lower, and this series doesn't speculate about admissions criteria the college hasn't published — but the gap here is real, and it's a separate finding from the Early Decision split above. Do not blend this residency data, or CMC's admissions figures generally, with Harvey Mudd or any other Claremont Colleges consortium statistic; CMC admits and files its Common Data Set separately from the other Claremont Colleges.

What This Means for Your Application

A verified 22.09% Early Decision admit rate against a 7.36% rate for everyone else is a large, real gap — roughly three times the odds — and one of the few round-based figures in this series we can stand behind with confidence, precisely because CMC's own filings agree with each other where most schools' don't. If CMC is a genuine first choice and you're prepared to commit to Early Decision's binding terms, that's a meaningfully different set of odds than Regular Decision. If you're not ready to commit, Regular Decision keeps your options open, but expect a rate closer to 7.36% than CMC's 9.44% blended headline.

Because CMC runs two separate binding Early Decision deadlines that this data can't distinguish between, keeping your dates straight matters even without a round-by-round rate. Our application deadline tracker can help you track both ED I and ED II deadlines against the rest of your list. If you're weighing whether a binding Early Decision commitment at a roughly three-times-better admit rate makes sense for your situation, our free college list builder can help you think through where CMC fits relative to your other schools. And if you want to talk through the trade-offs of applying Early Decision specifically, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to work through it.