Clemson Admits In-State Applicants at 52.92%, Out-of-State at 40.41% — A Gap That's Narrowing

Clemson's published acceptance rate for the Fall 2025 entering class was 42.43%, from 27,498 admits out of 64,805 first-time, first-year applicants. That single number blends applicant pools Clemson evaluates differently. South Carolina residents were admitted at 52.92%. Out-of-state applicants were admitted at 40.41%. International applicants landed lowest, at 38.44%. If you're a South Carolina family, Clemson is meaningfully more attainable than the headline number suggests. If you're applying from outside the state, it's somewhat less so — though not by the wide margin some other public flagships show.

The Decomposition

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

Show the math: 5,661 of 10,697 in-state applicants were admitted, and 5,661 / 10,697 = 52.92%. Out-of-state, 21,277 of 52,651 applicants were admitted, and 21,277 / 52,651 = 40.41%. Subtract the two and the in-state advantage is 12.51 percentage points. Notice also how lopsided the applicant pool itself is: 52,651 of the 64,805 total applications, or more than four out of every five, came from outside South Carolina. Out-of-state applicants are the overwhelming majority of who applies to Clemson, and they're also the group admitted at the lower rate.

Why This Happens

This isn't something you have to infer from the numbers alone. Clemson's own Common Data Set, Section C7, lists the factors the university considers in admission decisions and rates their importance. Clemson checks "State residency" as VERY IMPORTANT. That's a direct statement from the university, not a pattern reverse-engineered from admit rates — Clemson tells you, in its own institutional filing, that where an applicant lives is a formal factor in whether they get in.

The rest of the story is about who shows up after admission, not just who gets admitted. Clemson admitted 21,277 out-of-state applicants for Fall 2025, nearly four times the 5,661 in-state admits. Yet enrolled counts land close together — 2,669 in-state versus 2,357 out-of-state — because in-state yield is 4.3 times higher: 47.15% of admitted in-state students enroll, versus 11.08% of admitted out-of-state students. In-state admits tend to have fewer comparably priced options and stronger ties to the school; out-of-state admits are more often weighing several other offers, and only about 1 in 9 of them chooses Clemson. Without the yield numbers, the enrolled figures alone would make Clemson look almost evenly split between residents and non-residents. It isn't — the admit rates are what actually differ.

One more distinction worth knowing: press coverage sometimes cites Clemson's out-of-state share as roughly 40%. That figure describes all undergraduates (39.3%). Among first-time first-years specifically — the class discussed here — out-of-state students are 47.5%. Two different denominators, easy to mix up.

The Gap Is Narrowing

The in-state advantage shrank by 8.50 percentage points in a single year — from 21.01 points for Fall 2024 to 12.51 points for Fall 2025. Both rates moved toward each other: the in-state admit rate fell 3.03 points while the out-of-state rate rose 5.47 points. That runs against a common assumption about public flagships — that they're steadily tightening the door on non-resident applicants. Clemson's most recent year did the opposite.

What this doesn't tell you is where the gap goes next. Clemson's C7 filing still marks residency a very important factor, so the underlying preference for in-state applicants hasn't disappeared — it was simply less pronounced this cycle. With only two years of comparable data available, one year of narrowing isn't enough to call a trend, and an applicant shouldn't assume the gap keeps closing at the same pace, or at all, going forward.

A Cap That Does Not Exist Yet

Under current South Carolina law (S.C. Code 59-101-50), in-state applicants receive a preference in admissions at public institutions — not a quota. There's no statute today that caps how many out-of-state students Clemson can admit or enroll.

A bill introduced in the 2025-2026 legislative session, South Carolina H.3795, would change that. As written, it would require public institutions, starting July 1, 2026, to ensure at least 70% of accepted applicants are South Carolina residents — effectively a 30% cap on out-of-state admits. But H.3795 was introduced and referred to the House Education and Public Works Committee on January 28, 2025, and has had no further recorded action since. It is stalled in committee, not law, and there's no indication it's likely to pass in its current form.

That's a real contrast with North Carolina, where a similar-sounding cap is not a pending bill but enacted policy: UNC-Chapel Hill operates under a UNC System rule that caps nonresident enrollment at 18% of each entering class. We've covered how that enacted cap shapes UNC's own in-state versus out-of-state admit rates — a binding enrollment ceiling, not a preference. Clemson's current advantage comes from institutional preference and the C7 factor discussed above, not any statutory limit. If H.3795 or a similar bill eventually passes, that would change. As of now, it hasn't.

What This Means for Your Application

If you're a South Carolina resident, Clemson's 52.92% in-state rate is a meaningfully more favorable environment than the 42.43% headline suggests, and it's worth building your list around that reality rather than treating Clemson as a uniform reach. If you're applying from out of state, plan around 40.41%, not 42.43% — closer than some flagships, but still the harder pool, and Clemson's own C7 filing confirms residency is a factor it's actively weighing, not incidental.

Either way, Clemson's rate only means something in context of your full list. Our free college list builder can help you see where a school with a double-digit residency gap fits alongside your other targets. Once Clemson has a place on your list, our application deadline tracker keeps its deadlines alongside everyone else's instead of scattered across separate portals. And if you want to talk through how residency status should shape your Clemson strategy, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to work through it before you submit anything.

The Waitlist Swing

Clemson's waitlist has been a wildly different proposition depending on the year, even when the waitlist itself was a comparable size:

The number offered and accepting a waitlist spot moved up moderately, from roughly 11,100 to 13,300 offered. But the number actually admitted off that waitlist jumped from 112 to 1,801 — a more than 16-fold increase, and the share of accepted waitlisted students who got in rose from 3.1% to 40.0%. A Clemson waitlist spot meant almost nothing for Fall 2024 and meant a real, better-than-coin-flip chance for Fall 2025. Waitlist size alone doesn't tell you which kind of year you're in.