Dartmouth's ED Rate Is 5.7x the RD Rate

Dartmouth College's published acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 (Fall 2025 entering class) is 6.02%, straight from Dartmouth's own Common Data Set: 1,699 admits out of 28,230 applicants. That figure is accurate. It also averages together two rounds with very different odds. Applicants who applied Early Decision were admitted at 21.62%. Applicants who applied outside that binding round were admitted at 3.77%. More than five and a half times the odds, from the same filing, for the same entering class. Whether "Dartmouth's acceptance rate" means something close to 1 in 5 or closer to 1 in 27 depends almost entirely on which round produced your decision.

The Decomposition

| Round | Applications | Admits | Rate | Cohort | |---|---|---|---|---| | Overall | 28,230 | 1,699 | 6.02% | Fall 2025 entering class (Class of 2029) | | Early Decision | 3,552 | 768 | 21.62% | Fall 2025 entering class (Class of 2029) | | Non-ED (Regular Decision) | 24,678 | 931 | 3.77% | Fall 2025 entering class (Class of 2029), derived |

Show the math: Dartmouth's Common Data Set reports 1,699 total admits from 28,230 total applicants for the Class of 2029 (Section C1), and separately 768 admits from 3,552 Early Decision applications (Section C21). Subtracting one from the other isolates everyone outside the binding ED round. 28,230 minus 3,552 is 24,678 applications, and 1,699 minus 768 is 931 admits. 931 divided by 24,678 is 3.77%. Dartmouth runs a single binding Early Decision plan and has no Early Action option, so this non-ED figure functions as Dartmouth's Regular Decision rate. One filing note worth flagging: the CDS field asking whether Dartmouth also offers a non-binding early action plan (Section C22) was left blank in this year's document rather than marked "no." The prior year's filing did explicitly answer "No" to that same question, consistent with Dartmouth's long-documented, ED-only admissions structure, but this year's filing itself leaves that specific box unanswered.

A Gap That Widened

One year earlier, for the Class of 2028 (Fall 2024 entering class), Dartmouth's Common Data Set shows 31,656 total applicants and 1,710 admits, an overall rate of 5.40%. Of those, 3,551 applied Early Decision and 681 were admitted, an ED rate of 19.18%. Applying the same subtraction used above to isolate the non-ED figure: 31,656 minus 3,551 is 28,105 applications, and 1,710 minus 681 is 1,029 admits, a non-ED rate of 3.66%.

Compare that to Fall 2025. The overall rate climbed from 5.40% to 6.02% even as Dartmouth's applicant pool shrank from 31,656 to 28,230. The ED rate rose more sharply, from 19.18% to 21.62%, while the non-ED rate ticked up slightly too, from 3.66% to 3.77%. Both rounds moved in the same direction here, up modestly year over year even as the total applicant pool contracted, a different pattern than schools where a shrinking or growing pool pulls the two rounds apart.

Why the Gap Is This Big

Early Decision at Dartmouth is binding. An admitted ED applicant has agreed in advance to enroll and to withdraw every other application. That commitment removes yield uncertainty, the central variable every admissions office has to manage when shaping an incoming class. A Regular Decision admit's enrollment is still a probability, since RD admits are typically comparing offers from multiple schools before deciding. That uncertainty forces RD admission rates down, because a college has to admit conservatively enough to hit its target class size even accounting for RD admits who choose to enroll elsewhere. This is a structural fact about how binding admission plans work everywhere they exist, not a claim that ED applicants are stronger than RD applicants.

The RD pool is also a different population from the ED pool almost by definition. Committing ED means naming Dartmouth a first choice before you've seen a financial aid offer. Plenty of applicants who would have been competitive ED admits choose to apply Regular Decision instead, because they want to compare aid packages, because a fall semester's grades were still coming together, or because Dartmouth wasn't their clear first choice until later. A 3.77% non-ED rate reflects a much larger, later-stage applicant pool competing for whatever seats the ED round hasn't already filled. It says nothing about how strong those applicants are relative to the ED pool.

None of this requires assuming anything unusual about who applies ED to Dartmouth specifically. The same mechanism, a binding commitment that removes yield risk for the college, produces some version of an early-round advantage at nearly every school that offers one. What varies from school to school is the size of that advantage, and at Dartmouth, for the two cohorts shown above, it has widened rather than held steady.

What This Means for Your Application

The 21.62% ED figure isn't a rate you can borrow for an identical Regular Decision application. The ED and RD pools are different populations, so the roughly 5.7x gap between them overstates what switching rounds alone would do for one specific applicant with one specific file. It reflects the odds each pool actually faced, not the odds available to a single student choosing between rounds.

ED is also a financial commitment as much as an admissions one. Agreeing to Dartmouth's binding plan means committing to enroll before you've seen its financial aid offer and before you can compare it against any other school's package. If comparing aid matters to your family, that comparison has to happen before you apply ED, not after, because a signed acceptance removes your ability to negotiate or shop the offer once it's in.

Dartmouth admits students to a single, unified undergraduate college, including the undergraduate program run through its Thayer School of Engineering, with one common application and no separate by-school admission process. Unlike universities split into multiple colleges with their own applicant pools, there's no per-school breakdown to chase here: the 21.62% and 3.77% figures above already describe the entire applicant pool.

If Dartmouth is a genuine first choice and financing isn't the deciding factor, the ED numbers reflect a real structural advantage. Our application deadline tracker can help you line up Dartmouth's ED and Regular Decision dates against the rest of your list, and our college list builder can help you see how Dartmouth compares to your other targets before you settle on a round.

A short conversation with an advisor can help you weigh whether a 21.62% shot at a binding commitment makes more sense for your family than a 3.77% shot with your options open. Talk to a Dewey Smart advisor if you're still deciding.

The Waitlist

Dartmouth's Fall 2025 Common Data Set reports 2,497 qualified applicants were offered a spot on the waitlist. The filing leaves the number who accepted that spot, and the number ultimately admitted from it, blank for this cycle, so those two figures aren't available for the Class of 2029.

For context, the prior year's filing did report complete figures. For the Class of 2028 (Fall 2024 entering class), Dartmouth offered 2,589 students a waitlist spot, 2,189 accepted it, and 29 were ultimately admitted, a conversion rate of about 1.3% among students who accepted. That's a different cohort than the Class of 2029 headline numbers above, so treat it as background on how Dartmouth's waitlist has recently behaved rather than a figure for the current cycle.