Davidson Admits North Carolina Applicants at a Lower Rate Than Out-of-State Ones

Davidson College's Common Data Set does not print an acceptance rate. It prints counts: 8,933 applications and 1,127 offers for the Fall 2025 entering class. That works out to 12.62% — computed from Davidson's own numbers, not a percentage Davidson published.

Split those counts by residency and the rate runs in a direction most families don't expect. North Carolina residents were admitted at 16.69%, domestic applicants from outside North Carolina at 20.42%, international applicants at 2.38%. In-state applicants to this North Carolina college were admitted at a lower rate than out-of-state applicants, and the same direction holds in the previous filing.

The Decomposition

Cohort: Fall 2025 entering class, first-time, first-year, degree-seeking students, per Davidson's Common Data Set 2025-2026, Section C1 residency supplement. The rows sum exactly to the stated totals (1,402 + 3,957 + 3,574 = 8,933; 234 + 808 + 85 = 1,127), so this is a complete partition of the pool.

Show the math: Admit rate is offers over applications: 234 / 1,402 = 16.69%, 808 / 3,957 = 20.42%, 85 / 3,574 = 2.38%. Yield is enrollments over offers: 93 / 234 = 39.74%, 386 / 808 = 47.77%, 52 / 85 = 61.18%. Blended, 1,127 / 8,933 = 12.62%. International applicants were 40.01% of the pool and 7.54% of the offers.

The Direction Held in Both Filings

Fall 2024 counts: 1,370 in-state applications and 233 offers; 3,881 out-of-state and 758 offers; 2,863 international and 94 offers; 8,114 applications and 1,085 offers overall.

The out-of-state margin was 3.73 points in Fall 2025 and 2.52 points in Fall 2024. At many schools in this series a residency gap turns out to be yield arithmetic: the group that turns down its offers more often has to receive more offers to fill the same seats. That doesn't fit here. Davidson's out-of-state admits enrolled at a higher rate than its in-state admits in both cohorts, so the group admitted at the higher rate is also the group accepting more of its offers.

We aren't going to tell you why, because Davidson doesn't say and no school does. Applicant-pool composition, recruited-athlete and legacy mix, and financial-aid policy could all bear on it, and none are examined here. The direction is what's published, and it's the opposite of what "in-state advantage" predicts. That's the whole claim.

North Carolina's 18% Cap Does Not Reach Davidson

If you follow North Carolina admissions you've heard about the state's non-resident enrollment cap, and it would be easy to assume it explains the pattern above. It doesn't apply to Davidson. The cap is UNC Policy Manual 700.1.3, "Policy on Nonresident Undergraduate Enrollment," adopted 04/07/22 and amended 01/19/23, 09/12/24, and 02/26/2026:

> Requirements. Effective with the fall semester 2025, the following caps are established for students classified as nonresidents for tuition purposes in the fall first-time undergraduate class. The cap shall be equal to the percentage of the total number of first-time undergraduate students enrolled in the fall of the prior academic year. A. The cap shall be 18 percent for Appalachian State University, North Carolina State University at Raleigh, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Every institution named is a UNC System constituent institution. Davidson is a private liberal arts college, is not one of them, and appears nowhere in the policy — not in the 18% tier, not in the 25%, 35%, or 50% tiers set for other named campuses. Applying the cap to Davidson would be a factual error about who the policy governs. We also checked Davidson's own filings and site for a published cap, quota, or residency target and found none.

One number gets misread here. Section F1 reports that 80.58% of Fall 2025 first-year enrollees are from out of state — 386 of 479 domestic enrollees. That is the composition of a class that already enrolled, not an admit rate, and it tells you nothing about any applicant's odds.

The 2.38% International Rate

The international row is the widest split in Davidson's filing and one of the widest in this series: 3,574 applicants, 85 offers, 2.38%. Domestic out-of-state applicants were admitted at 20.42%, roughly 8.6 times that rate, inside the same 12.62% headline.

The direction isn't new, and it widened: in Fall 2024, 2,863 international applicants received 94 offers, a 3.28% rate, so a year later the pool had grown by 711 applicants while offers to it fell by nine. International admits enrolled at the highest rate of any group both years, 61.18% and 67.02%.

If you're applying from outside the United States, a headline rate is close to useless for estimating your odds, and this pattern isn't unique to Davidson. Our analysis of the international acceptance rate gap covers how far the two rates diverge elsewhere.

The Early Decision Section You Cannot Use

Davidson runs a binding Early Decision plan in two rounds — ED I closes November 15 with notification December 15, ED II closes January 5 with notification January 7 — so Section C21 applies, and it reports counts. We aren't publishing a rate from them, because they can't be attached to a named entering class.

Two problems, both visible in Davidson's own documents. First, the cohort label: the 2025-2026 filing's cover, its Section C1, and its residency supplement all state Fall 2025, but the C21 block inside that filing is headed "For the Fall 2024 entering class," reporting 1,232 early decision applications and 358 admits. Second, the prior filing disagrees: Davidson's 2024-2025 Common Data Set, whose Section C1 does cover Fall 2024, also heads its C21 block "For the Fall 2024 entering class" and reports 1,140 applications and 360 admits. Two Internet Archive captures of that filing, April 2025 and November 2025, both show 1,140 and 360, so the disagreement is between filings, not between captures.

Either set would produce a tidy-looking rate; neither can be tied to a specific entering class, so we publish neither. This isn't a claim about intent — a stale label in an optional block is an ordinary filing artifact — and it isn't unique to Davidson. We ran the same check across the series, and Davidson fails both halves; the full findings are in the Common Data Set Early Decision problem.

Davidson answers "No" to Early Action in both filings, so there's no Early Action rate either, and C21 combines both rounds into one applications figure and one admits figure, so ED I and ED II couldn't be separated even if the label were sound.

What Else Davidson Does and Doesn't Publish

Separately from the first-year pool, Section D2 reports transfer admissions: 152 applications, 28 offers, 17 enrolled for Fall 2025, an 18.42% rate. That's its own small population, not a slice of the first-year numbers — against 8,933 first-year applicants, a handful of transfer decisions moves the rate by whole percentage points. Transfer is broken out by sex only, and the waitlist carries no residency detail either: Davidson offered 1,968 waitlist places for Fall 2025, 953 applicants accepted one, and 28 were admitted from it.

There's no by-major or by-school decomposition to look for. Davidson has no separately-admitting undergraduate schools and one campus, so those axes don't exist rather than being withheld.

One sourcing note: Davidson serves its Common Data Set from a single reused web address, so each year's filing replaces the last at the same URL. The Fall 2025 figures come from the live file; every Fall 2024 figure in this article comes from Internet Archive captures taken before the current filing overwrote it.

What This Means for Your Application

If you're a North Carolina student, being in-state isn't doing work for you at Davidson the way it would at a UNC System campus. Build your list on 16.69%, not on home-state preference. If you're applying from outside the United States, plan around 2.38%, not 12.62% — a difference in kind, not degree, and one that should change how many schools are on your list and what the rest look like.

Our free college list builder puts Davidson's verified residency-level numbers next to the other schools you're weighing, instead of a single headline figure. Because the binding Early Decision plan runs two rounds and its published counts can't be used to judge your odds, the application deadline tracker is the practical tool — get November 15 and January 5 on a calendar and decide about binding commitment on your own terms. For a second read on whether Davidson belongs on your list at all, a free strategy call is a reasonable next step.