George Washington's Acceptance Rate Splits Backwards by Residency. The DC Pool Is 482 Applicants

The George Washington University's published acceptance rate for the Fall 2025 first-year class was 47.13%, per its own Common Data Set: 12,741 offers out of 27,034 applications. Split by residency, it runs the opposite direction from the pattern most families expect. Out-of-state applicants were admitted at 49.17%, 10,785 offers out of 21,934 applications. District of Columbia residents were admitted at 31.95% — 154 offers out of a DC applicant pool of 482. That's a 17.22-point spread favoring out-of-state applicants, reported in the same filing where GW marks "State residency" as Not Considered in its first-year admission decisions. GW is private, charges one tuition rate regardless of where a student lives, and reports no residency cap or quota, so none of the public-university machinery that usually drives a residency gap is in play. The filing gives you arithmetic. It doesn't give you a reason, and we're not going to supply one.

The Decomposition

Cohort: Fall 2025 entering class, first-time, first-year, degree-seeking students, per GW's Common Data Set 2025-2026.

Show the math: The DC admit rate is offers divided by applications from a pool of 482 DC residents: 154 / 482 = 31.95%. Out-of-state: 10,785 / 21,934 = 49.17%. The overall rate blends all four rows: 12,741 / 27,034 = 47.13%. Yield is enrollments divided by offers — the share of admitted students who actually show up: 58 / 154 = 37.66% for DC residents, 2,073 / 10,785 = 19.22% for out-of-state admits. The four components sum exactly to the totals GW states in the same table, so nothing is missing from the partition. DC residents ended up as 2.41% of the 2,405-student entering class, out-of-state students 86.20%, international students 7.19%, and unclassified-residency students 4.20%.

One caution on that fourth row. "Unknown" is GW's own column, and it means applicants GW did not classify by residency — not a group of students you could point to, and not a fourth cohort to compare the named rows against. It's reproduced above because it's a stated component of GW's stated total, and GW filled it in for Fall 2025 only.

The Direction Holds Across Three Filings, and the Gap Has Widened

This isn't a one-year artifact. GW has filled in its residency supplement completely for three consecutive years, and out-of-state applicants were admitted at a higher rate in every one.

GW's overall published rate across those three years was 43.54%, then 47.09%, then 47.13%. The headline rate rose about 3.6 points while the residency gap underneath it more than tripled.

Here's what matters most for how much weight to put on any DC figure above. That pool is tiny — 482 applicants in Fall 2025, 535 in Fall 2024, 429 in Fall 2023, between 1.6% and 2.0% of everyone who applied in each year — and a rate computed on 482 applicants moves a lot when a handful of decisions move. GW's DC admit rate swung 7.9 points across these filings, from 39.86% on 429 applicants to 31.95% on 482. The out-of-state rate, computed on more than 20,000 applicants a year, barely moved between the last two: 49.19% on 22,893, then 49.17% on 21,934. Never quote the 31.95% without the 482 next to it.

What GW's Own Filing Says About Residency

Two facts sit in the same Common Data Set, and both are worth stating separately. The first is the C1 residency table: DC residents admitted at 31.95% on 482 applicants, out-of-state applicants at 49.17% on 21,934. The second is Section C7, where GW lists what it weighs in first-year admission decisions. There, "State residency" is marked Not Considered. "Geographical residence" is marked Considered, as is "Level of applicant's interest." Section C6, where a school can indicate selective admission for out-of-state students, is not checked in any of the three filings.

The Common Data Set reports outcomes by residency. It doesn't report why they differ, and nothing in GW's filing joins the two facts together. A 482-applicant pool at a highly self-selecting national university can produce a different admit rate for reasons that have nothing to do with how any individual file is read.

Be precise about what this is not, too. Our broader analysis of the in-state advantage myth covers public universities, where residency gaps are entangled with in-state tuition, state appropriations, and legislated non-resident enrollment caps. GW is private, and the District of Columbia isn't a state: one tuition rate regardless of residency, no residency-linked appropriation, no cap of that kind. We checked Sections C6 and C7 of all three filings, GW's Office of Institutional Research and Planning site including its public dashboards, and its admissions site, and found no published residency cap, target, or preference statement — an absence of a search hit, not proof that no internal target exists.

GW's Transfer Rate Runs Above Its First-Year Rate

GW reports transfer admissions separately, in Section D2. For Fall 2025 it received 2,229 degree-seeking transfer applications, admitted 1,339, and enrolled 582 — a 60.07% admit rate and a 43.47% yield, about 13 points above the 47.13% first-year rate in the same filing. The pattern is consistent: 61.88% for Fall 2024 (1,471 of 2,377) and 58.88% for Fall 2023 (1,445 of 2,454).

These are two different applicant populations reported in one document, not two slices of one pool: transfer applicants aren't part of the 27,034 first-year applications, and the 60.07% isn't a subset of the 47.13%. GW publishes no residency or round split of its transfer pool — Section D2 breaks transfers out by gender only.

What GW Doesn't Publish

GW runs binding Early Decision I and Early Decision II — ED I closes 11/1 with notification 12/15, ED II closes 1/5 with notification 2/1 — and answers "No" to offering any nonbinding Early Action plan. Its Fall 2025 filing leaves both Early Decision count fields empty, so there's no current-year ED figure. The most recent published numbers are for the Fall 2024 entering class: 1,139 ED applications and 755 admits, a 66.29% ED admit rate. Subtracting those from that year's totals leaves 25,867 applications and 11,963 admits outside ED, a 46.25% rate — but that's derived by subtraction, not published by GW, which has never stated a Regular-Decision-only count. The Common Data Set collects one combined ED number, so no ED I versus ED II split exists anywhere.

Two other splits families ask for don't exist here. There's no admit rate by undergraduate school, even though GW admits first-year applicants to specific schools such as the Elliott School of International Affairs, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of Business. And there's no admit rate by whether an applicant submitted test scores. Section C9 reports test submission for the enrolled class only: of the 2,405 first-year students who enrolled in Fall 2025, 878 submitted SAT scores and 334 submitted ACT scores. That describes students who already enrolled, and it should never be read as an admit rate.

Waitlist admits swung sharply: 6,084 places offered and 2,858 accepted for Fall 2025, with 616 admitted from the list, against 6,517 offered and 2,844 accepted for Fall 2024 with 1,188 admitted, and 5,689 offered and 2,320 accepted for Fall 2023 with 14 admitted.

What This Means for Your Application

If you're applying to GW from outside the District of Columbia, the 49.17% out-of-state rate describes your pool, and it's been stable across the last two filings. If you're a DC resident, the honest read is that GW's published DC rate for Fall 2025 was 31.95% on a pool of 482 applicants, that the same filing marks state residency Not Considered, and that a rate built on 482 applicants isn't a stable planning number — it moved 7.9 points across three years. Don't treat it as a fixed bar, and don't assume being local moves your file in either direction, because the filing gives no basis for that assumption.

Our free college list builder is the fastest way to put GW's verified numbers next to the other schools on your list instead of comparing headline rates that hide splits like this one. Since GW runs two binding ED deadlines plus a regular one and publishes no current-cycle ED admit rate, our application deadline tracker will keep 11/1 and 1/5 straight against everything else you're filing. And if you want help deciding whether a binding round at GW makes sense for you, a free strategy call is a good next step.