Gonzaga Admits Out-of-State Applicants at 82.04%, In-State at 77.98% — Yield Runs the Other Way

Gonzaga University's published acceptance rate for the Fall 2025 entering class was 79.62%, from 7,091 admits out of 8,906 first-time, first-year applicants. Split by residency, out-of-state applicants were admitted at 82.04%, ahead of in-state Washington applicants at 77.98%. International applicants trailed both, at 51.71%. Follow those same students to enrollment and the pattern reverses: in-state admits enroll at roughly double the rate of out-of-state admits. Gonzaga's own Common Data Set publishes the full breakdown, and this is a rarer thing than it sounds — most private universities leave the optional residency table blank, and Gonzaga filled it in.

Only one year of this data exists to check. Gonzaga's current Common Data Set filing is the only one posted on gonzaga.edu; no prior-year filing could be located, so there's no Fall 2024 comparison and no trend line to draw. Everything below is Fall 2025 only.

The Decomposition

All figures are from Gonzaga's 2025-2026 Common Data Set, Section C1 residency supplement, for the Fall 2025 entering cohort, filed by Institutional Research and the Office of the University Registrar. The three rows sum exactly to Gonzaga's own published total — 8,906 applied, 7,091 admitted, 1,130 enrolled — with nothing left in an "Unknown" category, so none is shown.

Show the math: 2,606 of 3,342 in-state applicants were admitted, and 2,606 / 3,342 = 77.98%. Out-of-state, 4,349 of 5,301 applicants were admitted, and 4,349 / 5,301 = 82.04% — a 4.06-point edge for out-of-state applicants. International applicants: 136 of 263 were admitted, 136 / 263 = 51.71%, well below either domestic group. Yield tells a different story. Of the 2,606 in-state admits, 597 enrolled — a 22.91% yield. Of the 4,349 out-of-state admits, only 515 enrolled — 11.84%, just over half the in-state rate. International admits enrolled at 13.24%. Admitted students from Washington show up at nearly double the rate of admitted out-of-state students, even though out-of-state applicants had the easier path in.

Why This Happens

Gonzaga's Common Data Set doesn't state a reason for either pattern, and none is asserted here. What the filing does show is that the two patterns move in opposite directions. On admit rate, out-of-state applicants clear a higher bar than in-state applicants by a modest 4.06 points — not a wide gap, but a consistent one. On yield, in-state admits choose Gonzaga far more often than out-of-state admits do, by close to a two-to-one margin. That's a signal about where admitted students end up enrolling, not about who Gonzaga prefers to admit — a school can admit a group generously and still see most of that group enroll somewhere else. Gonzaga's filing doesn't explain the yield gap, and distance, competing offers, and regional draw are all plausible contributors that this article won't claim as confirmed fact.

Early Decision and Early Action

Gonzaga's Common Data Set answers its Early Decision question directly: no. Section C21 is checked "No," and the blank applied/admitted boxes for the prior entering class confirm it — Gonzaga does not run a binding Early Decision plan, full stop, not a plan it declined to report on.

Early Action is a different story, and worth being precise about. Section C22 is checked "Yes" — Gonzaga does offer a non-restrictive Early Action plan, closing November 15. But the Common Data Set's Early Action section only asks whether a school offers the plan, its closing and notification dates, and whether it's restrictive. It has no fields at all for Early Action applicant or admit counts. So while the plan itself is real and confirmed, no Early Action-specific admit rate exists anywhere in Gonzaga's public filings. The plan exists; the numbers don't. There's no round-level split to publish, and no way to tell whether applying Early Action moves your odds versus applying Regular Decision.

Gonzaga's Common Data Set does publish waitlist figures for Fall 2025: 676 applicants were offered a waitlist spot, 241 accepted the offer, and 66 were ultimately admitted from the waitlist — a real, if narrow, path in for students who don't get an initial offer.

What Gonzaga Doesn't Publish

Beyond the missing Early Action counts, Gonzaga's Common Data Set has no by-college or by-school breakdown of applicants or admits — the schema itself doesn't include one, and nothing on Gonzaga's site fills that gap. Whatever school or program you're targeting inside Gonzaga, the residency-based rates above are the most granular admissions data the university makes public. The same is true by intended major: no applicant or admit counts are published by field of study, so a major-specific acceptance rate for Gonzaga doesn't exist in any source checked.

What This Means for Your Application

The residency gap at Gonzaga is real but modest — 4.06 points between out-of-state and in-state admit rates, nowhere near wide enough to make residency your main strategic lever. The yield data matters more for planning purposes: if you're an out-of-state or international admit weighing Gonzaga against other offers, you're in good company, since most admitted non-residents choose somewhere else. And because only one year of data exists, treat 79.62% as a single data point rather than part of a trend — there's no way yet to tell whether it's rising, falling, or holding steady.

Our free college list builder can help you weigh Gonzaga's residency-based rates against the rest of your list, instead of relying on the single 79.62% headline. Once Gonzaga is on your list, our application deadline tracker keeps its November 15 Early Action date alongside every other school's deadlines. And if you're trying to figure out whether Early Action makes sense for your Gonzaga application, given that Gonzaga doesn't publish EA-specific odds, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to talk it through.