Harvey Mudd Admits International Applicants at Less Than Half the Domestic Rate

Harvey Mudd College's published acceptance rate for the Fall 2025 entering class was 12.33%, from 643 admits out of 5,217 first-year applicants. That figure sits close to two of the three groups inside it, but not the third. In-state applicants were admitted at 12.35% — almost exactly the headline rate. Out-of-state applicants were admitted at 17.84%. International applicants were admitted at 5.33% — under a third of either domestic rate. That's a wider divide than the domestic split alone, and it held a year earlier too.

The Decomposition

All figures are from Harvey Mudd College's Common Data Set, Section C1 residency supplement, for the Fall 2025 entering cohort, filed by the Harvey Mudd Office of Institutional Research. Harvey Mudd admits and files its Common Data Set separately from the other Claremont Colleges; nothing here is blended with Claremont McKenna, Pomona, Scripps, or Pitzer figures.

Show the math: 283 of 2,291 in-state applicants were admitted, and 283 / 2,291 = 12.35%. Out-of-state, 291 of 1,631 applicants were admitted, and 291 / 1,631 = 17.84%. Subtract the two and the domestic gap is 17.84 − 12.35 = 5.49 percentage points — out-of-state applicants had a real edge over in-state applicants. International applicants are a different calculation: 69 of 1,295 were admitted, and 69 / 1,295 = 5.33%.

Where the Real Gap Is

The domestic residency gap at Harvey Mudd is real — out-of-state applicants cleared nearly 18% while in-state applicants cleared just over 12%. But it's smaller than the gap between either domestic group and international applicants, who were admitted at 5.33% — below the in-state rate, and under a third of the out-of-state rate. That shape held in Fall 2024, too: 12.15% in-state, 19.39% out-of-state, 4.64% international, again the lowest of the three by a wide margin.

Harvey Mudd's Common Data Set doesn't explain why the international rate sits so far below both domestic rates, and this series doesn't speculate about admissions criteria the college hasn't published. What the data shows is the size of the gap, repeated across two entering classes. If you're applying to Harvey Mudd from outside the United States, 12.33% overstates your odds by more than double — something closer to 5% is a more accurate starting point.

What Harvey Mudd Doesn't Publish: A Reliable Early Decision Rate

Harvey Mudd offers two binding Early Decision rounds — ED I closes November 15, ED II closes January 5, both confirmed on the college's own admissions site. But Harvey Mudd's Common Data Set collects only one combined Early Decision figure covering both rounds together, and in the most recent filing, that figure contradicts Harvey Mudd's own prior filing.

The 2025-2026 Common Data Set — whose Section C1 covers the Fall 2025 class described above — prints its Section C21 Early Decision block under the header "For the Fall 2024 entering class," reporting 594 ED applications and 109 ED admits. But Harvey Mudd's own 2024-2025 Common Data Set, whose Section C1 genuinely covers Fall 2024, reports a different figure for that same stated cohort under the identical header: 656 ED applications and 106 ED admits. Two of Harvey Mudd's own filings disagree about the same entering class.

That's a filing-template problem, not an attempt to conceal anything — Harvey Mudd isn't withholding an Early Decision figure so much as its own paperwork has stopped agreeing with itself year over year, and it isn't unique to Harvey Mudd. We found the same stale, self-contradicting section at several colleges using the same Common Data Set template; see the Common Data Set Early Decision problem for the full pattern across 15 schools. Because neither number can be trusted on its own, we're not publishing an Early Decision admit rate for Harvey Mudd this cycle, for either year, and we're not subtracting either figure from the totals above to back into a non-ED rate. If you see an ED rate elsewhere, ask which of the two conflicting filings it came from.

What Else Harvey Mudd Doesn't Publish

Harvey Mudd's Common Data Set Section C9 reports that 55% of the enrolled Fall 2025 class submitted SAT scores and 21% submitted ACT scores — that's the composition of students who already enrolled, not an admit rate by score-submission status, and no such split has been published. Harvey Mudd also doesn't report admissions data by intended major, and as a single-campus college with an applicant pool distinct from the other Claremont Colleges, no meaningful consortium-level comparison exists.

What This Means for Your Application

A domestic admit rate split between roughly 12% in-state and 18% out-of-state means Harvey Mudd is a serious reach for any U.S. applicant, with out-of-state applicants seeing a modest edge. For international applicants, the odds are tighter still: 5.33% belongs in the same planning bucket as the most selective technical colleges in the country, and it should shape how many similarly selective reaches you carry elsewhere on your list.

Because Harvey Mudd's own Early Decision data can't be verified this cycle, timeline planning has to lean on what is confirmed. Our application deadline tracker can help you keep both binding deadlines lined up against the rest of your list without guessing at a rate we can't confirm. If you're weighing how a 5%-to-18% spread should shape your overall list, our free college list builder is built for exactly that kind of balancing. And if you want to talk through where a school like Harvey Mudd fits in your strategy, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to work through it.

The Pattern Held in Fall 2024

In-state rates barely moved between the two years, while out-of-state rates eased from 19.39% to 17.84% and international rates ticked up from 4.64% to 5.33%. Even with that movement, the ranking never changed: out-of-state applicants had the best odds, in-state applicants sat in the middle, and international applicants had the lowest odds in both years. Two years running, international status is the widest divide in Harvey Mudd's admissions data, even though a real domestic gap exists alongside it.