Lehigh's Real Acceptance Rate: ED vs. Regular Decision

# Lehigh's Real Acceptance Rate: ED vs. Regular Decision

Lehigh University's published admit rate for the Fall 2025 entering class, the Class of 2029, was 28.96%. That figure comes from Lehigh's own Common Data Set, and unlike some of the other schools in this series, it can be split cleanly into two rounds, because Lehigh does not offer a separate Early Action program. Everything outside the Early Decision figure is Regular Decision.

Split that way, Early Decision applicants were admitted at 47.35%, while Regular Decision applicants were admitted at 26.79%. The ED round ran at roughly 1.8 times the rate of Regular Decision, a comparison that is more direct at Lehigh than at schools where Early Action gets folded into the non-ED bucket.

The decomposition

All figures come from Lehigh University's Common Data Set 2025-2026 filing, published by the Office of Institutional Data.

Show the math

The headline rate: 5,601 total admits divided by 19,342 total applicants equals 28.96%.

The ED rate comes from Lehigh's item C21 directly: 966 admitted out of 2,040 ED applicants, which is 47.35%.

The non-ED rate is derived by subtracting the ED figures from the C1 totals: (5,601 − 966) admitted out of (19,342 − 2,040) applied, or 4,635 out of 17,302. That works out to 26.79%.

Divide 47.35% by 26.79% and Lehigh's ED round admitted students at roughly 1.8 times the rate of the Regular Decision round for the Fall 2025 cycle.

Why Lehigh's comparison is unusually clean

Most schools in this series report Early Action as a confirmed but numerically unreported program in their Common Data Set, which forces the "non-ED" figure to blend Early Action and Regular Decision together. Lehigh is different. Its Common Data Set item C22, which asks whether the school offers Early Action, is answered "No." Lehigh does not run an Early Action program at all.

That means the 26.79% figure in this decomposition is not a blend of two different applicant pools. It is a genuine Regular Decision rate, drawn from the same C1-minus-C21 arithmetic used for other schools in this series, but without the EA-blending caveat that applies elsewhere. Of the schools we have decomposed this way, Lehigh offers one of the more direct ED-versus-RD comparisons available from public Common Data Set filings.

That said, the same limitation that applies everywhere else still applies here: Lehigh's Common Data Set reports Early Decision as a single combined figure, so if Lehigh runs more than one ED round or any sub-categories within it, that detail is not visible in the public filing.

It's also useful to check Lehigh's numbers against the Common Data Set's residency breakdown, which offers an independent cross-check on the C1 totals. Lehigh reported 1,010 in-state admits out of 3,090 in-state applicants, 4,415 out-of-state admits out of 12,070 out-of-state applicants, and 176 international admits out of 4,182 international applicants. Added together, that's 5,601 admits out of 19,342 applicants, matching the C1 totals exactly and confirming the headline and derived rates above are internally consistent within Lehigh's own filing.

See the same decomposition applied across other schools at /admissions/real-acceptance-rates.

What this means for your application

An ED admit rate of 47.35% against a Regular Decision rate of 26.79% is a real, direct comparison in Lehigh's own published data, and the absence of an Early Action program removes one layer of ambiguity that complicates this comparison at other schools. Even so, this gap should not be read as a precise measure of how much applying ED would change an individual applicant's odds.

Early Decision at Lehigh is binding: an admitted ED applicant commits, before applying, to enroll and to withdraw applications submitted elsewhere. That commitment shapes who applies ED in the first place. Students who choose ED at Lehigh tend to have the school established as a clear first choice, and the ED applicant pool often differs systematically from the RD pool in preparation and fit. The 47.35% figure reflects the outcome for that self-selected group, not the outcome an identical RD applicant would receive by simply switching decision plans.

Because of that self-selection, the 1.8x gap between ED and RD likely overstates the effect of the ED round itself, holding an applicant's profile constant. Some of the difference reflects Lehigh's institutional preference for binding commitments; some reflects who opts into ED. The Common Data Set cannot separate those two effects, even in a comparison this direct.

The binding commitment also has a financial consequence the acceptance-rate numbers do not show. An ED admit at Lehigh is expected to enroll regardless of the aid package offered, barring documented financial hardship, which forecloses the ability to compare Lehigh's aid offer against other schools before committing.

It's also worth putting the size of Lehigh's ED pool in perspective. Lehigh's 2,040 ED applicants for Fall 2025 represented about 10.5% of its 19,342 total applicants, meaning the large majority of Lehigh's applicant pool, close to 90%, competed in the Regular Decision round at 26.79%, not the higher ED figure. Since Lehigh does not offer Early Action, that Regular Decision rate is the number that applies to nearly nine out of ten Lehigh applicants.

If you're weighing whether ED fits into your college list, our college list builder can help you think through the trade-offs, and our application deadlines page tracks Lehigh's ED and RD deadlines.

The waitlist

Lehigh's Fall 2025 waitlist saw 4,083 students offered a spot, 1,988 accept that spot, and 80 ultimately admitted off the waitlist. An admit count of 80 out of 1,988 accepted waitlist spots (about 4%) suggests the waitlist played a modest role in filling out the Fall 2025 class after the initial ED and RD decisions went out.

Relative to the size of the admitted class, a waitlist of 4,083 offered spots against 5,601 total admits is substantial. Lehigh offered a waitlist spot to a number of students equal to roughly 73% of its total admitted class, even though only 80 of those waitlisted students, about 2% of the offered pool, ultimately received an offer of admission. That gap between the size of the waitlist and the number ultimately admitted from it is a useful reminder that a waitlist offer at a school like Lehigh does not, on its own, indicate meaningfully improved odds of eventual admission.

To talk through how Lehigh's ED round fits your broader application strategy, and how it compares to the ED rounds at similarly selective schools, you can book a call with an admissions coach.