Princeton's Acceptance Rate, Broken Down by Residency (Class of 2028 Data)

A note before the numbers: everything below describes the Class of 2028, Princeton's Fall 2024 entering class. It is not the current admissions cycle. Princeton's Common Data Set for 2025-26, which would cover the Class of 2029, could not be confirmed to exist as a published document at the time of this research — the university's Common Data Set index page returned an access error on direct fetch, and no working link to a newer filing could be located. The 2024-2025 Common Data Set, covering the Class of 2028, is the most recent edition we could directly verify. Treat the figures here as one real, fully sourced data point, not a live read on this year's odds.

With that said, Princeton's published acceptance rate for the Class of 2028 was 4.62%, drawn from its own Common Data Set: 1,868 admits out of 40,468 applicants. That headline number blends three applicant pools that Princeton itself reports separately — in-state New Jersey residents, out-of-state domestic applicants, and international applicants — and they didn't all get admitted at the same rate.

We checked nine of the most selective private universities in the country for this kind of granular admissions breakdown. Seven publish nothing detailed enough to decompose. Princeton and MIT are the two that do. That's a fact about disclosure, not a judgment on the other seven schools — a blank field in a Common Data Set is ordinary and doesn't imply anything is being withheld.

The Decomposition

All figures are from Princeton's Common Data Set 2024-2025, Section C1, for the Class of 2028 (first-time, first-year, degree-seeking applicants).

Show the math: 234 of 4,554 in-state applicants were admitted, 234 / 4,554 = 5.14%. 1,425 of 26,018 out-of-state domestic applicants were admitted, 1,425 / 26,018 = 5.48%. 209 of 9,891 international applicants were admitted, 209 / 9,891 = 2.11%. The four residency rows sum exactly to Princeton's published totals: 4,554 + 26,018 + 9,891 + 5 = 40,468 applications, and 234 + 1,425 + 209 + 0 = 1,868 admits. Every percentage here is arithmetic computed from those raw counts — Princeton's Common Data Set publishes the counts, not the rates themselves.

No Round Split, and No SCEA Counts

If you came looking for Princeton's early-round acceptance rate, it isn't published anywhere we could find. Princeton's early program is Single-Choice Early Action: applicants can't apply early to any other school, but — like MIT's Early Action, covered elsewhere in this series — an admitted SCEA applicant isn't bound to enroll. Princeton's Common Data Set field for Early Action collects only policy details for that program: a November 1 application deadline, mid-December notification, and confirmation that the plan is restrictive. It does not collect, and Princeton does not separately publish, how many students applied or were admitted SCEA versus how many applied and were admitted Regular Decision. (Princeton also has no Early Decision plan at all, so the Common Data Set's separate Early Decision count field is simply blank for Princeton — not a missing disclosure, just a program the school doesn't offer.) The 40,468 applicants and 1,868 admits in the table above combine both admission rounds into one first-time, first-year total, with no way to split them from the data Princeton has published.

Why This Happens

If you've read the UNC or Northeastern pieces in this series, the residency split above will look different from what you'd expect at a public university. At a school like UNC, in-state applicants are admitted at multiples of the out-of-state rate because state policy caps how many nonresident students the school can enroll. Princeton has no such cap and no state-residency admissions preference at all: its own Common Data Set marks "state residency" as "not considered" among the factors used in admissions decisions. That's consistent with what the numbers show — New Jersey residents were admitted at 5.14%, actually slightly below the 5.48% rate for out-of-state domestic applicants, not above it. Whatever is driving Princeton's residency gap, it isn't a residency preference or a legal enrollment cap, because Princeton reports having neither.

The gap that does stand out is international versus domestic: 2.11% for international applicants against 5.14% and 5.48% for the two domestic pools. Princeton doesn't publish a stated reason for that difference, and this piece won't assign one — reporting the pattern is different from explaining its cause, and only Princeton's own admissions office could tell you why that specific gap exists in a given year. What the Common Data Set does make clear is that it isn't a residency-cap story like UNC's; it's a separate pattern along a different axis entirely.

What This Means for Your Application

If you're a New Jersey resident hoping in-state status gives you an edge at Princeton the way it might at a state school, the data doesn't support that: out-of-state domestic applicants were admitted at a very slightly higher rate in this cohort, and Princeton itself says residency isn't a factor. Build your Princeton strategy around your application, not your zip code. If you're weighing whether to apply Single-Choice Early Action, know going in that Princeton hasn't published the round-by-round numbers that would tell you whether SCEA carries a real rate advantage the way it does at some other schools — you're deciding on the strength of the restriction and the deadline, not on a documented rate edge.

Since Princeton's own numbers only tell part of the story without a round-level breakdown, it helps to see where Princeton fits against the rest of your list. Our free college list builder can help you place a school with this little published early-round transparency alongside your other targets. Our application deadline tracker keeps Princeton's November 1 SCEA deadline and every other school's dates in one place. And if you want to think through an SCEA decision without a published rate to lean on, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to work through the trade-offs before you submit anything.