Santa Clara Admits Out-of-State Applicants at 54.36%, In-State at 48.24%

Santa Clara University's published acceptance rate for the Fall 2025 entering class was 47.88%, from 9,592 admits out of 20,032 first-time, first-year applicants. Broken out by residency, out-of-state applicants were admitted at 54.36%, ahead of in-state California applicants at 48.24%, while international applicants trailed both at 28.61%. Follow the same groups to enrollment and in-state admits enroll at a noticeably higher rate than out-of-state admits. A year earlier, Fall 2024, the shape was nearly identical: 48.00% overall, with out-of-state again ahead of in-state. Santa Clara's own Common Data Set fills in the residency table both years, which is worth flagging on its own — most private universities leave that section blank, and Santa Clara doesn't.

The Decomposition

All figures are from Santa Clara's Common Data Set filings, Section C1 residency supplement, published by the Office of Institutional Research. Fall 2025 also reports a small "Unknown" residency row (10 applied, 3 admitted, 2 enrolled) that's included in the published total but omitted from the table above as immaterial; Fall 2024 has no such row. Both years' rows sum exactly to Santa Clara's own published totals, with nothing derived.

Show the math: Fall 2025, 4,923 of 10,205 in-state applicants were admitted, and 4,923 / 10,205 = 48.24%. Out-of-state, 3,921 of 7,213 were admitted, 3,921 / 7,213 = 54.36% — a 6.12-point edge for out-of-state applicants. International applicants: 745 of 2,604 were admitted, 745 / 2,604 = 28.61%. Yield moves in the opposite direction from admit rate but not by as much as at some schools: of the 4,923 in-state admits, 956 enrolled, a 19.42% yield; of the 3,921 out-of-state admits, 541 enrolled, 13.80%. International admits yielded at 19.06%, nearly matching the in-state rate despite facing the lowest admit rate of the three groups.

Why This Happens

Santa Clara's Common Data Set doesn't state a reason for the residency gap, and none is asserted here. The pattern repeated almost exactly across two entering classes: out-of-state applicants admitted 5-6 points ahead of in-state applicants both years, with in-state admits enrolling at a higher rate than out-of-state admits both years — though the yield gap here is narrower than at some other schools in this series. International applicants sit apart from both domestic groups: the lowest admit rate of the three, but a yield close to the in-state rate, meaning the international students Santa Clara does admit enroll at a comparable rate to in-state admits. Santa Clara's filing doesn't explain why, and this article won't guess at admissions criteria the university hasn't published.

The Early Decision Question — Why We're Not Publishing a Rate

Santa Clara's Common Data Set includes an Early Decision section, and on the surface it looks complete. But the two most recent filings disagree with each other about the same entering class, and neither can be trusted as a result.

Santa Clara's 2025-2026 Common Data Set prints its Early Decision block under the header "For the Fall 2024 entering class," reporting 611 applicants and 467 admitted. But Santa Clara's own 2024-2025 Common Data Set — whose filing year genuinely is Fall 2024 — reports a different figure for that identical cohort: 609 applicants and 488 admitted.

Both filings claim to describe the same students. They don't agree. Because of that, we're not publishing an Early Decision acceptance rate for Santa Clara this cycle, for either year, and we're not using either figure to back into a non-ED rate elsewhere on this page.

This is a filing-template problem, not an attempt by Santa Clara to conceal anything — it's the same defect we've documented at 10 of the 17 schools checked in this series, where a newer Common Data Set carries forward a prior-year Early Decision figure that no longer matches what that prior year's own filing reported. See our investigation of the Common Data Set Early Decision problem for the full pattern. Even reliable numbers wouldn't support an ED I versus ED II comparison here — Santa Clara reports both rounds as one combined figure, not two.

Early Action is simpler to summarize: Santa Clara's Common Data Set collects only a closing date, a notification date, and a restrictive-plan flag for its Early Action section, with no applicant or admit count fields at all in either filing. No Early Action-specific admit rate exists to publish.

Santa Clara's Common Data Set also publishes waitlist figures both years, as filed: Fall 2025 offered 405 spots, 268 accepted, 263 admitted; Fall 2024 offered 5,871 spots, 3,312 accepted, 197 admitted — a large swing in offers year over year, reported here exactly as filed, with no attempt to reconcile it.

What Santa Clara Doesn't Publish

If you're targeting a specific program, know this going in: no by-college or by-school admit-rate breakdown exists anywhere in Santa Clara's public data. That includes the Leavey School of Business and the School of Engineering specifically — searched directly on Santa Clara's Institutional Research site, including its Common Data Set filings and IPEDS Admissions page, with no applicant or admit table found for either school. The Common Data Set schema has no by-college section, so this isn't Santa Clara withholding a number that exists elsewhere. Same story by intended major: no applicant or admit counts are published by field of study.

What This Means for Your Application

The residency gap at Santa Clara has held steady across two years — out-of-state applicants admitted 5-6 points ahead of in-state applicants both times — so treat it as a real but modest factor, not the deciding one for your strategy. The yield data is closer than at many schools in this series, with international admits enrolling at nearly the in-state rate, so don't assume international admits are just using Santa Clara as a backup. And since Santa Clara's own Early Decision figures contradict each other, don't trust any ED rate you see elsewhere for Santa Clara without checking which conflicting filing it came from.

Our free college list builder can help you weigh Santa Clara's residency-based rates against the rest of your list, rather than a single blended headline or an unverifiable ED figure. Once Santa Clara is on your list, our application deadline tracker keeps its Early Decision and Regular Decision dates lined up against every other school's. And if you want help deciding how much weight to put on Early Decision at a school whose own Common Data Set can't confirm the rate, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to work through it.