Tufts' published acceptance rate for the Fall 2025 entering class (Class of 2029) is 10.81%: 3,613 admits out of 33,415 first-time first-year applicants, confirmed both by Tufts' own Common Data Set and its admissions office's enrolled-student-profile page. That number is accurate as a campus-wide average, and it hides a much bigger split by round. For the Fall 2024 entering class (Class of 2028), Tufts admitted Early Decision applicants at 32.03%, versus 9.28% for everyone else. That's roughly a 3.5x gap, the widest of any school covered in this batch of data.
One thing to be upfront about: those two figures come from different cohorts, one year apart, and that's not a choice we made, it's how Tufts reports the data. Here's why, and what it means for reading the numbers correctly.
The Decomposition
| Round | Applications | Admits | Rate | Cohort | |---|---|---|---|---| | Overall (headline) | 33,415 | 3,613 | 10.81% | Fall 2025 entering class (Class of 2029) | | Early Decision (combined) | 3,344 | 1,071 | 32.03% | Fall 2024 entering class (Class of 2028) | | Non-ED (mostly Regular Decision) | 31,088 | 2,886 | 9.28% | Fall 2024 entering class (Class of 2028) |
Show the math: 1,071 of 3,344 ED applicants were admitted, 1,071 / 3,344 = 32.03%. Tufts' Common Data Set reports a Section C1 grand total for the Fall 2024 cohort (34,432 applications, 3,957 admits) and a Section C21 Early Decision subtotal, so subtracting one from the other isolates everyone else: 34,432 minus 3,344 is 31,088 applications, and 3,957 minus 1,071 is 2,886 admits. 2,886 / 31,088 = 9.28%.
The cohort mismatch has a specific explanation. Tufts left its numeric ED application and admit fields blank in the Common Data Set filing that covers each entering class in real time. Those Fall 2024 ED figures only appeared a year later, filled in retroactively inside Section C21 of the following year's filing, still explicitly labeled "for the Fall 2024 entering class." That's the only Early Decision breakdown Tufts has published across the filings available. As of this writing, no Fall 2025 ED application or admit count has been released anywhere, whether in the Common Data Set, on Tufts' admissions pages, or through Tufts Now. If Tufts repeats the same reporting pattern, Fall 2025 ED numbers may surface in next year's filing with the same one-year lag.
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Why the Gap Is This Big
The underlying mechanism is the same one that drives an ED advantage at every school that offers a binding round: an ED admit has agreed, in writing, to enroll and to withdraw applications everywhere else, so the college can count on that seat being filled with certainty. A Regular Decision admit is a probability, not a guarantee, because admitted RD students typically weigh multiple offers before deciding, and only some enroll. Colleges plan their entering class around yield, the share of admits who actually show up, and RD yield is inherently uncertain in a way ED yield isn't. That uncertainty pushes the non-ED admit rate lower, because a school has to admit conservatively when it can't know in advance how many RD admits will say yes. Binding ED removes that uncertainty for the students who use it, which is the structural reason the gap exists, not evidence that RD applicants are weaker.
At 32.03% versus 9.28%, Tufts' gap sits at the wide end of what shows up across schools with round-level Common Data Set disclosure. A gap this size means the round is doing an outsized amount of the work in determining an applicant's odds, more so than at schools where ED and RD rates sit closer together.
What This Means for Your Application
Three things follow, and the size of the gap doesn't change any of them.
First, ED at Tufts is binding. Signing the agreement means committing to enroll and to withdraw every other application if admitted. That obligation holds regardless of what other offers arrive later; walking away from a signed ED agreement for a better deal elsewhere is going back on that commitment, not exercising a normal choice.
Second, applying ED forecloses the chance to compare financial aid offers before committing. You'd be agreeing to enroll before seeing Tufts' actual aid package and before you can weigh it against another school's offer. If aid comparison matters to your family, work through your likely aid picture before applying ED, since a binding acceptance removes your ability to negotiate or shop the offer once it's signed.
Third, and this matters more at Tufts than at a school with a narrower gap: 32.03% versus 9.28% almost certainly overstates the real advantage ED would provide for any one, specific, identical applicant. Tufts' ED pool is not a random cross-section of its RD pool. Students who apply ED tend to be further along in confirming Tufts as a genuine first choice, often with more deliberate, earlier application preparation behind them. Some of that 3.5x gap reflects the binding-commitment mechanism itself, and some reflects that self-selection in who applies ED in the first place. Neither Tufts' Common Data Set nor any other public source lets you cleanly separate those two effects, and with a gap this wide, the self-selection component could plausibly account for a meaningful share of it. Treat 32.03% as the outer edge of what ED could do for you, not a guaranteed multiplier on your own odds.
If Tufts is genuinely a first choice and comparing aid offers across schools isn't a priority for your family, the ED numbers represent a real, substantial advantage worth taking seriously. Our college list builder can help you see how Tufts stacks up against the rest of your list before you commit to a round, particularly useful given how much weight the round carries in Tufts' numbers specifically.
The Waitlist
Tufts' Fall 2025 CDS reports 3,061 applicants offered a spot on the waitlist, 1,193 accepted the offer, and 71 were ultimately admitted, a conversion rate of about 5.95% among students who accepted their spot. Tufts' waitlist is unranked, per the same Common Data Set section.
Those 71 waitlist admits are already counted inside Tufts' total admit figures, not sitting on top of them as an additional pool. Note that this waitlist data is drawn from the Fall 2025 cohort, the same cohort as the 10.81% headline rate, rather than the Fall 2024 cohort used for the round-level ED breakdown above.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is Tufts' real acceptance rate?
It depends on the round and, unusually, on which year's data Tufts has released. Tufts' most recent campus-wide rate is 10.81% for the Class of 2029 (Fall 2025 entering class, 3,613 of 33,415). The most recent round-level breakdown Tufts has published is for the Class of 2028 (Fall 2024 entering class): 32.03% for combined Early Decision applicants (1,071 of 3,344) and 9.28% for everyone else (2,886 of 31,088).
Why is the Early Decision data a year behind the headline rate?
Tufts leaves its numeric ED application and admit fields blank in the Common Data Set filing that covers each entering class in real time, then fills them in a year later in the following year's filing, still labeled for the original cohort. No Fall 2025 ED figures have been published as of this writing.
How much better are my odds if I apply Early Decision to Tufts?
Based on Tufts' most recent published round-level data (Fall 2024 entering class), ED applicants were admitted at roughly 3.5 times the rate of everyone else, 32.03% versus 9.28%, the widest gap among the schools in this data set.
Does Tufts publish acceptance rates by school or major?
No. Tufts' Common Data Set has no by-major or by-school admissions section, and Tufts' public enrollment pages report enrollment counts by school, not application or admit rates. No official Tufts source publishes a school-level or major-level acceptance rate.
What happens on Tufts' waitlist?
For the Fall 2025 cohort, Tufts offered 3,061 applicants a waitlist spot, 1,193 accepted it, and 71 were ultimately admitted, about 5.95% of those who accepted. Those admits are already included in Tufts' total admit count, not additional to it. Source: Tufts University's Common Data Set 2025-2026 (Fall 2025 entering class headline and waitlist figures; Fall 2024 entering class Early Decision figures reported with a one-year lag) and Common Data Set 2024-2025 (Fall 2024 entering class overall totals), Section C, published by Tufts' Office of Institutional Research. Deciding whether a 32.03% ED shot is worth foreclosing your aid comparison is a genuinely hard call, and it's easier to work through with someone who's seen it before. [Book a free call](/book-a-call) with a Dewey Smart advisor.
