UIC's Acceptance Rate Doesn't Split on the State Line. It Splits on Citizenship

The University of Illinois Chicago's most recent acceptance rate is 75.76%, computed from the raw counts in its own Common Data Set: 22,674 offers out of 29,929 applications for the Fall 2025 entering class. That number cannot be broken down by residency, and the reason belongs up front. UIC's 2025-2026 Common Data Set files the entire Fall 2025 first-year cohort under the UNKNOWN residency column — all 29,929 applications, all 22,674 offers, all 5,405 enrollments — and leaves the in-state, out-of-state and international cells blank. Every decomposed figure below therefore comes from the two filings that do carry those cells: Fall 2024 and Fall 2023. Nothing here describes the Fall 2025 class by residency, because UIC published nothing that would allow it.

With that scope fixed: in Fall 2024, UIC's residency line was essentially not a state line. Illinois residents were admitted at 79.78% and out-of-state applicants at 79.95% — 0.17 points apart. International applicants were admitted at 51.22%, roughly 29 points below both. The sharper divide came after the admit letter, where 24.28% of in-state admits enrolled against 5.47% of out-of-state admits.

The Decomposition

Cohort: Fall 2024 entering class, first-time, first-year, degree-seeking students, per UIC's Common Data Set 2024-2025. This is not the Fall 2025 class.

Show the math: Admit rate is offers divided by applications. In-state: 16,267 / 20,390 = 79.78%. Out-of-state: 3,492 / 4,368 = 79.95%. International: 1,192 / 2,327 = 51.22%. Overall: 20,951 / 27,085 = 77.35%. Yield is enrollments divided by offers — the share of admitted students who showed up: 3,949 / 16,267 = 24.28% in-state, 191 / 3,492 = 5.47% out-of-state, 279 / 1,192 = 23.41% international. The three rows sum exactly to UIC's stated totals on all three columns, so the split is complete rather than partial. UIC publishes no admit-rate percentage of its own; every rate here is computed from its counts.

The composition effect is large. Out-of-state applicants were 16.1% of the Fall 2024 pool and 16.7% of the admitted group — nearly identical shares, because the admit rate barely moved between residency groups — then 4.3% of the entering class. Illinois residents went the other way: 75.3% of applicants, 77.6% of admits, 89.4% of the class that arrived.

Fall 2023 Shows the Same Shape

Cohort: Fall 2023 entering class, first-time, first-year, degree-seeking students, per UIC's Common Data Set 2023-2024. Applications and admits only — see below for why the enrolled column is left out.

Two filings, two years apart, same pattern: in-state and out-of-state within half a point of each other (81.06% and 80.72%, a 0.34-point gap), international roughly 30 points below at 50.62%. Across the three filings reviewed here the overall rate drifted down — 78.50%, then 77.35%, then 75.76% — while applications rose from 25,420 to 27,085 to 29,929.

Why the Fall 2025 Class Has No Residency Split

The residency block in the Common Data Set is an optional supplement. UIC filled it in for Fall 2023 and Fall 2024, and for Fall 2025 reported the whole cohort as UNKNOWN residency instead. The filing itself is published and internally consistent — its sex rows sum exactly (12,719 + 17,210 = 29,929 applied; 9,385 + 13,289 = 22,674 admitted; 2,524 + 2,881 = 5,405 enrolled). The residency cells are simply blank.

One tempting shortcut here produces a wrong number. UIC's Fall 2025 Ten-day Census memo reports the residency of students who enrolled: of 5,405 first-time freshmen, 4,930 Illinois residents, 219 non-Illinois resident or unknown, 256 U.S. nonresidents. Those are enrolled-class composition counts — who showed up, not who was admitted. Dividing them into an admit total that carries no residency breakdown would manufacture admit rates UIC never published, and we don't do it. If you see a Fall 2025 UIC in-state acceptance rate quoted anywhere, ask which applied and admitted counts produced it.

The International Gap

The largest gap in UIC's own numbers is between international applicants and everyone else: 51.22% against 79.78% and 79.95% in Fall 2024, and 50.62% against 81.06% and 80.72% in Fall 2023. UIC publishes no explanation for it — no stated policy, no separate international standard, no commentary in any filing reviewed. We report the gap because it's in UIC's counts, and we won't speculate about its cause.

It also isn't peculiar to UIC — our running review of the international acceptance rate gap tracks the same shape at other public universities that publish the breakdown. The other half of the picture is yield: international admits enrolled at 23.41% in Fall 2024, close to the in-state rate of 24.28% and more than four times the out-of-state domestic rate of 5.47%.

Illinois Law Permits an Out-of-State Difference. UIC Doesn't Show One

Families often assume a public university's out-of-state admit rate is held down by a statutory cap on non-resident enrollment. At UIC, we found no such cap — not in the University of Illinois Act (110 ILCS 305), the University of Illinois at Chicago Act (110 ILCS 320), the Board of Higher Education Act (110 ILCS 205), the University of Illinois Statutes adopted by the Board of Trustees, or the Illinois higher-education act index. Neither UIC's filings nor its Office of Institutional Research site state a residency quota, share or target.

The nearest provision runs the other way — permissive rather than limiting. 110 ILCS 205/9.07(a) states: "Admission standards for out-of-state students may be higher than for Illinois residents." Illinois explicitly contemplates the asymmetry and attaches no number to it. UIC's filings don't display one: 79.95% out-of-state against 79.78% in-state in Fall 2024, 80.72% against 81.06% in Fall 2023.

That 0.17-point spread isn't an out-of-state advantage either, and we won't call it one. It sits on an out-of-state pool roughly one-fifth the size of the in-state pool, and 5.47% of those admits enrolled. At the admit stage, residency barely moved UIC's decision in the years it published the split. Our broader look at the in-state advantage myth covers why this question comes up so often at public universities with steep out-of-state yield gaps.

A Line in UIC's 2023-2024 Filing That Doesn't Reconcile

The Fall 2023 table above stops at admits, and here's why. UIC's 2023-2024 Common Data Set prints an enrolled residency row of In-State 4,150, Out-of-State 212, International 285 against a stated total of 4,697. Those components sum to 4,647. The same filing's enrolled sex rows (2,166 + 2,481) also sum to 4,647, and UIC's Fall 2025 Ten-day Census memo independently reports 4,647 first-time freshmen for Fall 2023 with exactly the 4,150 / 212 / 285 split.

We are not correcting this and not picking a side. We report it as a filing inconsistency and publish no Fall 2023 enrolled total or yield that would depend on which figure is right. That year's applied and admitted columns reconcile exactly (19,363 + 3,963 + 2,094 = 25,420 and 15,696 + 3,199 + 1,060 = 19,955), which is why they appear above and the enrolled column doesn't.

What Else UIC Doesn't Publish

UIC runs no Early Decision plan: its 2025-2026 filing answers the Early Decision question "N/A" and leaves every Early Decision date and count blank, as do the two prior filings. It does offer non-binding Early Action, closing November 1 with notification December 1, but the Common Data Set collects no Early Action applicant or admit counts and none were found on UIC's admissions or institutional research sites. There is no early-versus-regular decomposition to report.

There is no by-college or by-major breakdown either. Section C reports first-year applicants, admits and enrollees by sex and — when filled in — residency, and nothing else. UIC's Office of Institutional Research publishes dashboards for credit hours, degrees awarded, enrollment, graduation rate, retention and transfer students, but none for applications or admits, and no admit counts for any guaranteed-professional or health-science pathway appear on UIC's admissions site. There is no waitlist funnel: UIC answers "No" to having a waiting-list policy in both the 2025-2026 and 2023-2024 filings, with all waiting-list cells blank.

Transfer admissions are published, but by sex only — no residency split. UIC admitted 3,923 of 7,109 transfer applicants for Fall 2025 (55.18%), with 2,450 enrolling, a 62.45% yield; Fall 2024 was 3,480 of 5,527 (62.96%) and Fall 2023 was 3,258 of 5,256 (61.99%). Applications rose about 29% in a year while the admit rate fell nearly 8 points.

What This Means for Your Application

If you're applying from another state, the Fall 2024 figures say residency was close to a non-factor at the admit stage — 79.95% against 79.78% for residents. Treat that as the most recent evidence available, not as a description of the class being admitted now. The 5.47% out-of-state yield says something useful in the other direction: very few admitted out-of-state students choose UIC, which suggests it functions as one option on a wide list rather than a destination.

If you're an international applicant, plan around the roughly 29-point gap rather than the headline rate. A 75.76% overall rate and a 51.22% international rate describe very different applications, and the second is the one that applies to you.

Our free college list builder lets you place UIC's verified numbers next to other public universities, with the cohort year attached so you aren't comparing a 2024 split to a 2025 headline. Because UIC offers Early Action with no published admit data for it, our application deadline tracker is the more reliable way to keep the November 1 early deadline and the regular deadline straight. If you want to talk through where UIC fits in your strategy, a free strategy call is a good next step.