The University of Utah's published acceptance rate for the Fall 2025 entering class was 90.15% — 27,076 admits out of 30,036 first-time, first-year applicants, from Utah's own Common Data Set. Break that down by residency and the number barely moves: 89.71% in-state, 90.39% out-of-state, 89.86% international — a spread of just 0.68 points. There is no meaningful residency-based admissions story here. The real divide shows up after admission: in-state admits enroll at 35.56%, out-of-state admits at 17.85% — nearly twice the rate. Admit rate says almost nothing about residency at Utah. Yield says a great deal.
The Decomposition
Residency | Applied | Admitted | Enrolled | Admit Rate | Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
In-state | 10,063 | 9,028 | 3,210 | 89.71% | 35.56% |
Out-of-state | 18,977 | 17,153 | 3,061 | 90.39% | 17.85% |
International | 996 | 895 | 242 | 89.86% | 27.04% |
Overall | 30,036 | 27,076 | 6,513 | 90.15% | — |
All figures are from the University of Utah's Common Data Set, Section C1, for the Fall 2025 entering cohort. Unlike some schools in this series, Utah's residency rows sum exactly to its own stated totals on applied, admitted, and enrolled — no internal gap to flag here.
Show the math: In-state, 9,028 of 10,063 applicants were admitted: 9,028 / 10,063 = 89.71%. Out-of-state, 17,153 of 18,977 applicants were admitted: 17,153 / 18,977 = 90.39%. The gap is 90.39 − 89.71 = 0.68 points — essentially nothing. International applicants land in between at 89.86% (895 of 996). There is no residency-based admit-rate story to tell in Fall 2025.
Yield is a different picture entirely. Of the 9,028 in-state admits, 3,210 enrolled: 3,210 / 9,028 = 35.56%. Of the 17,153 out-of-state admits, only 3,061 enrolled: 3,061 / 17,153 = 17.85%. In-state admits enrolled at almost exactly twice the rate of out-of-state admits (35.56 / 17.85 ≈ 1.99). International admits landed in between, enrolling at 27.04% (242 of 895).
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The Real Gap Is Yield, Not Admission
If you're trying to understand how residency functions at Utah, admit rate is the wrong place to look — it's nearly flat, all three groups within a point of 89-90%. Yield is where residency shows up clearly and consistently. In-state admits enroll at roughly twice the rate of out-of-state admits, and that isn't a one-year blip: Fall 2024 shows the same shape, in-state admits enrolling at 40.14% against 18.07% out-of-state, a 2.22-to-1 ratio close to Fall 2025's 1.99-to-1.
Utah's Common Data Set doesn't explain why in-state admits show up at roughly double the rate — no University of Utah source addresses the mechanism, so this piece isn't going to speculate. It could reflect in-state tuition, proximity, competing offers, or something else; Utah doesn't say, so we're reporting the pattern, not the cause.
Worth flagging: the near-flat admit-rate pattern is specifically a Fall 2025 story. A year earlier the spread was wider — 88.18% in-state, 84.52% out-of-state, 92.70% international, an 8.18-point spread driven mostly by a higher international rate that year. So don't read "residency doesn't move Utah's admit rate" as a fixed rule; read it as what Fall 2025 shows. What held steady across both years is the yield pattern — in-state admits consistently enrolling at roughly double the out-of-state rate, regardless of how wide the admit-rate spread happened to be.
No Early Decision or Early Action Data Exists At All
Unlike schools where Early Decision numbers turn out to be mislabeled or copied forward from a prior filing, Utah's issue is more basic: the numbers were never entered. Utah checks "yes" to offering an Early Decision plan in both its Fall 2025-2026 and 2024-2025 filings, but the application-count and admitted-count fields for ED are left entirely blank in both years, along with the closing and notification dates. Early Action doesn't even collect application or admit counts in the Common Data Set template — it only asks for closing and notification dates (December 1 and January 15 in the current filing). So there is no Early Decision or Early Action acceptance rate to report for Utah in either year checked. This isn't a discrepancy to resolve; it's a straightforward absence of data.
What Utah Doesn't Publish
Utah's Common Data Set contains no by-college or by-major admissions breakdown — that's not a standard field in the Common Data Set format, and Utah's public Fast Facts and Undergraduate Admission Profile dashboards describe the demographic and origin makeup of the enrolled class, not applicant or admit counts by college. If a college-specific Utah acceptance rate is circulating somewhere, it isn't sourced to anything the university itself publishes.
Whether Utah's state system caps how many non-resident students the university can enroll could not be verified for this piece. The relevant Utah System of Higher Education policy portal is hosted on a page that would not render its content during research, and no working policy document could be located. We are not asserting a cap exists, and we are not asserting one doesn't — this is an open question, not a published fact either way, and out-of-state applicants shouldn't assume either answer when planning around Utah.
Waitlist data is inconsistent across the two years checked. Fall 2025's Common Data Set leaves the waitlist-policy checkbox blank, with no numbers reported. Fall 2024's filing is more definitive: Utah checked "No" to having a waitlist policy that year, so there's simply no waitlist to report for that cohort.
What This Means for Your Application
Utah's admit rate is close to a sure thing for a qualified applicant regardless of residency — all three groups landed in the high 80s to low 90s in Fall 2025. That's genuinely useful, not a number to hedge around: a school admitting roughly nine or ten out of every ten applicants is a legitimate safety school for most applicants. But yield is the number that tells you something about institutional behavior, not personal odds — it reflects what admitted students as a group decided to do, not what you individually should expect.
If you're weighing Utah against schools with a wider admit-rate spread by residency, our free college list builder can help you place it accurately relative to your reaches and targets. Because Utah's Early Decision and Early Action timelines carry no reported acceptance-rate advantage in this data, our application deadline tracker is still useful for keeping Utah's regular deadlines aligned with the rest of your list, even without a round-based rate to weigh. And if you want to talk through how a near-flat-admit, wide-yield-gap school like Utah should factor into your strategy, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to work through it.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the University of Utah's real acceptance rate?
Utah's Fall 2025 acceptance rate was 90.15% (27,076 admits out of 30,036 applicants). By residency, the rate barely moves: 89.71% in-state (9,028 of 10,063), 90.39% out-of-state (17,153 of 18,977), and 89.86% international (895 of 996) — a spread of well under a point. Admit rate isn't where residency matters at Utah.
Does the University of Utah admit out-of-state applicants at a different rate than in-state applicants?
Barely, in Fall 2025 — 90.39% out-of-state versus 89.71% in-state, a 0.68-point gap. A year earlier the admit-rate spread by residency was wider (84.52% out-of-state versus 88.18% in-state), so the near-flat pattern shouldn't be treated as a fixed rule. In neither year is admit rate the meaningful residency divide.
Do in-state and out-of-state admits enroll at the same rate once accepted?
No — this is the real gap. In Fall 2025, in-state admits enrolled at 35.56% versus 17.85% for out-of-state admits, roughly a 2-to-1 ratio. The same pattern held in Fall 2024 (40.14% versus 18.07%). Utah's data doesn't explain why, so this piece reports the pattern without speculating about the cause.
Does the University of Utah have Early Decision or Early Action acceptance-rate data available?
No usable numbers exist for either. Utah checks "yes" to offering Early Decision but leaves the application and admit fields blank in both the Fall 2025-2026 and 2024-2025 Common Data Set filings. Early Action doesn't collect application or admit counts in the Common Data Set format at all. There's no round-level acceptance rate to report for Utah in either program. Source: University of Utah Common Data Set, Section C1, Fall 2024 and Fall 2025 entering classes, Office of Budget and Institutional Analysis.
