Vassar Admits Domestic Applicants at Nearly 29% — International Applicants at Just 5%

Vassar College's published acceptance rate for the Fall 2025 entering class was 20.93%, from 2,327 admits out of 11,118 first-year applicants. That single number blends two very different admissions outcomes. Break the pool out by residency and the picture splits sharply: domestic applicants (in-state and out-of-state combined) were admitted at 28.90%, while international applicants were admitted at 4.99%. That's not a modest tilt in the odds. It's a gap of nearly six-to-one, and it held in roughly the same shape a year earlier.

The Decomposition

All figures are from Vassar College's Common Data Set, Section C1 residency supplement, for the Fall 2025 entering cohort, filed by the Vassar College Office of Institutional Research.

Show the math: In-state and out-of-state applicants combine to 2,194 + 5,219 = 7,413 domestic applicants, of whom 616 + 1,526 = 2,142 were admitted, and 2,142 / 7,413 = 28.90%. International applicants are a separate pool entirely: 185 of 3,705 were admitted, and 185 / 3,705 = 4.99%. Divide the two admit rates and 28.90 / 4.99 = 5.79 — domestic applicants were admitted at roughly 5.8 times the international rate.

Where the Real Gap Is

At Vassar, residency within the U.S. barely moves the odds — in-state applicants were admitted at 28.08% and out-of-state applicants at 29.24%, essentially the same environment. International status is where the real divide sits. Domestic applicants combined were admitted at 28.90%; international applicants were admitted at 4.99%, less than a sixth of that rate. The gap held in Fall 2024, too: domestic applicants combined were admitted at 25.06% (2,155 of 8,599), international applicants at 4.05% (156 of 3,848) — a 6.19x gap.

Vassar's Common Data Set doesn't explain why the international admit rate sits so far below the domestic rate, and we're not going to speculate about admissions criteria the college hasn't published. What the data shows is the size of the gap, repeated across two entering classes. This is now a pattern across six liberal arts colleges we've examined — Bates, Carleton, Harvey Mudd, Vassar, Haverford, and Wellesley — with the domestic-to-international admit-rate gap ranging from 2.7x to 9.6x; see the Bates and Carleton breakdowns for two of the other five. If you're applying to Vassar from outside the United States, 20.93% is not a reasonable estimate of your odds — 4.99% is a far more accurate starting point for building your list.

What Vassar Doesn't Publish: A Reliable Early Decision Rate

Vassar's most recent Common Data Set — the 2025-2026 filing, whose Section C1 covers the Fall 2025 class described above — prints its Section C21 Early Decision block under the header "For the Fall 2024 entering class," reporting 1,046 ED applications and 402 admits. But Vassar's own 2024-2025 Common Data Set, filed while Fall 2024 was the actual current cohort, reports a different figure for that same stated cohort: 999 ED applications and 312 admits.

Two of Vassar's own filings disagree about the same entering class, with admit rates seven points apart. Neither figure can be relied on. That's a filing-template problem, not an attempt to conceal anything — Vassar isn't withholding an Early Decision figure so much as its own paperwork has stopped agreeing with itself year over year, and Vassar isn't unique here. We've found the same stale, self-contradicting section at other colleges using the same Common Data Set template; our investigation now covers 12 such cases across 21 schools checked. See the Common Data Set Early Decision problem for the full pattern. Because neither number can be trusted on its own, and because subtracting a bad ED figure from the total would still be built on a stale number, we're not publishing an Early Decision admit rate for Vassar this cycle, for either year, and we're not backing into a Regular Decision rate by subtraction either.

The Pattern Held in Fall 2024

Both domestic rates rose a few points between the years, and the international rate ticked up slightly too — but the ratio stayed in the same range, between roughly 5.8x and 6.2x. What didn't move: international applicants stayed under 5% in both years, while every domestic figure cleared 23%. The divide that matters at Vassar is international status, not which U.S. state an applicant calls home.

What This Means for Your Application

A domestic admit rate near 29%, with only a point of daylight between in-state and out-of-state applicants, means Vassar is a genuine reach for any U.S. applicant regardless of home state — residency simply isn't the lever here. For international applicants, the calculus is starker: a 4.99% admit rate belongs in the same planning bucket as the most selective schools in the country, and it should shape how many similarly selective reaches you're willing to carry elsewhere on your list.

Because Vassar's own Early Decision data can't be verified this cycle, timeline planning has to lean on what is confirmed rather than on an ED admit-rate advantage we can't stand behind. Our application deadline tracker can help you keep Vassar's deadlines lined up against the rest of your list without guessing at a number that isn't verifiable right now. If you're weighing how a 5%-to-29% spread like this should shape your overall list, our free college list builder is built for exactly that kind of balancing. And if you want to talk through where a school like Vassar fits in your strategy, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to work through it.