Villanova's Real Acceptance Rate: ED vs. Everyone Else

# Villanova's Real Acceptance Rate: ED vs. Everyone Else

Villanova's published admit rate for the Fall 2025 entering class, the Class of 2029, was 28.14%. That number comes straight from the university's Common Data Set filing, and it is accurate as an overall figure. It is also an average of two very different outcomes depending on when and how a student applied.

Isolate the Early Decision applicants from that same cohort and the admit rate jumps to 59.82%. Everyone else in the pool was admitted at 25.93%. Villanova's binding early round ran at roughly 2.3 times the rate of the rest of its applicants, a pattern that held steady across two consecutive entering classes.

The decomposition

All figures come from Villanova University's Common Data Set 2025-2026 filing, published by the Office of Decision Support and Data Integrity.

Show the math

The headline rate: 7,272 total admits divided by 25,841 total applicants equals 28.14%.

The ED rate uses Villanova's item C21 directly: 1,005 admitted out of 1,680 ED applicants, which is 59.82%.

The non-ED rate is derived, since Villanova's Common Data Set does not report Regular Decision or Early Action separately. Subtracting the ED figures from the C1 totals gives (7,272 − 1,005) admitted out of (25,841 − 1,680) applied, or 6,267 out of 24,161. That works out to 25.93%.

Divide 59.82% by 25.93% and Villanova's ED round admitted students at roughly 2.3 times the rate of the rest of the applicant pool for the Fall 2025 cycle.

Why the gap exists, and what it doesn't tell us

Villanova runs two Early Decision rounds: ED I, which closes November 1 and notifies December 15, and ED II, which closes January 15 and notifies March 1. The Common Data Set's item C21, however, only reports a single combined figure for both rounds together. The 59.82% number above is ED I and ED II pooled, and there is no way to separate them from the public filing. If one round runs meaningfully differently than the other, that detail is invisible in this data.

Villanova's Common Data Set does not report a standalone Early Action program, and item C1 does not break out a separate EA figure the way some other schools' filings show a distinct EA line. That means the 25.93% "non-ED" figure represents the remainder of Villanova's applicant pool outside the combined ED rounds, most of which is Regular Decision. This makes Villanova's non-ED comparison somewhat cleaner than schools where Early Action is confirmed to exist but is not broken out numerically, though it does not change the underlying fact that ED I and ED II cannot be separated from each other.

One additional data point is worth flagging, though it falls outside the Common Data Set and should be treated with more caution than the figures above. Villanova's live admissions "Admission Profile" page reports a preliminary 29.6% admit rate for the Class of 2030 (Fall 2026 entering cohort), based on 28,867 applicants, as of a snapshot taken in May 2026. That figure comes from a marketing page for a cycle whose Common Data Set has not yet been published, so it is not directly comparable to the audited CDS-derived rates in this piece and should be read as preliminary and unaudited rather than as confirmation of a continuing trend.

Read more about how we build this comparison across other schools at /admissions/real-acceptance-rates.

The year-over-year trend

The prior cycle, Fall 2024 (Class of 2028, CDS 2024-2025), shows the same structural pattern. The overall admit rate was 26.98% (6,274 admitted out of 23,256 applicants). ED admitted at 54.25% (920 out of 1,696 applicants). The derived non-ED rate was 24.83% ((6,274 − 920) out of (23,256 − 1,696), or 5,354 out of 21,560).

That puts the Fall 2024 ratio at roughly 2.2x (54.25% divided by 24.83%), close to the 2.3x ratio in Fall 2025. Both the overall admit rate and the ED admit rate rose from Fall 2024 to Fall 2025 — overall from 26.98% to 28.14%, and ED from 54.25% to 59.82% — while the ED-to-non-ED ratio held roughly steady across both years.

What this means for your application

A consistent 2.2x to 2.3x ED advantage across two years of Villanova's own data is a real pattern, but it is not a clean measure of how much the ED round itself would change any individual applicant's odds.

Early Decision at Villanova is binding: an admitted ED applicant commits, before applying, to enroll and to withdraw other applications. That commitment changes who applies ED in the first place. Applicants who choose ED tend to have Villanova established as a clear first choice, and the ED pool often differs systematically from the broader RD pool in preparation, timing, and fit. The 59.82% figure describes the outcome for that self-selected group, not the outcome an identical RD applicant would get by switching decision plans.

Because of that self-selection, the raw gap between 59.82% and 25.93% likely overstates the effect of the ED round itself, holding an applicant's profile constant. Some of the difference reflects Villanova's own preference for binding commitments; some reflects who opts into ED to begin with. Villanova's Common Data Set cannot separate those two forces, and this piece will not guess at the split.

The binding nature of ED also forecloses financial aid comparison. A student admitted ED to Villanova is expected to enroll regardless of the aid package received, barring documented financial hardship, which means there is no opportunity to weigh Villanova's offer against another school's before committing.

It's also worth sizing up how much of Villanova's applicant pool actually goes through ED. For Fall 2025, Villanova's two combined ED rounds drew 1,680 applications out of 25,841 total applicants, about 6.5% of the pool. The large majority of Villanova applicants, roughly 93.5% of them, are competing in the non-ED pool at the 25.93% rate, not the 59.82% rate that gets the most attention.

If you're deciding whether ED fits your college list, our college list builder can help you think through the trade-offs, and our application deadlines page tracks Villanova's ED I, ED II, and RD deadlines.

The waitlist

Villanova's Fall 2025 waitlist was large relative to the number ultimately admitted from it. The university offered 5,449 students a spot, 2,205 accepted, and only 28 were ultimately admitted off the waitlist. Villanova's Common Data Set also notes the waitlist is unranked, meaning there is no published order for how waitlisted students are considered.

An admit count of just 28 out of 2,205 accepted waitlist spots (about 1.3%) suggests the waitlist played only a marginal role in filling the Fall 2025 class, consistent with a class that filled heavily through the ED and RD rounds before waitlist decisions were made.

To talk through how Villanova's ED round fits into your broader strategy, you can book a call with an admissions coach.