Wake Forest's Early Decision Advantage Was 1.10x, and It Hasn't Reported the Number Since

Wake Forest admitted 20.76% of applicants for the Class of 2029, according to its own Common Data Set: 4,068 admits out of 19,600 applicants. That's the number that shows up in rankings and guidebooks. It's also missing the one breakdown that would tell an Early Decision applicant something closer to their real odds. Wake Forest offers binding Early Decision, and most families assume applying ED buys a meaningful edge. Wake Forest's current data can't confirm or deny that, because the school hasn't reported Early Decision applicant or admit counts in three consecutive filings. What it reported the last time it did disclose the split is the real story here, and it undercuts a widely held assumption about how much binding commitment is worth.

What The Number Does Not Contain

The Common Data Set is the standardized survey most colleges fill out each year, and Section C21 asks schools to report Early Decision applications and admits separately from Regular Decision. Wake Forest's CDS filings for the Classes of 2027, 2028, and 2029 (the 2023-24, 2024-25, and 2025-26 survey years) leave those applicant and admit count fields blank. That's a verifiable fact about the filings, not a claim about why the fields are blank. Optional CDS fields go unreported at plenty of schools for plenty of reasons, and nothing here indicates why Wake Forest's numbers stopped appearing.

There's a second limit worth knowing before anyone tries to fill that gap themselves. Wake Forest runs two Early Decision rounds, ED I with a November 15 deadline and ED II with a January 1 deadline, and Section C21 of its CDS confirms both closing dates exist. But the CDS format only ever asks for one combined Early Decision number, applicants and admits together across both rounds, in the years Wake Forest reported and the years it hasn't. An ED I versus ED II acceptance rate has never been available from this source, in any year. If you see one cited anywhere, it isn't sourced to the CDS.

One more note on the current figure: Wake Forest's press release for the Class of 2029 cited 4,073 admits against "nearly 20,000" applicants, a small difference from the CDS figures of 4,068 admits and 19,600 applicants used throughout. The gap is minor and unexplained by either source, so this article uses the CDS numbers, the standardized filing every school completes the same way.

The Last Time Wake Forest Reported

Wake Forest last reported a full Early Decision breakdown for the Class of 2024 (Fall 2020 entering class), and the year before that for the Class of 2023. Here's what those two filings show, with the Regular Decision figures derived by subtraction, since the CDS never publishes an RD line directly.

Source: Wake Forest's Common Data Set filings, Sections C1 and C21, for the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 survey years.

Show the math: For the Class of 2024, Wake Forest received 11,959 total applications and 2,241 came through Early Decision. Subtract ED from the total and 9,718 applications were Regular Decision, a derived figure since the CDS never states it directly. Do the same for admits: 3,825 total admits minus 773 ED admits leaves 3,052 Regular Decision admits, also derived. ED then works out to 773 / 2,241 = 34.49%, and RD to 3,052 / 9,718 = 31.41%. The same subtraction for the Class of 2023 gives 10,512 RD applicants (12,559 minus 2,047) and 3,091 RD admits (3,717 minus 626), for an RD rate of 29.40% against an ED rate of 30.58%.

An Early Decision Edge Smaller Than You Think

Here's where Wake Forest's own historical data cuts against a common assumption. For the Class of 2024, the 34.49% ED rate against the 31.41% RD rate works out to an ED multiple of 1.10x. Applying ED meant your odds were about 10% better than RD, not double, not triple. For the Class of 2023, the gap was even smaller: a 30.58% ED rate against a 29.40% RD rate is a 1.04x multiple, an edge of just over a single percentage point.

Set those numbers against other binding-ED schools we've examined in this series and the contrast is stark. Northeastern's ED applicants have been admitted at roughly 11.2 times the RD rate. Cornell's ED multiple runs around 2.8x. Wake Forest's own reported figures, in the two most recent years it disclosed them, sat at 1.10x and 1.04x, closer to no advantage at all than to what either of those schools shows. The near-universal assumption that binding Early Decision buys a large edge everywhere doesn't hold up against Wake Forest's own numbers. At some schools it clearly does. At Wake Forest, on the data it actually published, it barely moved the needle.

What About Test-Optional

Wake Forest has been test-optional for years, and its CDS filings do publish one piece of testing data: the share of the enrolled class that submitted SAT or ACT scores. For the Class of 2029, that was 24.00% SAT and 22.00% ACT. For the Class of 2028, it was 22.20% SAT and 25.70% ACT. For the Class of 2027, it was 26% SAT and 22% ACT.

That figure describes the enrolled class after the fact, not an admissions outcome. It is not an admit rate for students who submitted scores compared against students who didn't, and Wake Forest doesn't publish that comparison. The CDS field that could support a submitter-versus-non-submitter admit rate is blank in its recent filings, the same way the ED count fields are. If you've seen a claim online that submitting scores raises or lowers your odds at Wake Forest, it isn't backed by anything the school has published.

What This Means for Your Application

If you're weighing whether to apply Early Decision to Wake Forest, the honest takeaway from its own data is that a binding commitment should be justified by genuine fit, not by an assumed rate advantage the school's current numbers can't confirm and its last reported numbers don't strongly support. A 1.10x or 1.04x edge is not nothing, but it's a long way from the double-digit multiples some binding-ED schools show, and it isn't a number Wake Forest is publishing for your cycle at all.

That's a reason to build your list around more than one school's round-by-round math. Our free college list builder can help you weigh a school like Wake Forest, where the ED math is genuinely uncertain right now, against schools where the data is clearer. Once your list is set, our application deadline tracker keeps ED I, ED II, and RD deadlines in one place instead of scattered across separate portals. And if you want to talk through whether ED makes sense for you specifically, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to work through it before you commit to anything binding.