Wellesley Admits Domestic Applicants at Over 21% — International Applicants at Under 4%

Wellesley College's published acceptance rate for the Fall 2025 entering class was 14.79%, from 1,258 admits out of 8,506 first-year applicants. Break the pool out by residency and domestic applicants (in-state and out-of-state combined) were admitted at 21.42%, while international applicants were admitted at 3.42% — a gap of better than six-to-one that held in roughly the same shape a year earlier. Residency is the axis this article uses, and it's the only one Wellesley's own data supports: as a women's college, Wellesley's applicant pool has no meaningful split by sex to report, and we're not presenting one.

The Decomposition

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

Show the math: In-State and Out-of-State applicants combine to 698 + 4,676 = 5,374 domestic applicants, of whom 151 + 1,000 = 1,151 were admitted, and 1,151 / 5,374 = 21.42%. International applicants are a separate pool: 107 of 3,132 were admitted, and 107 / 3,132 = 3.42%. Divide the two rates and 21.42 / 3.42 = 6.26 — domestic applicants were admitted at roughly 6.3 times the international rate.

Where the Real Gap Is

Within U.S. residency, Wellesley shows almost no gap at all — in-state applicants were admitted at 21.63% and out-of-state applicants at 21.39%, a quarter-point apart. International status is where the real divide sits. Domestic applicants combined were admitted at 21.42%; international applicants were admitted at 3.42%, roughly a sixth of that rate. The pattern held in Fall 2024: domestic applicants combined were admitted at 19.24% (1,103 of 5,734), international applicants at 4.06% (121 of 2,980) — a 4.74x gap.

Wellesley'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.

There's a counter-current worth flagging, though: admitted international applicants enroll at a distinctly higher rate than admitted domestic applicants. International yield was 67.29% for Fall 2025 and 62.81% for Fall 2024, against 43.79% and 45.97% for domestic applicants in the same years. We're reporting that figure because it's in Wellesley's own data — not explaining it, since the Common Data Set doesn't say why admitted international students commit at a higher rate. If you're applying to Wellesley from outside the United States, 14.79% is not a reasonable estimate of your odds — 3.42% is a far more accurate starting point, even though the students who do get in clearly want to be there.

What Wellesley Doesn't Publish: A Complete Early Decision Row

Wellesley's Early Decision figures check out. Three consecutive Common Data Set filings — covering the Fall 2023, Fall 2024, and Fall 2025 entering classes — each label Section C21 with their own current cohort year, not a stale carried-forward one, and the numbers move meaningfully year over year: 976 applied / 295 admitted (30.23%) for Fall 2023, 1,033 applied / 308 admitted (29.82%) for Fall 2024, and 1,023 applied / 301 admitted (29.42%) for Fall 2025.

But passing that check doesn't make the ED figure usable as a full decomposition row, and we're saying that plainly rather than leaving it out quietly: Wellesley's Common Data Set never reports how many admitted ED applicants actually enrolled. Applied and admitted counts exist for Early Decision; an enrolled count does not. Without all three numbers, we can't build the same applied/admitted/enrolled/yield row for Early Decision that we can for residency, so residency stays the decomposition this article relies on.

The Pattern Held in Fall 2024

Domestic rates rose a couple of points between the years while the international rate fell slightly, widening the ratio from 4.74x to 6.26x. What didn't move: in-state and out-of-state rates stayed within a quarter-point of each other in both years, confirming that U.S. residency isn't the lever at Wellesley. International status is.

What This Means for Your Application

A domestic admit rate near 21%, with virtually no gap between in-state and out-of-state applicants, means Wellesley is a genuine reach for any U.S. applicant no matter which state they call home. For international applicants, the calculus is starker: a 3.42% 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 — even with a yield rate that suggests admitted international students are highly committed once they get the offer.

Because Wellesley's Common Data Set doesn't publish a full Early Decision row, timeline planning has to lean on what is confirmed: Wellesley's ED admit rate has stayed close to 30% across three straight years, even though we can't tell you how many of those admits actually enrolled. Our application deadline tracker can help you keep Wellesley's ED and regular deadlines lined up against the rest of your list without leaning on a yield figure we can't verify. If you're weighing how a 3%-to-21% 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 Wellesley fits in your strategy, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to work through it.