Princeton University admitted just over 4 percent of the 46,618 students who applied to join the Class of 2030. From the accepted students, 76 percent matriculated, culminating in an enrollment of 1,414 first-time, first-year undergraduates.
These figures, obtained from a faculty report from the Faculty Committee on Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid, viewed by The Daily Princetonian and published publicly for the first time, reinforce the University’s status as one of the nation’s most selective and prestigious institutions and represent Princeton’s lowest-ever acceptance rate.
The application cycle saw the University’s highest-ever number of applicants, mirroring a pattern seen across higher education. The Class of 2030 will be the second-to-last class that does not have to submit standardized test scores, after the University announced that its test-optional policy would be phased out.
The yield rate of 76 percent of admitted students, the highest in recent years, resulted in only 29 students enrolled from the waitlist. The report states that from the students who declined their acceptance and indicated where they would attend, 31 percent of students went on to Harvard, and a further 49 percent chose either Yale, Stanford, or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
he Class of 2030 fell just short of the goal of 1,425 students laid out under the Strategic Planning Framework’s expansion of the undergraduate student body, which was completed last year. Out of the first-year students, 8.4 percent identified as Black or African American, a marked uptick from the 5 percent of students in the Class of 2029 and a return to the range of around 9 percent over the last five years.
The report stated that 29.1 percent identified as white, 23 percent as Asian American, and 9.7 percent as Hispanic or Latino. Following a 2023 Supreme Court decision, universities can no longer directly consider an applicant’s race as a factor in the admissions process. Princeton’s demographic data separately categorizes students who identify as more than one race, and ethnic and racial self-identification data is not reported for international students.
In an early September press release that contained some information about the Class of 2030, the Office of Communications emphasized the University’s “continuing commitment to socio-economic diversity.”
A large proportion of incoming students, 71 percent, are projected to be on financial aid after the program’s recent expansion to cover tuition for most families making up to $250,000, allowing the University to avoid the new endowment tax enacted in 2025. A quarter of the class were eligible for federal Pell Grants, about the same rate as last year. Children of alumni accounted for 12 percent of the class — in keeping with recent legacy admission rates — and 19 percent are first generation college students, an increase from 16.7 percent the year before.
Sixty-three countries outside of the United States are represented in the class, with international students comprising 12.9 percent of the class. The number represents a 1.2 percentage point drop from last year, and comes amid increasing uncertainty among international students amid policies from the Trump administration.
Of those admitted in the most recent cycle, 65 deferred their admission to next year’s class. 35 of those students will take part in the Novogratz Bridge Year Program, which provides international programming for students taking an extra year before starting college.
Thirty-five students were enrolled under the transfer program, including 20 veterans of the armed forces.
In 2021, the University stopped publicizing the acceptance rate, SAT score range, or mean GPA of incoming classes, but recent information has been made available in University bond disclosures, faculty reports, and the University’s Common Data Sets.
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The faculty report was unanimously approved, without questions or comments, at the Monday meeting of the University faculty in Nassau Hall. Dean of the College Michael Gordin presented the report, explaining that an initial version contained an error which was corrected before the meeting.
Also at the meeting, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 led the customary tradition of cancelling the October faculty meeting and approving the minutes from the previous meeting. “And what would we do if they didn’t [pass],” he joked.
Dean of the Faculty Gene Jarrett introduced new faculty members in a shorter ceremony than last year. The entire meeting took less than 18 minutes.
Dean of the Graduate School Rodney Priestley introduced a measure that involved the transfer of the Graduate Certificate in Computational Science and Engineering from the Princeton Initiative in Computational Science and Engineering to the newly formed Data and Intelligent Systems academic unit. Data and Intelligent Systems recently subsumed the Princeton Institute in Computational Science and Engineering along with other University units. It passed without any dissenting votes.
Undergraduate Student Government Vice President Anuj Krishnan ’27 was present at the meeting as an observer, following the change this week to limit the number of permitted Undergraduate Student Government representatives.
Faculty meetings normally take place on one Monday each month, and are not open to the general public or student body. The next meeting will be on Nov. 2.
https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026/09/princeton-news-adpol-admissions-class-of-2030-lowest-ever-acceptance-rate
