Below is a comparison of the admissions rates between Fall 2019 and 2020 at a sampling of the most selective universities, ranked from lowest difference to highest:
| COLLEGE NAME | FALL 2019 ADMIT RATE | FALL 2020 ADMIT RATE | DIFFERENCE |
| Brown University | 7.1% | 6.9% | -0.2% |
| Princeton University | 5.8% | 5.6% | -0.2% |
| Northwestern University | 8.9% | 9% | +0.1% |
| Duke University | 8.8% | 9.06% | +0.26% |
| Harvard University | 4.5% | 4.9% | +0.3% |
| University of Chicago | 5.9% | 6.2% | +0.3% |
| Yale University | 5.9% | 6.5% | +0.3% |
| University of Pennsylvania | 7.4% | 8.1% | +0.4% |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | 6.7% | 7.25% | +0.55% |
| Columbia University | 4.8% | 6.1% | +0.8% |
| Dartmouth College | 7.9% | 8.8% | +0.9% |
| Georgetown University | 14.0% | 15% | +1% |
| Reed College | 39.4% | 41% | +3% |
Brown University and Princeton University both dropped their admit rates slightly in 2020, possibly indicating a confidence in their school’s brand that the COVID-19 health crisis with the subsequent economic and social effects will not affect their admissions yield.
Those colleges with less than a half a percentage point admit rate gain, a majority of the colleges in the sample, suggest that administrators at these universities are concerned about Fall 2020 enrollment numbers enough, to increase their admissions year over year.
Lastly, colleges reporting a near 1% or more admit rate increase, are indicative of even more concern that forecasted yield for 2020 may be in jeopardy, thus leading them to increase total admitted students for 2020-21 school year.
Like every spring, only time will tell how many admitted students choose to enroll. However, with the on-going, successive economic and social consequences of the pandemic health emergency yet to be experienced, “summer melt”, or the number of committed students who do not actually arrive on campus in the fall, may be greater than usual, so no matter the number of admitted students this spring, college enrollments may still decline causing knock-off effects to the universities that may reverberate for years to come.
