Updated: Tuesday, April 1 at 7:49 p.m.
The University accepted 43 percent of applicants to the Class of 2018, an expected drop in selectivity after a restructured admissions process caused applications to fall this year.
The admit rate had hovered at 33 percent for the last three years, while many competitor schools became more selective.
With 8,248 admitted students, the admissions office expects a class of 2,350, which is a typical size for GW. That would require 28 percent admitted students to enroll, a threshold the University has met in the past.
GW received a total of 19,028 applications this year compared to 21,789 last year.
The drop in applications came after the University started to accept only the Common Application, which requires students to submit all their materials and a $75 fee at the same time. The “multiple hoops students had to jump through” this year made the process more “rigorous,” Senior Associate Provost for Enrollment Management Laurie Koehler said in an interview earlier this year.
“I’m confident that our selectivity will not be as good as it has been, if you use that as a gauge, but our quality will be very strong, and that’s really the bottom line that we care about,” Koehler said then.
The University received 17,407 applications through the Common Application alone last year
It accepted 64 percent of early decision applicants, a 20-point spike and the highest rate in five years after a steep drop-off in early applications.
The median SAT scores of early decision admits ticked up by about 30 points, with the middle 50 percent this year scoring between 1190 and 1320. ACT scores also increased slightly.
This post was updated to reflect the most recent number of applications and admitted students, which are initial figures and are subject to change, University spokeswoman Maralee Csellar said.