Early Admission of Women to Leading Colleges and Universities

Several of the nation’s highest-ranked colleges and universities have reported data on students they have accepted under early decision or early action admissions plans. Some of these selective educational institutions have provided data broken down by gender.

At Harvard University, 14.5 percent of the 6,473 early applicants were admitted to the university. Of the 938 students who were admitted early, 48 percent are women. Last year, women made up 47.4 percent of all women admitted early.

At Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, there was a record 3,170 early applicants this year. From this group, 695 students were admitted to Brown. Students accepted under the university’s early decision program have agreed to enroll. Of the 675 student admitted in Brown’s early decision pool, 411, or 59 percent, are women.

While women far outnumber men in the early decision students at Brown, just the opposite is true at Williams College, the highly rated liberal arts educational institution in Williamstown, Massachusetts. At Williams, 257 students were admitted from a record early applicant pool of 728. Of the 257 student admitted 94, or 36.6 percent, are women.