First-Year Women Students at the Nation’s Leading Research Universities

For the twelfth year in a row, WIAReport has surveyed the nation’s highest-ranking research universities to determine the percentage of women in this year’s entering classes. We also report on gender differences in acceptance rates at these schools and whether women have made gains in enrollments at these universities compared to where they were a year ago.

Of the 27 high-ranking research universities for which we have data, women were the majority of the entering students at 22 schools. This is up from 21 a year ago and 18 two years ago. Seven years ago, women were a majority of the first-year students at only 11 high-ranking universities.

There are wide variations in the percentage of women in the first-year classes at these highly rated universities. For the twelfth year in a row, the highest percentage of women in the entering class among this large group of leading research universities is found at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There are 2,758 women among the 4,440 entering students at the university this year. Thus, women make up 62.1 percent of all first-year students, down from 63 percent a year ago.

Women as a Percentage of First-Year Enrollments at High-Ranking Research Universities, Class of 2026

At the University of California, Los Angeles, women are also 62.1 percent of the entering class. There are 4,012 women in the entering class of 6,462 students.

Georgetown University is the only other high-ranking research institution where women are 60 percent of the entering class. A year ago, women were 55 percent of the first-year students at the university. Two years ago, Georgetown University had the second-highest percentage of women in its first-year class, making up 59.6 percent of the total.

Tufts University in Massachusetts and the University of Michigan both have entering classes in which women make up 58 percent of the total. A year ago women made up 54.8 percent of the first-year students at Tufts and women were 55 percent of the entering class at the University of Michigan.

Women are 56.8 percent of the first-year class at the University of Virginia, putting the university in sixth place. A year ago, the university ranked third with an entering class with women making up 57.3 percent of the total.

Two years ago, women made up 52.5 percent of the entering class at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. A year later, women were 58.1 percent of the first-year students. This ranked Johns Hopkins second in our survey. This year Johns Hopkins dropped to seventh place with women making up 55.9 percent of entering students.

Cornell University, Harvard University, Emory University, and the University of Pennsylvania all have entering classes where women make up at least 55 percent of the students.

The California Institute of Technology has made tremendous progress in increasing gender diversity of its student body. A year ago, Caltech had an entering class where women were 44.8 percent of all first-year students. This was the lowest percentage among high-ranking universities in our survey group. Nine years ago, women made up only 35 percent of the entering class at Caltech. Now, women make up 51.4 percent of the entering class.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Notre Dame, Carnegie Mellon University, Dartmouth College, and Rice University are the only other major research universities in our survey, where women are less than 50 percent of all first-year students.

Seven years ago, Carnegie Mellon University had an entering class where women made up 45.9 percent of all first-year students. This was the lowest percentage in our survey that year. Carnegie Mellon has a large number of students in engineering and STEM disciplines. A year ago, women were nearly 52 percent of the students in the Class of 2025 But now men once again make up a small majority of entering students.

One-Year Gainers and Losers in First-Year Enrollments of Women at High-Ranking Research Universities

We can compare last year’s results to the current data to see where women are making progress. Of the 23 leading research universities for which we have data in both years, only six schools show an increase in the number of women first-year students and 19 show a decline. It must be noted that an increase in the number of women in the first-year class may not reflect a fluctuation in the gender ratio but may simply result from more students overall in the first-year class.

This year’s data must be treated with some caution given the extraordinary circumstances faced by colleges and universities as a result of the pandemic. Overall enrollments were down at most schools in the 2020-21 academic year. Many students who were scheduled to enroll in the fall of 2020, took a gap year to ride out the pandemic and enrolled instead the next fall. For example, at Yale University, 330 students accepted into the class of 2024 deferred their matriculation until the Class of 2025. So the Class of 2025 was abnormally large and therefore it was expected that many universities were would have lower numbers of women students in this year’s entering class.

Princeton University bucked the trend with 11.2 percent more women in its entering class. But the overall entering class at Princeton was 1,290 in 2021 and almost 1,500 this year.

Vanderbilt University in Nashville and Georgetown University in Washington each showed increases of first-year women students of 8.1 percent. Vanderbilt actually had a small decrease in the overall class size but a significant increase in women students.

The only other major research universities showing increases in the number of women in their entering classes were Brown University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Pennsylvania.

A year ago, Yale University showed the largest one-year increase in women in its entering class. There are 984 women in the first-year class, compared to 608 in the previous academic year. This was an increase of nearly 62 percent. Overall enrollments in the first-year class were up 42 percent this year. This was largely due to increased enrollments after the pandemic. Thus, it is no surprise that this year Yale had the largest decrease in the number of women in its entering class.

Gender Differences in Acceptance Rates at High-Ranking Research Universities, Class of 2026

It is well known that nationwide women outpace men in college enrollments, graduation rates, and degrees earned. Because of a large and growing gender gap in enrollments at many colleges and universities, it has become easier for men to gain admission to some colleges and universities. It must be noted that just because men have a higher acceptance rate than women at a given institution does not necessarily mean that men have received an unfair admissions advantage. A particular college or university may simply have had an outstanding pool of male applicants in a given year.

We do note that an increasing number of high-ranking research universities are reluctant to report gender differences in acceptance rates. This year, we have data on 13 research universities, down from 16 a year ago. We will simply present the data and let readers make their own conclusions.

Of the 13 highly rated research universities for which we have data, we find that women were accepted at a higher rate than men at seven institutions. Men were accepted at a higher rate than women at six institutions.

The greatest difference was at Carnegie Mellon University, where there is a large concentration of STEM majors. At Carnegie Mellon, 14.8 percent of women were accepted for admission compared to 9.1 percent of men. This gap of 5.7 percentage points is lower than the 7.2 percentage point gap a year ago and is far below the 14.5 percentage point gap that existed five years ago.

At all the other research universities that reported data, the gender differences in acceptance rates were very low. We do not know if this is true for the universities that declined to provide data.