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Credit: Julia Schorr

Penn hit its lowest admission rate to date with 7.4 percent for the Class of 2023. Six of the Ivies set record-low admission rates this year, while Cornell University and Princeton University saw increases in their recent acceptance rates. 

Penn is the sixth most selective school in the Ivy League this year. Dartmouth College and Cornell had the highest acceptance rates at 7.9 percent and 10.6 percent, respectively. Harvard University had the lowest admission rate at 4.5 percent


Penn was not alone in receiving the most applications in its history. This year, Columbia University, Yale University, Brown University, Harvard, and Dartmouth all had their largest applicant pools ever. 

Though Penn admitted 3 percent fewer international students than from the year before, it still has the highest composition of international students in the Class of 2023 across the Ivy League schools that reported this data. 


For Penn’s newest class, 14 percent of students originate from 100 countries outside the U.S. In comparison, 8 percent of Cornell’s newest class is composed of international students. Yale, Princeton, and Columbia did not release data about international students admitted to their schools. 

Fifty-six percent of Princeton’s newest class identifies as students of color — the highest percentage in the Ivy League. Cornell welcomes its most diverse class ever with 55 percent of its admitted students identifying as students of color. Brown is the only Ivy to admit less than half of its class as students of color with 49 percent. Yale and Columbia did not release data on this. 


First-generation college students made up significant portions of each class. In Penn's incoming class, 15 percent of admitted students identified as the first in their families to attend college. Eighteen percent of Princeton’s newest class identifies as first-generation students – the most in the Ivy League. Cornell has the lowest percentage with 10.4 percent.


13 percent of students admitted to Penn this year are legacies: they have a parent or grandparent who attended the University. At Dartmouth, nine percent of those admitted  are legacy students, while Princeton's class of 2023 is 11 percent children of alumni.