Shreya Ramalingam
Shreya Ramalingam, a new member of the Class of 2027, after being admitted to Vanderbilt. (Photo courtesy of Shreya Ramalingam)
Vanderbilt welcomed 1,763 students to the Class of 2027 on March 28 through the regular decision cycle. The RD and overall acceptance rates were both the lowest in university history at 4.2% and 5.6%, respectively.
Students expressed excitement and gratitude about joining the Class of 2027 and making Nashville their home next fall. Around 1,100 accepted students and families visited Vanderbilt’s campus on April 15 for Anchor Day — Vanderbilt’s accepted students day — where they toured campus, spoke to students and faculty and learned more about Vanderbilt.
The Hustler found discrepancies between admissions statistics posted on the Vanderbilt Admissions Blog and the Common Data Set for the Classes of 2026 and 2025. The Common Data Set is a standardized set of information voluntarily released by many universities.
Victoria Robson, director of analytics and enrollment strategy, explained that first-year admissions statistics for each incoming class are not finalized until the fall after RD decisions are released due to students taking gap years and student-athletes offered late admission. Other schools also experience such fluctuation. This piece reflects the most updated statistics as of publication.
Vanderbilt admission rates
A total of 2,645 students were accepted to the Class of 2027 out of 47,120 applicants, with 882 students — 15.7% of early decision applicants — being admitted through early decision I and II. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Doug Christiansen said around the same number of students applied EDI and EDII, but declined to offer the specific acceptance rates for each ED cycle. For the Class of 2026, the EDI and EDII rates were erroneously released by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, with 24.1% of EDI and 10.3% of EDII applicants being admitted. The EDII cycle received around 300 fewer applicants than EDI that year.!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r=0;r