HANOVER — After reinstating standardized testing requirements for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, Dartmouth saw a slight decrease in applicants from a year ago when the college received a record number of applications.

After receiving 31,657 applications last year, the College drew 28,230 applicants for the undergraduate Class of 2029, a 10.7% decrease. The college accepted 1,702 of those who applied, increasing its acceptance rate from 5.3% to 6%. 

“Our pool continues to be wide and deep, with a 32% increase over the pool we evaluated five years ago,” Lee Coffin, vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid, said in a Thursday news release from the college.

Applicants to the Class of 2029 were the first in the last five years required to submit standardized testing scores.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dartmouth, along with serveral other schools, waived its standardized testing requirements since many students were not able to take the SAT or ACT.

In February 2024, the college announced it was reinstating the testing requirement, beginning with the Class of 2029. The change came after Dartmouth economics and sociology professors compared the years in which the SAT/ACT was required and years in which it was optional. Their research showed that test scores help the college identify “high-achieving less-advantaged applicants” since Dartmouth considers an applicant’s test score in relation to their high school’s average score.

Findings also suggested that when test scores are optional, “many high-achieving less-advantaged applicants choose not to submit scores even when doing so would allow Admissions to identify them as students likely to succeed at Dartmouth and in turn benefit their application.”

In 2022, the Massachussettes Institute of Technology, or MIT, reinstated its standardized test requirement for similar reasons to Dartmouth. Yale did the same shortly after Dartmouth announced its decision in 2024. Yale also saw a decrease in applicants this year, while MIT saw an increase.

Dartmouth’s admitted Class of 2029 students scored highly, with 92% ranking among the top 25% of test-takers at their high schools, according to the Thursday news release.

In spite of the resumption of the testing requirement, not much has shifted in terms of demographics over last year.

The percentage of accepted students who are in the first generation in their families to attend a college or university dropped by 1% compared to last year. The same is true for the percentage of students who attend public school. Fifteen percent of those accepted “live in a rural environment,” equal to last year.

Undergraduate tuition, fees, and room and board for undergraduates is set at almost $92,000 for the upcoming year. While the total cost of attending Dartmouth rose by about $4,000 over last year, the average financial aid award only went up by $1,455. 

The Class of 2029 will be the second eligible for what the college calls its “middle-income initiative.” Using a large gift from an alum’s family, Dartmouth nearly doubled its income threshold for a “zero parent contribution” from $65,000 to $125,000 for families with typical assets.

In 2024, nearly 20% of accepted students qualified to attend Dartmouth without a parental financial contribution. This year, 18% of accepted students qualified for the expanded scholarship. 

The current first-year class is the first to be accepted since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June of 2023 to ban affirmative action.

At Dartmouth, the percentage of Black and Native American students each declined slightly, from 10.9% to 10.2%, and 5.9% to 5.3% respectively, the college reported in September 2024. White students declined from 52.3% to 48% and Asian American students from 23.3% to 21.8%. Meanwhile, the percentage of Hispanic or Latinx students increased from 9.7% to 12.7%.

Racial demographics of the accepted class of 2029 students won’t be available until late summer when the waitlist closes, Jana Barnello, a spokesperson for the college, said.

Emma Roth-Wells can be reached at erothwells@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.