President’s speeches, letters, and articles
Subject: Entering Class of 2019
August 24, 2015
Dear Reed College faculty, staff, students, and trustees:
I am writing to provide you with preliminary information about the entering class of 2019. As you may know, this was a strong year for Reed admissions. 5,392 prospective students submitted applications, a remarkable increase of 86% over 2013 and 36% over last year. The academic quality of this applicant pool was very high, with roughly twice as many high performing applicants as in 2013.
We accepted 1,888 students, an acceptance rate of 35%, down from 39% last year. Because of the high quality, we expected our yield to go down. Instead, it remained constant at 23%. In addition, almost no students “melted” to other colleges over the summer. As a result, the incoming class is large, at 426 students. Dean Nicholson and the faculty Committee on Academic Policy and Planning (CAPP) have taken steps to insure that first year classes will remain as small as possible despite the large incoming class.
The incoming class comes from 45 states and 17 countries. The academic profile remains strong and is similar to that of previous years. We will enroll 14 valedictorians, 9 more than last year. The average GPA is 3.95, a slight increase over last year; the average 1600-scale SAT is 1390, down 10 points from last year; the average ACT remained constant at 31. There is no GPA or SAT performance gap between aided and non-aided students.
In terms of diversity, 34%, or 134 students, identify as US Multicultural, up from 32% and 100 students last year. 38 students are first-generation, compared to 27 in last year’s class. Over 55% of the freshman class will receive financial aid, another new Reed record, up from roughly 45% last year.
We are proud of our new class and hope you will enjoy working with them.
--John