Nathan Howard ’25

Chief News Editor

The College of the Holy Cross has just finished reviewing applications for its 2023 admissions cycle. Students admitted to the class of 2027 who applied through the Regular Decision process were notified of their acceptance on March 18. Students who applied through Early Decision II were notified of their acceptance on February 15 and students who applied through Early Decision I were notified on December 15, 2022. On March 21, the College announced that “More people than ever before are recognizing the value of a Holy Cross education. A record number of students applied to join our incoming class this fall.” The College added that “It was the largest and most diverse application pool in the College’s history, and their academic qualifications were incredibly strong overall. We look forward to welcoming the class of 2027 to our community.” 

The College received 23% more applicants during the 2023 admissions cycle than the previous year. This is a record-breaking number for Holy Cross. Last year, the College received 7,036 applications for the Class of 2026. This year, that number increased to approximately 8,654 applicants for the Class of 2027. Because of this, the College had a 21% admission rate for this year’s applicant pool. This is substantially more selective than the previous year, where the admission rate was 36% for the Class of 2026 and an even greater decrease than the 43% admission rate for the Class of 2025. A 21% acceptance rate is a record-breaking number for the College, as the lowest acceptance rates in previous years were 33% in 2013-2014 and 34% in 2019-2020. 

The dramatic increase in applicants is likely due in part to the College’s significant efforts in recent years to make the Holy Cross education and experience more accessible. In 2022, Holy Cross became a QuestBridge partner college and completed the Hope + Access Campaign for Financial Aid, which raised more than $56 million to improve student financial accessibility. While explaining the importance of this partnership, Holy Cross President Vincent Rougeau stated that “Since our founding as a Jesuit, Catholic institution committed to educating immigrants, we have shared QuestBridge’s belief that talent is equally distributed across our nation, but opportunity is not. Our partnership with QuestBridge will help us to attract and enroll promising students from across the country, including rural communities and places where we are perhaps less well known; and we will benefit from the rich diversity of experiences these students will bring to our campus community.” President Rougeau also thanked Cornell LeSane, the College’s new vice provost for enrollment management, and his team “for their exemplary efforts in securing this important partnership, and all those who will support this endeavor in the future.” In 2021, Holy Cross was also named a First-Generation Forward Institution by the Center For First Generation Student Success, and in 2018, Holy Cross joined the American Talent Initiative, which utilized contributions to nationally increase the number of first-generation students attending college by 50,000. In September 2022, the College also announced that they were partnering with the Schuler Education Foundation to support students who are undocumented, low-income, or Pell-eligible.

These are just a few of the noteworthy and outstanding efforts made by the College in recent years to make Holy Cross more accessible. The 2023 admissions cycle reflects the positive effect these programs have had on creating the largest and most diverse application pool in the College’s history.

Photo by College of the Holy Cross