Class of 2026 Hopefuls: BU’s Largest Applicant Pool Ever

The top five countries and regions outside of the United States represented by the prospective freshmen in the Class of 2026 are China, India, South Korea, Canada, and Taiwan. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi

Class of 2026 Hopefuls: BU’s Largest Applicant Pool Ever

Number of underrepresented and first-gen students increases significantly, early decision applicants up 11.5 percent

Danicka Joseph knew her college destiny a lot sooner than many of her high school peers. Joseph applied for early decision to Boston University and learned in January that she had been accepted to BU’s Class of 2026.

“It took me a few minutes to process when I heard that I got in,” says Joseph, who was also named a QuestBridge Scholar (a well-respected nonprofit program that matches high-achieving low-income students with colleges around the country). “I was in pure shock. I was at school so I told my teachers and college advisors first, and I made a lot of people cry that day.”

Joseph (Sargent’26) was one of the more than 6,300 students who applied to BU early decision, an 11.5 percent increase from last year’s number of 5,663. In total, a record-setting 80,797 students have applied to the Class of 2026. BU saw a 6.7 percent rise in applications overall, “not only making this the largest applicant pool we’ve ever had, but also the strongest,” says Kelly Walter (Wheelock’81), BU’s associate vice president for enrollment and dean of admissions. “How we’re going to select the top students, from a pool of applicants with an A- average, is the daunting task that lies ahead for me and my team.”

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Amy Laskowski is a senior writer at Boston University. She is always hunting for interesting, quirky stories around BU and helps manage and edit the work of BU Today’s interns. She did her undergrad at Syracuse University and earned a master’s in journalism at the College of Communication in 2015. Profile

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There are 6 comments on Class of 2026 Hopefuls: BU’s Largest Applicant Pool Ever

Reading this article is both amazing, and anxiety provoking. I’m just hoping my daughter Ella is one of the accepted amongst nearly 81,000 applicants. It is comforting to know that she sits above the average GPA of this year’s accepted students. Thank you for writing such an informative piece. It would be interesting to know stats on the number of applicants from each state as well. Since our state (Maine) has a small population, I’d love to know the tally for applicants from our state for the class of 2026. Thanks for the great read!

Thank you for the article. It must be a tough job to decide who to admit these days. Most of the area colleges have an increasing pool of very intelligent students from which to choose. Just today, BC also announced that it had an increase in applicants to its class of 2026. Northeastern has also been doing well in attracting new students. I’m looking forward to your always interesting article about the final numbers and who made the cut.

I love that those numbers have increased. My daughter graduated in May 2021 and would attend again if she could. Absolutely great experience and education and a definite return on investment. A fabulous experience and our family are Terriers for life. We love BU. Still I wouldn’t make such a huge deal about the increased applicant pool. This is happening around the country at a majority of colleges due to more universities and colleges making ACT/SAT optional or completely eliminating them. Doesn’t necessarily correlate to a more competitive admissions pool. My guess is just more people using the money they spent for prep classes for the standardized tests and spending it on more applications. I bet that the average number of universities a student applies to has increased over these last two years.

Great article that explains a lot. Sadly my son did not make it in with both a GPA and SAT that exceeded the average of those admitted, and with fantastic extracurriculars. This same scenario played out at every single college/university he applied to. A tough year for high school seniors. Congratulations to all those that made it!

My heart goes out to all of the kids who worked so hard and didn’t make the cut. BU was my son’s top choice. As a National Merit finalist with GPA and SAT well above BUs average he thought he would be admitted. The class of 2026 will surely be exceptional.

BU is my daughters top choice and she was waitlisted as of many other talented and hardworking kids. We visited Boston University campus over the summer and my daughter never stopped talking about the tour. I guess as many parents we all know the hard work and sacrifice our kids have put in working towards their dreams during in these trying times. Congratulations to all the kids made it and good luck to the ones on the waitlist.