News

87 first-year students opt for gap year

No students to be taken off Class of 2024 waitlist

Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill ’86 wrote in an email to The Tech that 87 first-year students chose to defer their admission until the next academic year. 

Schmill wrote on the MIT Admissions Blogs July 30 that “fewer first-year students chose to defer their admission than anticipated” despite having to learn remotely for the fall semester. As a result, MIT does not “have any space in the class” for students on the Class of 2024 waitlist.

“Typically, between 10 and 15 students will defer in a given year,” Schmill wrote in the email, but given the “higher than expected number of admitted students” who chose to accept their offers of admission, the Class of 2024 will end up being of “similar size to other classes.” 

Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz said during an Aug. 3 call with administrators that about 1,080 first year students will enroll this fall, which is “pretty close to our typical class size of 1,100.” The eight percent deferral rate by first years is “lower than many of [MIT’s] peers who are inviting first-years back,” Waitz said, noting that MIT Admissions “over-admitted a bit given uncertainty about how the online CPW would work.”

“I want to express my thanks for your patience, and my apologies for having kept you waiting so long as we tried to do the right thing,” Schmill wrote to waitlisted students in the blog post. “We might be so fortunate as to see you at MIT in the future, perhaps as a graduate student, faculty or staff member, or a friend of the MIT community.”

MIT announced March 14 that it had accepted 1,457 students into the Class of 2024 from the initial pool of 20,075 applicants, making for a 7.3% admission rate overall.