NYU: NYU Records 14th Year in a Row of Record Applications With 100,131 Applications for First-Year Admission

NYU today announced that the University has received more than 100,000 applications for first-year undergraduate admission, a 20% increase over last year. Applicants to NYU represent more than 10% of all Common App unique applicants. Some 95,308 of the applications were to NYU’s New York campus – a number which exceeds the total number of applicants to all three of NYU’s degree-granting campuses last year.

Diversity Indicators: More than 25% of the applicants are first-generation college-goers. More than 22% of applications came from students in under-represented minority groups, with significant increases among Native American/Alaskan Native students (up 39% from last year); Black/African-American students (up 22% from last year); and Latinx students (up 22% from last year).

Applications from international students also increased: more than 22,000 international students applied, a 22% increase over last year.

Early Decision Applications: NYU received 17,148 Early Decision applications, also a record. Early Decision applications for fall 2021 were 14% greater than for fall 2020.

Many Years of Steady Increases: This is the 14th year in a row of record-setting application numbers at NYU, and applications have more than doubled during that period.

This year’s increase in applications is spread across all of NYU’s undergraduate schools, underscoring NYU’s strength across fields of study, as well as across all of NYU’s degree-granting campuses — New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai.


Graphic depicting increase in applications from 37,245 in 2008 to 100,131 in 2021
Applications for undergraduate admission to NYU in 2021 have increased almost threefold since 2008, surpassing the 100,000 mark for the first time.

Like many schools, NYU sought to address the impact of COVID-19 on high school students’ ability to participate in standardized test-taking by giving students the option this year for the first time not to submit standardized test scores. Also, given the many disruptions of 2020, NYU moved back its deadline for regular decision submission by four days.

NYU President Andrew Hamilton said, “Although the pandemic deprived us of many of the tools of a regular year’s admissions process—on campus visits, tours, in-person info sessions, meeting with students face-to-face at college nights all over the country—in 2020 NYU was nevertheless able to convey clearly issues that mattered to applicants: our care for the well-being of the University community; our persistent academic strength across a wide range of disciplines; and our commitment to serving our students and fulfilling our educational mission. It is a testament as well to the strength and resilient appeal of the cities where our degree-granting campuses are located – New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai. We are honored to have so many wonderfully talented, smart, ambitious, diverse young people seek to be part of our community, and as we move forward in the process of assembling a freshman class, we will be highly attentive to the issues of access, equity, and inclusion.”

Approximately 6,500 students are expected to enroll as freshmen at one of NYU’s three degree-granting campuses – in New York, Abu Dhabi, or Shanghai – next fall.