By the numbers: incoming first-years

Chart: Jeanine Dunn.

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This fall, approximately 1,650 members of the Class of 2029 are arriving on campus, one of the largest first-year classes in Yale history. (The Class of 2025 had 1,789, its ranks swollen by students who took a pandemic gap year.) Last winter, the university announced that the target class size would increase from 1,550, where it has been since the new residential colleges opened in 2017, to 1,650. The chart here shows the size of a sampling of incoming classes over the last 85 years.

Notes
1: Incoming classes were smaller during World War II and unusually large in its aftermath.

2: Class sizes were increased when women were first admitted to the college.

3: Class sizes were increased when two new residential colleges were opened in 2017. The entering Class of 2024 was unusually small because of the Covid-19 pandemic; the Class of 2023 figure is shown here because it is more representative.