On Feb. 12, Swarthmore College’s Admissions Office released the second round of early decision (ED) application results for the class of 2030. In an email to The Phoenix, Vice President and Dean of Admissions Jim Bock ’90 relayed that the Admissions Office received a total of 1,249 applications across the Fall and Winter ED rounds. He noted that the ED applicant pool was “just 2% or 32 fewer than last year.”
Bock told The Phoenix that the college admitted three additional students in this year’s ED cycles compared to the class of 2029. Last fall, Admissions accepted 228 ED students from a pool of 1,281: an ED acceptance rate of 17.8%. This year’s cohort had a marginally higher acceptance rate of 18.5%, with 231 new students accepted.
When asked about possible trends in the new cohort, Bock stated, “We continue to see robust interest from international students despite concerns about securing visas.”
During the Fall 2025 semester, the Admissions Office announced it planned to continue its test-optional policy for an additional five years. In an Admissions 101 Information Session hosted by the Student Government Organization later that semester, Bock clarified that this decision was based on “non-worrisome differences in GPA data between current students who submitted their scores and those who didn’t.”
Recently, The Phoenix conducted a poll on current student and faculty opinions of the test-optional policy, highlighting a discrepancy between the two groups. Of the faculty respondents, 44% said that Swarthmore should require test results to be submitted in the admissions process, while only 22% of students responded the same.
Bock commented that the percentages of students who apply test optional remain similar from year to year. However, he mentioned that “most recently about 2% more [applicants] asked us not to consider their scores in the early rounds.” Of the class of 2029, 171 enrolled students submitted SAT scores and 63 students submitted ACT scores, meaning 193 (or 45%) didn’t submit scores at all.
In response to a question about the increasing usage of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the college application process, Bock told The Phoenix that the Admissions Office “expects some applicants to use AI.” To combat this trend, the office has published guidelines for the use of AI in applications for prospective students, including recommendations to refrain from asking AI to draft an application essay or to use it as a translation tool. Bock also clarified that all of the applications are reviewed by hand and that Admissions does “not currently employ any AI tools in the decision-making process.”
In August of 2025, Swarthmore was named in a lawsuit accusing 32 elite academic institutions of inflating tuition costs through their ED processes. While ED acceptance rates are generally much higher, applying through such programs involves a binding agreement, requiring students who are accepted early to commit to attending the school, barring inability to pay. This prevents students from weighing the pros and cons of each institution into which they are accepted, including financial aid offers, an aspect that disproportionately affects low-income students. Further, according to the filing, “The schools lose their incentive to compete on price for students admitted through Early Decision, driving up overall ‘top line’ tuition levels and reducing both need-based and merit-based aid for Early Decision admittees.”
When asked whether the lawsuit had impacted the early decision process for the class of 2030, Bock said that he could not comment on an ongoing investigation. “We did not make any changes to the ED process this year.”
The Admissions Office will spend the coming weeks reviewing the regular decision applicant pool, releasing results on April 1.
