On Ivy Day, the evening of March 26, 2026 (U.S. time), all eight Ivy League universities released regular decision results for the Class of 2030, the students entering college in fall 2026. Some of the news was good: students from the previous summer's Seoul Research Program let us know they had been admitted to schools including Harvard, Columbia and Penn, and you can read more CRI student stories on the Student Success page. For many families, though, the night brought results far harsher than they had expected, and the first official numbers helped explain why.
Yale's second-largest applicant pool
Yale was the first to publish official figures. According to YaleNews, applications rose 9.4% over the previous year, producing the second-largest applicant pool in the college's history. From those tens of thousands of applicants, Yale admitted 2,328 students to the Class of 2030, a total that includes those admitted early.
The squeeze was felt close to home. At leading international schools in Korea, one top student after another, some with perfect GPAs, was turned down. Flawless numbers are no longer enough on their own. So what changed?
Required testing is back
The biggest reason this cycle felt so unforgiving was the return of required SAT and ACT scores. On March 26, The Daily Pennsylvanian, the University of Pennsylvania's student newspaper, reported that more than 61,000 students had applied to Penn in its first admissions cycle since 2020 to require standardized test scores. With that change, Penn joined Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth and a growing list of highly selective universities that now require applicants to submit scores.
The effect is simple, and it is harsh. When everyone submits scores, the whole pool looks stronger on paper. Admissions officers now face tens of thousands of files with the same profile: an SAT above 1550 and a perfect GPA. Academic ability that can be proven with numbers has stopped being an advantage. It is the baseline, the thing every serious applicant is expected to bring.
