After poring over a record-breaking 9,722 applications, the Office of Admissions admitted 1,244 applicants to the class of 2022, bringing the acceptance rate down to 12.8 percent, according to the Office of Admissions. Around 37 percent of the total number of accepted students were admitted through early decision.

Dean of Admissions Katie Fretwell expects a yield rate of 37 to 39 percent, which would make a class of 460 to 485 students. Admissions hopes to admit additional students off of the waitlist in late April and May in order to meet this target class size.

This year’s accepted students are “the most diverse pool geographically, socioeconomically and racially” that the college has ever had, according to Fretwell in an email interview. She attributes this diversity to a variety of outreach efforts Amherst has put in place over the past year.

“In addition to a number of targeted recruitment efforts to diverse populations, we have made a number of modifications to the application process including reduced standardized testing requirements, expansion of application fee qualifiers and waiver of the additional fee for submission of supplemental arts materials,” Fretwell said.

The school flew out prospective students in the fall for Diversity Open Houses (DIVOH), and accepted 101 of the students who participated in that program. Fretwell expects to fly in about 200 more students for the April Open House.

The college accepted a record number of African-American and Latino students this year, and 56 percent of the admits are domestic students of color. The admit pool is also geographically diverse, with admitted students from 58 foreign countries, 49 states, Washington D.C., Guam and Puerto Rico. Forty-seven percent of the accepted students are men and 53 percent are women.

According to Fretwell, 72 percent of admitted students said that they intended to apply for financial aid. Fourteen percent of the accepted students are first-generation.

The college matched with 19 students in December through the QuestBridge National College Match Program, which is a record high for Amherst. In addition, 174 students who participated in QuestBridge programming were also offered admission.

This year’s admitted students had an average ACT composite score of 33 and an average SAT score of 1,492, which is an increase by 20 points from last year after the SAT was redesigned, according to Fretwell. “The academic quality of both the pool and the admit group, by any traditional academic measure, are both unprecedented and reflect our ambition to build an academically powerful class,” she added.

The higher numbers of applicants is a trend across other colleges, too, said Fretwell. “Most of our peer institutions also reported increases in their first-year applicant pools with some seeing the greatest increases coming among international students,” Fretwell said. “While we did see growth among non-U.S. applicants, we saw greater growth in our applicant pool among domestic students.”

Admitted students will arrive on campus soon to attend open houses. A one-day program will be held on Monday, April 9, and a longer program will run from Saturday, April 14 until Monday, April 16.