Georgia Tech’s First-Year Class Grows by 50 Students

Georgia Tech enrolled 4,100 first-year students in the summer and fall of 2026, a gain of 50 from the year before. Transfer students added 1,008 in the same two terms, about a fifth of the new class. That is a smaller incoming wave than the 5,415 new undergraduates who arrived in 2025, a total that mixed summer and fall first-years with transfers from spring through fall.

The Office of Undergraduate Admission still describes a growing campus. The first-year number barely moved, beds went to a lottery, and the Institute opened its first new traditional residence hall since 1969 to keep pace with a roll that already exceeded 21,000.

First-Year Enrollment Rose by 50 Students

Summer and fall 2025 brought 4,050 first-year students. Summer and fall 2026 brought 4,100. The extra seats equal one large lecture section, not another jump in class size.

Applications did not repeat the prior cycle’s 12% surge. Georgia Tech recorded 66,912 first-year applications for 2025 and a record 67,985 first-year applications for 2026, a rise of 1,073 files, or 1.6%. Admits moved from 8,819 to 9,017. Yield filled almost the same first-year target both years.

Mary Tipton Woolley is executive director of Undergraduate Admission. She tied the 2026 class to access in the Institute’s welcome note.

The continued growth of our student body reflects Georgia Tech’s commitment to expanding access, value, and reach both within our state and beyond.

Mary Tipton Woolley, executive director of Undergraduate Admission

The geographic mix shifted inward. Enrolling first-years in 2026 came from 121 Georgia counties, 49 states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, 78 nations, and 1,625 high schools. The 2025 first-year group had come from 115 Georgia counties, 86 nations, and 1,619 high schools. More Georgia counties. Fewer countries.

FIRST-YEAR CLASS, 2025 AND 2026

Admission staff spent the year feeding that funnel. Counselors visited 149 Georgia counties, 132 in the fall and 17 more in the spring, out of 159. Campus visit programs hosted 36,000 people. The operations desk answered 66,900 emails and 10,000 phone calls and processed more than 600,000 documents. Across first-year, transfer, and non-degree files, the office took in more than 77,000 applications.

A Fifth of the New Class Arrived as Transfers

Transfer students made up about 25% of the 2025 incoming group when spring, summer, and fall were counted together, 1,365 people from 6,383 applications and 1,541 admits. For summer and fall 2026, the transfer team read 5,041 applications, admitted 1,177, and enrolled 1,008, about 20% of new students in that class.

The two counts are not the same calendar. The 2025 figure includes a spring term the 2026 welcome does not. Even so, transfers are no longer a quarter of the arriving class in the terms that dominate campus housing demand.

WHERE 2026 TRANSFERS CAME FROM

• Colleges: 244 sending institutions.
• Georgia: 45 counties.
• The map: 36 states plus Puerto Rico, and 12 countries.

Those students land in the same majors that dominate the first-year list, computer science, mechanical engineering, aerospace, biomedical engineering, and business among them. They also land in a housing process built around a lottery, not a first-year guarantee.

21,028 Undergraduates Share 8,810 Student Beds

Institutional Research and Planning counted 21,028 undergraduates on the fall 2025 census. That is the working size of the campus the 2026 first-years joined, 12,659 men and 8,369 women.

Student housing that same fall had room for 8,810 people and held 8,473, a 96.17% occupancy rate. Add Greek houses and the Institute’s disclosed total rises to 10,313 beds with 9,786 occupied. Either way, most undergraduates sleep somewhere else.

FALL 2025 BEDS AGAINST THE ROLL

• Student housing: 8,810 capacity, 8,473 occupied, 96.17% full.
• Share on campus: 8,473 of 21,028 undergraduates, 40.3%, in student housing.
• All disclosed housing: 10,313 capacity and 9,786 occupied, including Greek houses.
• The leftover: a majority of the undergraduate roll in Atlanta’s off-campus market.

A first-come housing rush used to decide who got those rooms. Housing now runs a lottery for new transfers, new graduate students, and returning upper-level undergraduates, then parks everyone else on a waitlist. The office tells students it does not have enough history to forecast whether a waitlist number will clear.

Peterson Hall Adds 862 First-Year Beds

On August 13, 2026, Georgia Tech cut the ribbon on the Bud and Val Peterson Residence Hall along Northside Drive, between Eighth and Ninth streets. The eight-story, 191,000-square-foot building holds about 862 beds in double-occupancy rooms, with study space, an esports lounge, a fitness room, wing kitchens, and a cashierless market. It is the first traditional residence hall built on campus since 1969. Move-in began August 15.

The hall is sized for first-years. It is also sized as a fraction of the undergraduate census. Adding 862 beds to the fall 2025 student-housing stock of 8,810 produces 9,672, in line with the Institute’s line that capacity now exceeds 9,600 bed spaces across nearly 50 residence halls. The 4,100-student first-year class still would not fit in that one building four times over.

The Lottery for Transfers and Upperclassmen

Housing is blunt about the leftover demand. The general lottery FAQ says the Institute cannot guarantee on-campus housing to everyone who applies. New transfers, new graduate students, and returning upper-level undergraduates enter the lottery if they apply by the deadline. Miss it, and the waitlist is ordered by when the contract was signed.

Time tickets exist so My Housing does not crash. They do not improve the odds. Students who do not draw a room are told to study off-campus listings while they watch a waitlist number that may not move until late spring or summer, if it moves at all.

Pell Students Move Up the Housing Line

Priority sits with new students, rising second-years, and Fall 2026 Pell recipients who accepted their aid. For the 2027-28 year, Housing has already published a tighter stack: first-years, then rising second-years, then Pell undergraduates, then new transfers, then new graduate students. The access rhetoric and the bed list now point at the same people, new and low-income students, which leaves juniors, seniors, and transfers to compete for whatever remains.

That is the second bill of a 4,100-student first-year class. The first is the admit rate. The second is who sleeps on campus after the freshmen are placed.

Rural Georgia and 118 Promise Scholars

The access campaign is not a slogan on the rural side of the state. For 2025, admission said rural Georgia enrollment rose 66% from the year before and made up 14% of the incoming first-year group. In the 2024-25 cycle, rural applications rose 72% and rural admits rose 71% after 111 events that reached 6,168 people.

Christina Scott is assistant director of rural initiatives. She has been on those roads, including hand deliveries of acceptance packets.

It is an immense joy to take the time to connect with students in every corner of the state. Being present in communities across Georgia allows us to understand the context these students come from and helps these students build a stellar application for Georgia Tech.

Christina Scott, assistant director of rural initiatives, Undergraduate Admission

Georgia Tech joined the Small Town and Rural Students College Network in July 2024. Antwuan Holloway manages that work and has said the partnership was a way to stand behind every county. Counselors from Chattahoochee, Early, Laurens, Liberty, Lowndes, Peach, Pulaski, Thomas, and Twiggs counties were sponsored to a SACAC conference. Admission also posted resources for rural and small-town applicants, including the Georgia Tech Scholars path for valedictorians and salutatorians.

RURAL OUTREACH, 2024 TO 2026

1. July 2024: Georgia Tech joins the STARS College Network.
2. 2024-25 cycle: Rural applicants rise 72% and rural admits rise 71%; 111 rural events reach 6,168 people.
3. Summer and fall 2025: Rural students make up 14% of the incoming first-year group after a 66% enrollment jump.
4. March 2026: 15% of admitted Georgia students for the 2026 first-year class are from rural areas, and 16% are first-generation.
5. 2025-26 travel: Staff reach 149 of Georgia’s 159 counties.

Money follows some of those files. The G. Wayne Clough Tech Promise Scholarship is built for academically qualified Georgia students from households earning below $55,500, with a path to a debt-free degree. In fall 2026 the program seated a record first-year cohort of 118 scholars. The program’s own apply page had limited 2025-26 awards to 75 eligible first-years. Twelve percent of the 2025 first-year class were first-generation; among Georgians admitted for 2026, that share was 16%.

Those are real seats. They are also small next to 4,100 first-years and 21,028 undergraduates. Rural recruitment changed who is in the class more than it changed how large the class is.

In-State Applicants Still Get the Wider Door

When remaining 2026 first-year decisions went out on March 27, admission stated an overall admit rate of 28% for Georgia residents and 9% for nonresidents. Georgia students filed 13,100 applications, up 5%, and 3,621 were admitted, from 136 counties and 494 high schools. The in-state applicant pool had reached 152 counties.

Early Action 1, the Georgia-only round, offered seats to 2,640 students on December 5, 2025. Early Action 2, the large out-of-state round, offered 3,149 seats to a 37,300-student pool on January 30, 2026, an 8% rate in that round, which admission said was 55% of the first-year volume.

2026 FIRST-YEAR ADMIT RATES

A public institute that says Georgians come first is running that policy in the numbers. The other side of the same ledger is the 9% door for everyone else, and a first-year class that admission can fill at 4,100 without taking much more risk on volume.

High schoolers already on the payroll of that pipeline are a separate, quieter intake. Dual enrollment seated 1,855 Georgia students in 2026 from 2,410 applications, across 12 courses, 52 counties, and 177 high schools. More than 1,600 current undergraduates had taken a dual-enrollment course at Tech while still in high school. That path does not need a residence hall.

The 2027 first-year application opened on August 1, 2026, still on the Common Application. Admission has already dropped the Georgia Tech short-answer question for that cycle, keeping the Common App personal essay. Staff are back on the Peach State Tour with Augusta University, Georgia State University, and the University of Georgia. The housing lottery calendar is on the same desk.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do Georgia Tech first-year students have to live on campus?

No. Housing says a majority of first-year students live on campus, but a first-year year is not a live-on requirement. Students who want a room still need to apply; those who apply by June 1 receive a random room-selection time ticket, and later applicants are assigned in the order their applications arrive.

How do students qualify for the Tech Promise scholarship?

There is no extra essay. Admitted first-years are considered if they finish the Georgia Tech Application for Scholarships and Financial Aid and the FAFSA by January 31 before their first year, and the household must fall under the program’s income cap of $55,500. Late files are not reviewed, and the 2025-26 cycle capped awards at 75 eligible first-year students before the 2026 cohort rose to 118.

When are Georgia Tech’s 2027 first-year application deadlines?

The Common Application opened August 1, 2026. Early Action 1, for Georgia students, is due October 15 with a document deadline of October 30. Early Action 2 is due November 2 with documents by November 16. Regular Decision is due January 6, 2027, with documents and self-reported test scores by January 22, and the deposit deadline for every plan is May 1.

How many beds does Georgia Tech have after Peterson Hall opened?

The Institute said the new hall brings capacity to more than 9,600 bed spaces across nearly 50 residence halls. Fall 2025 student housing, before those 862 beds came online, held 8,810 people at 96.17% occupancy, so even the larger stock still covers well under half of a 21,028-student undergraduate census.

Admission is already on the road for the next class. The first-year target it just filled was 4,100, and the new hall that opened in August holds 862 of them.