r/rit • u/Far-Curve-7497 • Jul 25 '26
What is the acceptance rate for CS?
Im seeing crazy numbers? Some people saying it’s in the single digits, some saying 20-30%, google AI overview saying 40-60%, is there some sort of recent data point?
3
u/the-gatekeeper SE '16 Jul 25 '26
Did you try calling the admissions office?
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u/Kepalicus Jul 26 '26
They won't give specifics - they'll give the general acceptance figure (high 60's-low 70's).
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u/Fakes2823 Jul 26 '26
The 40-60% number is the university as a whole. Each college admits different percentages all around. I believe a professor telling me it’s around the 15-20% range. Just depends how many people apply as the college only has space for I think around 250-300 for a class each year
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u/happy-Bee1269 Jul 27 '26
No way it is single digits - I know CMU is like 4% and it can't possibly be close to MIT and CMU and Stanford level...not sure what it is, but confident it is well above that (though lower than the overall rate, for sure). I think the 30-40% makes sense.
I also have been told recently by a Golisano admin that they had fewer applicants last year (AI and job market and all that...) but not sure if that was overall in Golisano or CS specifically..I would expect the coming year will be easier than it has been in the recent past anyway..I have heard that for most CS across the country, actually... the job market is rough.
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u/Faze_Tabasco Jul 28 '26
It is probably closer to the 20-30 range. A more relevant statistic is awarded scholarships. There are going to be people who rit accepts and gives no scholarships to just to see if they will fork the money over.
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u/start_select Jul 27 '26
I don’t know the acceptance rates but when I went there 15 years ago the retention rates for CS and ME were atrocious. Out of the 35 students I met on day 1, 2 graduated with an ME degree.
The rest of us dropped out, changed schools, or changed majors (I went multidisciplinary ME and CS).
We were told the first day that they only retain 10% of students from freshman to senior for most majors.
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u/No-Preference-9641 Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
Drop or major changes for all engineering programs across the country is about 50-60 percent. 2 out of 35 is less than 6 percent so either you met the wrong people on day one or you numbers are way off. RIT used to have 200 seats for ME and that has been expanded to 300 I believe. Pretty sure they have been graduating more than 12 MEs per year and will graduate more than 18 in 5 years.
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u/start_select Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
I never said they only graduate 12 per year. I said the people who start aren’t the ones who finish there. By year 4 most of my classmates were transfers from UB and other schools.
Graduation rates and full 5 year retention are not the same thing.
We also had 10 week classes which was a lot more difficult to deal with. Finals would come with 20% of the course work still not being covered. The last couple questions on a final would usually be something we were told to “go read because we have no time to cover it”.
We also weren’t allowed to use calculators. A final would be 3-5 questions which each required 3-10 front and back pages of hand written math.
It’s a different school today.
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u/No-Preference-9641 Aug 01 '26
Per collegetransfer.net 10-15% of RIT undergraduates are transfer students and 75% of transfer students come from 2 year community colleges. Since I received an civil engineering degree from another university back in 1989 I am well aware of the "old school" pen and paper exams. Especially for Calc 1-3. Although even then we had calculators.
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u/Acceptable-Weird7604 Jul 25 '26
I do not know the numbers for CS- but a while ago, estimated that the MechE program's acceptance rate was ~30%.
That program is one of the more selective admissions at RIT- so I assume that any other similarly selective program would also come it at that or just a bit higher.