A new study shows that approximately 20% of freshman students at Yale are identifying as LGBTQ and that less of the student respondents are politically conservative.
The Yale Daily News released a study called “Class of 2022: By the Numbers” where it revealed that approximately 23% of the freshman class identified as LGBTQ. This factor is up from 21% in 2017 and 15% in 2016, according to the student newspaper.
The newspaper staff wanted to learn more about the class of 2022 – and so they sent out a survey to the newest class of Bulldogs in August.
According to the newspaper, of the 1,578 new first years, 864 responded to the survey – a 54.75% response rate. Survey results were not adjusted for selection bias.
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“No matter where you are from, or who you are, or your path to arriving here, now you are — among other things — a member of this community,” University President Peter Salovey said at the annual Opening Assembly Address. “You belong here. You are citizens of Yale.”
Female respondents outnumbered male respondents by nearly 9 percentage points. Seven survey respondents identified as gender queer.
Around three-fourths of those surveyed identified as straight, while nearly 5 percent identify as gay and just over 9 percent as bisexual or transsexual. Three percent opted not to answer, and the remaining 8 percent identified as asexual, ace spectrum or questioning their sexual orientation.
On the political spectrum, the newspaper reported that nearly three-fourths of respondents identified as “very liberal” or “somewhat liberal.” Just over 16% said they were centrist, and almost 9% somewhat “conservative.” Slightly less than 2% of respondents identified as “very conservative.”
Yale’s acceptance rate of 6.31% is slightly lower than other Ivy League colleges. Harvard offered a place in the class of 2022 to 4.59% of its applicant pool, or 1,962 of 42,739 applicants. Princeton offered admission to 5.5% of candidates, or 1,941 of 35,370 applicants.
Almost 75% of respondents said that Yale was their first-choice school. Of the quarter who had other first choices, the majority preferred Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, and MIT.