The Class of 2030 continued many trends established by preceding classes, including participating in extensive extracurricular activities and placing in top percentiles for standardized tests. They have broad interests, from engineering and finance to academia and publishing. They are community volunteers with admissions to multiple top 10 universities, they are sometimes cheaters with 99th percentile test scores, and they are everything in-between.
45.7 percent of respondents reported that they did not receive admission to any of the other top schools listed. After that, UCLA and Brown University admitted the highest number of new Princetonians, at 12.7 percent and 12.1 percent respectively. The smallest overlap was with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which admitted only 1.4 percent of Princetonians surveyed. This was Princeton’s most competitive admissions year yet, with only about 4.0 percent of applicants receiving admission.
Of the students surveyed, over one in five said they had cheated, plagiarized, or otherwise gained an impermissible advantage on a test or assignment at some point in high school — an increase from the Class of 2029 , where exactly 20 percent reported they had done the same. This comes after Princeton’s peer institutions have confronted large-scale cheating concerns, and after Princeton reintroduced proctoring for in-person examinations in May 2026.
Among extracurricular options, students in the Class of 2030 participated most often in community service in high school, continuing a trend established in 2029, 2028, and 2027. In each of these years, more than 70 percent of surveyed Princetonians engaged in community service in high school. The next most popular activities were varsity athletics and honor societies, both engaging over 50 percent of respondents, which also follows from the Class of 2029. Only 0.3 percent of respondents said they did not participate in any extracurricular activities in high school, an increase from the Class of 2029, where only 0.1 percent had no extracurriculars.
Students surveyed were most interested in engineering careers, with over 39 percent responding that they were interested in going into the field post-grad. Academia and finance came in second and third place with 37.6 percent and 32.3 percent of students expressing interest respectively, with similar numbers reported in 2029 for all three sectors. About 29 percent of respondents said they applied as B.S.E. students, with 69 percent of students reporting applying as A.B. In terms of actual intention, however, 32.9 percent reported they intended to pursue a B.S.E. and only 63.8 percent reported they intended to pursue an A.B. degree.
Of the AP exams taken, most students took AP English Language and Composition and U.S. History, with 69.5 percent and 67.1 percent of student respondents taking each exam respectively. Only 0.2 percent of students responded that they took AP Italian Language and Culture, AP Cybersecurity, AP 3-D Art and Design each. More than a fifth of respondents took AP Precalculus, which was officially launched by CollegeBoard in the fall of 2023. 21.4 percent of respondents surpassed multivariable calculus in high school.
13.4 percent of respondents said they had never taken an AP exam, with only 0.55 percent taking more than 20. The highest proportion of students took 10 AP exams at 12.1 percent. In terms of other standardized tests, over 36 percent of respondents had a 35 on the ACT, with 23.0 percent scoring a perfect 36. No respondents reported a score lower than 26. For the SAT, more than one in five students surveyed had a score between 1540 and 1550. Only 2.6 percent had a perfect 1600, a much lower percentage than those who achieved a 36 on the ACT and a decrease from 3.1 percent in the Class of 2029.