IU Kelley Standard Admit Updated Requirements for 2025-26

Colleges & Universities Indiana University - Bloomington
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IU has updated the criteria needed for guaranteed standard admission to Kelley for the incoming class (2025 HS grads.) To be clear, this is NOT for those students who were directly admitted to Kelley, it is for those admitted into pre-business who intend to apply to Kelley in second semester of their first year (that’s called standard admission.)

Starting with the Fall’s first years, students wanting to transfer into Kelley will need all B+ grades or higher in all IU courses. If they don’t achieve that, some will be eligible for a comprehensive review (see disqualifying reasons at the link below.)

IMO, It’s quite unfortunate that this change comes after the enrollment deposit deadline.

Automatic Admission

Students whose records indicate grades of B+s or better in every IU Bloomington course on the first attempt will be automatically admitted.

It will be interesting to see if the direct admit criteria (GPA and test score) are increased for class of 2026.

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I agree that they need to revise their admission standards, but announcing this change for incoming students after the deposit deadline is unethical. I too wonder if they are going to review the DA criteria for the Class of 30. With this and the other changes going on at Indiana, I’m so glad my kid picked a different school!

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Bait and switch for sure. Unfortunately there are no ethics police in college admissions.

Those committed to IU who were considering the Kelley standard admission route might contact other schools where they had direct admit to a business program. Those schools might say no, too late, but it could be worth the ask.

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What was the requirement before this change? I agree with your point about changing the requirements after kids committed but just wondering what it was before.

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Prior to this upcoming year, one needed all B’s in all the required classes for guaranteed standard admission to Kelley. If those conditions weren’t met students could still apply via comprehensive review (assuming they didn’t have any of the disqualifying conditions).

IMO, there is a world of difference between all B’s and now all B+’s, especially considering the transition to college.

What’s probably happening is far too many students are qualifying for direct admit, so there aren’t many slots left for standard admission.

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I’d guess you’ll see a direct admit required stat increase as well in this 2026 app. It’s not really more auto-DAs - it’s a higher overall group of students academically achieving the B minimum. It used to be a few years ago that many petitions were admitted and you saw a number of B average students looking at SA. Now you see way fewer petitions approved and many higher academic students achieving the scores. The higher the standards to get in - the higher your external rankings grow - this has always been the IU Kelley ranking challenge metric.

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That quote says “every IU Bloomington course” rather than just required courses.

Grade distributions can be found at IUB Grade Distribution: Office of the Registrar: Indiana University Bloomington for those who have IU logins.

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Or that combined with too many students meeting the automatic admission criteria for standard (secondary) admission.

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The fact that a 3.8 GPA - weighted or unweighted - gets you in for DA is silly. You’d think it should be unweighted only and Indiana could supply a calculator like California does.

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They could. One thing that Kelley admissions have always said is they don’t have much staff, which is true. I guess they could require SRAR, which would do whatever calculations they want, but shifts the work to the students.

Will be interesting to see if more changes are coming.

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If IU business takes weighted HS GPA at face value, are Indiana high schools adding heavy HS GPA weighting schemes to help get their students into IU business?

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It’s not if, that’s what they do, for any school…as long as the GPA is on transcript. So, that does favor any applicant with heavy weighting. At my kids HS it’s not uncommon that kids in the 3rd quartile of the class can qualify for DA.

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Other schools use SRAR or similar type ways for applicants to put their academic record into the application, so that would not be unusual. Having that all done in the application makes it easy for the school to recalculate HS GPA as they wish, and/or have a somewhat standardized HS GPA included for holistic admission reading.

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Thx…I edited the OP to clarify.

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It will be curious to see what the ADA requirements are for fall applications to IU / Kelley.

Perhaps they will stay the say (3.8 GPA with SAT 1370 or ACT 30).
If having too many kids qualifying for ADA as entering freshman is resulting in too few slots remaining for standard admits after freshman year - then that’s not a terrible problem to have for the school.

I suppose they might bump up to 3.85 GPA or possibly 3.9 GPA (but that becomes a rather tight window) and I’m sure they can look how many kids that would have removed from ADA - at 3.85 or 3.9 vs 3.8. And I’d guess a fair percentage of those kids may then apply for DA Review instead which only kicks the numbers can down the road and increases the ‘work’ of evaluating the entire profile of even more student applicants.

Same would be true for taking the SAT from 1370 to 1400 or even 1420 - (so going from around the 91st percentile of the actual SAT takers scores to the 93 and 94 percentiles respectively) as they know the numbers of how many fewer ADA kids they’d extend to and likely how that impacts ADAs, but then a decent number of those kids would likely go for DA review now - again, same problem for admissions reviewing even more whole profiles.

ACT from 30 to 31 or 32 takes one from the 94rd percentile of test takers to the 96th and 97th respectively.

All ADA criteria changes present the same issue, while it might lower the ADA numbers, it likely increases the DA review requests which is something it seems the ADA process is designed to try to reduce overall.

I’m not sure it would be a good thing to really ramp up the criteria for streamlining the process of admitting the High Achieving High School Students applying for ADA, when those students -should- have other options for top 10 - top 20 B schools on their radar, and those that are high acheivers and interested in Indiana/Kelley would more than likely ask for DA review if they didn’t get in ADA regardless. Those high acheivers that aren’t that interested in Indiana/Kelley and are only applying to get an ADA ‘notch in their belt’ through an ‘easy process’ are probably ultimately not taking ADA seats at IU/Kelley now anyway. They may get ADA notification, but are waiting on and ultimately accepting seats at other programs later in the admissions cycle… so those kids aren’t ‘taking lots of seats’ because they had ADA criteria at current levels, but then declined to attend.

Kelley should know if the criteria for ADA students correlates to a very high percentage of those students excelling in their 1st-4th years as opposed to DA Review students entering straight from high school during their 4 years as well as those who SA after their first year in college performance. If there’s an outcomes difference in performance levels - then you can make an argument for changing ADA or DA or SA criteria of ‘automatically getting in’.

Raising the SA requirements from B to B+ (for all classes) for SA (after First or second semester of undergraduate) indicates they probably do have too many students who qualify for SA after 1 year, so not enough seats to accommodate. Is it grade inflation or are the cohorts of students ‘improving’ over previous decades? (Or does the performance data indicate there’s a difference in 4th year outcomes from students who SA with Bs versus B+s?)

I guess we’ll find out in August.

:thinking:

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I have 2 Hoosiers, one a Kelley DA rising sophomore. The last time the SAT requirement was different was several years ago, I believe in 2019. It was 1390, ACT was same 30, gpa was the same 3.8. My student just finished up with mostly A’s, a few B’s and a C+ in Econ. Thankfully DA as would not have made it as a standard admit getting into Kelley. Also witnessed many students constantly calculating their class grades and freaking out over the possibility of not getting in!! I feel like the place to make the change would be in the DA requirements, seems more fair to me

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Agree it is bait and switch for fall 2025 admits planning the standard admit route. But the GPA requirements are not different than comparable schools like Smeal (3.5 for finance and 3.2 for non-finance majors).

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B+ in every single course is harder than a 3.3 GPA which may include some < B+ grades offset with some > B+ grades.

If pre-business courses are graded competitively (“on a curve”), that could make for a more competitive or cutthroat environment in them.

Not really when they accept weighted HS GPA at face value. Students at high schools with heavy weighting may not find it difficult to meet that GPA requirement.

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The B+ in every class is hard because you might end up with a bad prof. You have NO CHOICE on the teacher/time/section for your 2 required fall business classes. It is auto assigned when you show up for NSO to pick classes. And you are not allowed to switch.

I have a DS who is a rising sophomore and entered as DA. First semester, the only Econ time that would work and had seats was with a prof with horrible reviews and a real bad curve. DS waited until they posted a couple new class sections and he grabbed a class with a TBA teacher at the same time as the bad prof class. If IU had decided to merge the classes he would have dropped the class day 1. There is no reason to let a known problem professor tank your gpa. But I bet a lot of first semester students were just thrilled to get in any Econ class.

DS ended with strong grades that would have made him an auto SA if he hadn’t already come in direct. Some of that was hard work, some was strategy (taking highly ranked teachers when possible), but some was just luck of the draw.