What's behind the surge in applications to some schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is the highest point before the “cliff”. Drops next year.

Plus Ivy apps are falling.

Agreed.

[Anonymous]

we dont know ivy apps are down

princeton has been up. harvard flat. cornell up. penn up. columbia down.

they're all substantially (double digit ) from pre-covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we dont know ivy apps are down

princeton has been up. harvard flat. cornell up. penn up. columbia down.

they're all substantially (double digit ) from pre-covid.

Test required Ivy apps are down: Yale, Brown, Dartmouth have reported this. And Harvard didn’t release numbers for the first time ever but it’s likely they were down.

Literally everywhere else in the universe is up.

[Anonymous]

UT and UTK etc didn't have a surge during test optional.

Harvard has an admissions rate under 4%. Sorry, but these are truths.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we dont know ivy apps are down

princeton has been up. harvard flat. cornell up. penn up. columbia down.

they're all substantially (double digit ) from pre-covid.

Right. Brown fall 2025 ED apps were still higher than for fall 2020 freshmen (2019-2020 admission season).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we dont know ivy apps are down

princeton has been up. harvard flat. cornell up. penn up. columbia down.

they're all substantially (double digit ) from pre-covid.

Right. Brown fall 2025 ED apps were still higher than for fall 2020 freshmen (2019-2020 admission season).

And, Brown admitted more in ED than ever before. So fewer RD seats available than ever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:University of Texas saw a massive increase, from 72,000 to 90,000. USC got more than 42,000 EA applications. UVA saw a huge spike. Northeastern went from 98,000 applications to over 107,000. Overall, applications in the Common App increased from 6.3 million to 6.7 million.

I thought that the demographic cliff would be kicking in, but it looks like it is harder than ever.

Two of those are a great educational value
Northeastern likely up from marketing and fee waivers

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:University of Texas saw a massive increase, from 72,000 to 90,000. USC got more than 42,000 EA applications. UVA saw a huge spike. Northeastern went from 98,000 applications to over 107,000. Overall, applications in the Common App increased from 6.3 million to 6.7 million.

I thought that the demographic cliff would be kicking in, but it looks like it is harder than ever.

UVA does not consider the 3000 additional applications to be a "huge spike"

The 3,000 increase must be ED apps only.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Simple, 2007 was one of the largest baby booms in the last couple if decades.

It was actually the largest birth year in the history of the US.

[Anonymous]

Do you think raising the income thresholds for free tuition increased apps at some schools?

[Anonymous]

Um USC is up only 2%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is Northeastern still TO and No Essay?

Yes.

[Anonymous]

That figure of Northeastern getting 105,000 or whatever applications is pretty amazing. Northeastern takes something like 35%-40% of their class ED, so you can see how good of a position they are in forming a class, especially since they have a yield of 50%.

The Texas figure is bonkers considering some of had said that with all the red state politics stuff that UT would suffer.

I think the schools like Central Michigan, Central Connecticut State, Seton Hall, etc. are the ones who are going to be hurt in the future. The "hot" and perceived prestigious ones will continue to get massive amount of applications.

USC

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[color=red]What's behind the surge in applications to some schools?

Three reasons:
1) The Common App: Once you get a few apps in via the Common App, it doesn't take as much heavy lifting as it used to to add another school or three. And often, its possible to re-purpose the base of essays used for other schools. So it's not much to simply tack on more schools this way...

2) The Vicious Cycle: Per #1 above, the Common App makes it easier to add more applications than it used to be. So applications go up while the schools' capacity for how many applications they accept remain the same... so admit rates decline... kids then see this spike in applications and declination in admit rates, get scared that their initial list of 5-8 schools isn't broad enough... so what do they do? They react by applying to more schools since the Common App makes it easy.... it's a vicious cycle.

3) Test Optional: Adding to all of this, we are now several years into Test Optional and kids look at reaches and say "I'll just take a flyer on this and will go test optional"... so Test Optional encourages more applications too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:University of Texas saw a massive increase, from 72,000 to 90,000. USC got more than 42,000 EA applications. UVA saw a huge spike. Northeastern went from 98,000 applications to over 107,000. Overall, applications in the Common App increased from 6.3 million to 6.7 million.

I thought that the demographic cliff would be kicking in, but it looks like it is harder than ever.

Two of those are a great educational value
Northeastern likely up from marketing and fee waivers

Northeastern is actually better performing school than the orter two