Rumors and conjecture about what would happen with application numbers have caused great worry for many. The data is rolling in and here is what we know so far.
University of California System
- Applications are up, but by how much and residence status varies widely.
- In-state applications increased by about 11.5%
- Out-of-state domestic increased 20.6%
- International increased 10% (China went down but other countries increased significantly)
UC individual campuses year over year comparisons for in-state residents
Berkeley up 20%
Davis up 10%
Irvine up 7%
Los Angeles up 19%
Merced* up 1%
Riverside* up 1%
San Diego up 13%
Santa Barbara up 11%
Santa Cruz* up 11%
*these three campuses extended their deadlines to increase application numbers.
Observations
Without SAT requirements this was the year to aim high. But if applicants don’t have honors/AP/IB/Dual enrollment then it probably won’t make a difference. The CSU system also saw an overall decrease in applications this year indicating applicants likely didn’t apply to more places, just switched systems. If you are interested in the specific numbers for individual UC campuses here is the link to the data.
Common Application Schools
Take these with a grain of salt because this represents about 900 schools with VAST differentiation in admission rates. Overall I am hearing the elite schools saw an increase in applications, likely due to optional test scores. But as mentioned above, that doesn’t mean the quality of applications remained constant.
- The volume of applications rose by 10%, but the number of unique applicants only increased by 1%. In other words, without test scores applicants were applying to more places.
- Applications to schools with more than 20,000 students increased by 16%
- The Southwestern part of the country saw a 21% increase in applications, the most of any other region (there are 6 regions)
- Colleges that grant exclusively Baccalaureate degree saw an increase of 6.41% in applications
- More selective* private colleges under 10,000 students receive approximately 13.8% more applications
- More selective* private schools over 10,000 increased 20%
- Public more selective* schools under 10,000 students saw a drop of 3.76%
- Large public selective* saw an increase of 14%
*selective defined as a less than 50% acceptance rate
Following a long-term trend, the number of female applicants increased by 2.78% and on average they submit more applications while male applicants dropped by .64%.
For more details or to dig into the Common App data click here.
Take-Aways
- Making standardized testing optional encouraged applicants to apply to schools that were previously out of reach.
- While this may increase the selectivity ratio (accepted to applied) it does not necessarily indicate the pool was stronger
- Though I don’t have data to support this, I strongly suspect a correlation between brand recognition and application increases.
- The increase in the number of unique applicants to Common App Schools was pretty small. Colleges will either send out a higher number of acceptance offers to compensate for the fact students applied to more places but can still only enroll in one institution, or they will create long waitlists and we can expect lots of movement this summer. Waitlists are like a domino chain. The higher up the food chain the first domino falls the bigger the ripple to everyone beneath that point. So if elite schools don’t fill their classes and go to waitlists, there will be more waitlist activity throughout the summer.