Washington University in St. Louis, Photo courtesy: Fishville
Applications Rise (Yet Again) at Dozens of Selective Colleges
By JACQUES STEINBERG and ERIC PLATT, New York Times, Jan 31,2011
No one can ever say for sure why applications rise (or fall) at a particular college or university in a particular year. Sometimes institutions make their own luck, deciding to blanket a high school graduating class with come-ons to apply; other times, the buzz may spread virally, taking on a life of its own.
In compiling the chart above — which documents the change in applications this year, compared with last, at nearly 100 colleges and universities that responded to queries we sent by e-mail — The Choice is seeking to help applicants put their own submissions in some statistical context.
The 5,146 students who applied for the next freshman class at Bates, for example, represent a 14 percent increase; the 13,363 at Case Western, a spike of nearly 45 percent; the 9,337 at Pepperdine, a jump of 17.4 percent.
For the most part, we’re going to leave it to applicants, parents, counselors and admissions officers to draw their own conclusions about the reasons underlying the trends at these institutions, and others. Readers are invited to use the comment box below to provide any insight borne of personal experience.
One trend, though, does seem some obvious: the increase in applications reported by Columbia University (32 percent) and the University of Michigan (18 percent, as the Feb. 1 application deadline looms) would seem, at least in part, to be a function of those institutions’ choosing to accept the Common Application this year for the first time.
With that, the only other observation we will offer is that, yet again, the sluggish economy and increasing cost of a college education appear to have done nothing to cool applicants’ interest in those institutions that, historically, have been among the most difficult to get into.
Colleges wishing to submit data to be considered for this list may do so by sending an e-mail to thechoicenyt@gmail.com.
2011 Application Tally: Updated Feb. 28, 2011.
| Institution | Total Applications 2011 | Total Applications 2010 | Change as a Percentage |
| American (D.C) | 18,638 | 16,953 | 9.94% |
| Amherst (Mass.) | 8,432 | 8,099 | 4.11% |
| Babson (Mass.) | 5,074 | 4,061 | 24.94% |
| Barnard (N.Y.) | 5,133 | 4,618 | 11.15% |
| Bates (Me.) | 5,146 | 4,518 | 13.90% |
| Boston U. | 41,734 | 38,275 | 9.04% |
| Boston College | 33,000 | 29,933 | 10.25% |
| Bowdoin (Me.) | 6,544 | 6,018 | 8.74% |
| Brandeis (Mass.) | 8,915 | 7,753 | 14.99% |
| Brown (R.I.) | 31,000 | 30,136 | 2.87% |
| Bucknell (Pa.) | 7,829 | 7,191 | 8.87% |
| California Tech. | 5,169 | 4,859 | 6.38% |
| Carleton College (Minn.) | 4,960 | 4,862 | 2.02% |
| Carnegie Mellon (Pa.) | 16,497 | 15,496 | 6.46% |
| Case Western (Ohio) | 13,363 | 9,247 | 44.51% |
| Claremont McKenna (Calif.) | 4,458 | 4,264 | 4.55% |
| Colby (Me.) | 5,170 | 4,213 | 22.72% |
| Colgate (N.Y.) | 7,763 | 7,871 | -1.37% |
| College of N.J. | 10,090 | 9,956 | 1.35% |
| Columbia (N.Y.) | 34,587 | 26,179 | 32.12% |
| Cooper Union (N.Y.) | 3,505 | 3,354 | 4.50% |
| Cornell (N.Y.) | 36,273 | 36,338 | -0.18% |
| Dartmouth (N.H.) | 22,140 | 18,778 | 17.90% |
| Davidson (N.C.) | 4,734 | 4,084 | 15.92% |
| Dickinson (Pa.) | 6,013 | 4,922 | 22.17% |
| Duke (N.C.) | 29,561 | 26,770 | 10.43% |
| Elon (N.C.) | 9,010 | 9,591 | -6.06% |
| Emerson (Mass.) | 7,345 | 6,567 | 11.85% |
| Emory (Ga.) | 17,006 | 15,550 | 9.36% |
| Fordham (N.Y.) | 30,759 | 26,816 | 14.70% |
| Franklin & Marshall (Pa.) | 4,953 | 4,742 | 4.45% |
| George Washington (D.C.) | 21,400 | 21,200 | 0.94% |
| Georgia Tech. | 14,100 | 13,550 | 4.06% |
| Georgetown (D.C.) | 19,400 | 18,079 | 7.31% |
| Goucher (Md.)* | 3,800 | 3,587 | 5.94% |
| Grinnell (Iowa) | 2,925 | 3,166 | -7.61% |
| Hamilton (N.Y.) | 5,264 | 4,857 | 8.38% |
| Harvard (Mass.) | 35,000 | 30,489 | 14.80% |
| Harvey Mudd (Calif.) | 3,122 | 2,718 | 14.86% |
| Haverford (Pa.) | 3,471 | 3,312 | 4.80% |
| Johns Hopkins (Md.) | 19,201 | 18,459 | 4.02% |
| Kenyon (Ohio) | 4,300 | 4,064 | 5.81% |
| Lafayette (Pa.) | 5,638 | 5,822 | -3.16% |
| Lehigh (Pa.) | 11,500 | 10,328 | 11.35% |
| Lewis & Clark (Ore.) | 5,805 | 5,239 | 10.80% |
| Macalester (Minn.) | 6,071 | 4,317 | 40.63% |
| M.I.T. | 17,908 | 16,632 | 7.67% |
| Middlebury (Vt.) | 8,498 | 7,984 | 6.44% |
| N.Y.U. | 42,242 | 38,037 | 11.06% |
| Northeastern (Mass.) | 42,850 | 37,710 | 13.63% |
| Northwestern (Ill.) | 30,925 | 27,615 | 11.99% |
| Notre Dame (Ind.) | 16,512 | 14,527 | 13.66% |
| Pennsylvania State | 50,508 | 47,277 | 6.83% |
| Pepperdine (Calif.) | 9,337 | 7,949 | 17.46% |
| Pomona College (Calif.) | 7,189 | 6,794 | 5.81% |
| Princeton (N.J.) | 27,115 | 26,247 | 3.31% |
| Rensselaer Polytechnic (N.Y.)* | 12,912 | 11,606 | 11.25% |
| Rice (T.X.) | 13,776 | 12,393 | 11.16% |
| Rutgers, New Brunswick (N.J.) | 29,092 | 29,774 | -2.29% |
| Skidmore (N.Y.) | 5,701 | 5,931 | -3.88% |
| Smith (Mass.) | 4,105 | 4,015 | 2.24% |
| Stanford (Calif.) | 34,000 | 32,022 | 6.18% |
| SUNY, Binghamton | 28,700 | 27,248 | 5.33% |
| SUNY, Stony Brook | 27,182 | 27,605 | -1.53% |
| Swarthmore (Pa.) | 6,581 | 6,092 | 8.03% |
| Syracuse (N.Y.) | 25,093 | 22,146 | 13.31% |
| Trinity (Conn.) | 6,909 | 4,688 | 47.38% |
| Tufts (Mass.) | 17,094 | 15,433 | 10.76% |
| Tulane U. (La.) | 37,574 | 43,368 | -13.36% |
| Union (N.Y.) | 5,064 | 4,874 | 3.90% |
| U.C., Berkeley | 52,920 | 50,312 | 5.18% |
| U.C., Los Angeles | 60,823 | 57,670 | 5.47% |
| U. of Chicago | 21,669 | 19,374 | 11.85% |
| U. of Connecticut* | 25,294 | 20,425 | 23.84% |
| U. of Georgia | 18,000 | 17,450 | 3.15% |
| U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | 28,687 | 27,310 | 5.04% |
| U. of Maryland, College Park* | 25,704 | 26,147 | -1.69% |
| U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor* | N/A | 31,613 | 18.00% |
| U.N.C., Chapel Hill* | 23,473 | 23,271 | 0.87% |
| U. of Pennsylvania | 31,651 | 26,941 | 17.48% |
| U. of Richmond | 9,355 | 8,661 | 8.01% |
| U. of Rochester | 13,339 | 12,509 | 6.64% |
| U. of Southern California | 38,000 | 35,794 | 6.16% |
| U. of Virginia | 23,962 | 22,512 | 6.44% |
| U. of Wisconsin, Madison* | 25,775 | 25,522 | 0.99% |
| Vanderbilt (Tenn.) | 24,650 | 21,811 | 13.02% |
| Vassar (N.Y.) | 7,983 | 7,822 | 2.06% |
| Villanova (Pa.) | 15,352 | 14,361 | 6.90% |
| Washington & Lee (Va.) | 6,465 | 6,382 | 1.30% |
| Washington U. in St. Louis (M.O.) | 28,800 | 24,939 | 15.48% |
| Wesleyan U. (Conn.) | 10,010 | 10,657 | -6.07% |
| Wheaton | 2,020 | 1,991 | 1.46% |
| William & Mary (Va.) | 12,776 | 12,539 | 1.89% |
| Williams (Mass.) | 7,008 | 6,634 | 5.64% |
| Yale (Conn.) | 27,230 | 25,869 | 5.26% |
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