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Posted Wed, 06/01/2011 - 14:11 by Fishville

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 [email protected].

 

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%