Are Students Really Sending Out More Applications?

Along with college acceptance letters, there's another rite of spring that occurs each year. I'm talking about media reports trumpeting how we've experienced yet another record surge in the number of applications sent to colleges. Most of these articles also blame the Common Application as one of the reasons for rising application numbers.

Rob Killion, Executive Director of the Common Application, Inc., says that simply isn't true. According to Killion, the number of applications submitted per Common Application user remains "very stable." In an email to college counselors last week, he gave the following statistics. In 2001-2002, students using the Common Application submitted an average of 3.6 applications. This year, in 2006-2007, the average number of Common Applications submitted by applicants was 3.6. The number, noted Killion, "hasn't varied by a few tenths of a percentage in almost a decade."

Further, Killion reported that "The number of applicants submitting more than 10 applications remains very stable and very tiny." In 2004-2005, 3.1% of students using the Common Application submitted more than 10 applications. This past admissions season, 3.5% of all students using the Common Application did so. Killion added that if international students were dropped out of the numbers, "the percentages would be even lower."

Don't jump to the conclusion that the "record numbers of applications" being touted in the press are coming from places other than the Common Application. On-going research conducted by the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute shows that the total number of applications submitted from all sources hasn't changed much in recent years either. A survey of over 200,000 freshman last fall showed that 72.9% said they had applied to fewer than five colleges and universities.

Are there more students of college application age in the U.S. now than there were 10 years ago? Yes, says U.S. Department of Education Research. According to those estimates, the number of students enrolling in four year colleges is growing at an annual rate of between 1.3% and 1.8%. But, even if more students are going to college, the figures from the Common Application and HERI suggest they are not all sending out many more applications than in the past. Smart college shoppers will focus more on finding the match between themselves and a solid list of colleges, and not be overly swayed by media hysteria.