The Cynical Reason College Applications Are Surging
Frank is on leave this month and will return on Thursday, April 6. In the meantime, this newsletter is being written by a series of guest authors with some personal connection to him or a thematic connection to his work. Today’s contributor is Jeffrey Selingo, a former editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education and the author of “Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions.”
As the high school class of 2023 anxiously awaits the last of the admissions decisions from colleges in the coming weeks, one thing is a safe bet: This year’s seniors will have submitted more applications to colleges than ever before.
The number of college applications filed through the Common Application, the single online application now used by more than a thousand institutions, has jumped 30 percent over the past three years. That equates to some 1.56 million additional applications sent by this year’s class compared to their counterparts in the class of 2020 — although the classes are roughly the same size.
When I applied to college in late 1990, I recall petering out after filling out four applications on my family’s Smith Corona electric typewriter. Last year, nearly one in five applicants applied to 10 or more colleges, mostly by pressing a button on the Common App. That’s about double the proportion of seniors who applied to the same number of colleges just eight years ago.
