Dive Brief:
- High school students applying to college this fall are sending out more applications than in previous years — 10 applications for a student is typical and 30 is not unheard of, the New York Times reports.
- According to the Naviance online college application tool, one user has already reported plans to apply to 60 schools; and last year’s record was 86.
- A survey showed that in 1990, 9% of students applied to seven or more colleges, compared to 29% in 2011. Last year, 16.5% of the students using Naviance planned to apply to 11 to 20 colleges.
Dive Insight:
The applications per student rate is on the rise for several reasons. The Common Application, accepted by more than 500 schools, makes it easier to crank out multiple applications. The search for the best financial aid offers pushes students and their families to widen their searches. Media reports of low acceptance rates at top colleges and universities creates pressure on applicants to send out more applications to those schools, which helps create still-lower acceptance rates. For higher education admissions officers, the increasing application numbers can hurt their yield — the number of accepted applicants who choose to enroll. So more colleges look to indicators of demonstrated interest, or how much an applicant really wants to attend the school.