<p>Nope. Certainly a factor, but not even arguably “the top of the list”. </p>
<p>A decade ago, five years before adopting the Common Application, Chicago was getting about 8,000 applications per year. Five years later, the year before going to the Common App, it got 12,400 applications. The next year, with the Common App, it got 13,600 applications – basically the same rate of increase it had had for a few years. The next year, there was a more significant increase, to 19,300 applications, and credit for some of that doubtless goes to the Common App. But over the ensuing four years applications have gone up another 56%, to 30,100 this year. </p>
<p>At the top of the food chain, everyone’s application numbers have been increasing over the same period. Ten years ago, Harvard got fewer than 20,000 applications; this year I think it’s around 34,000. In the 2005 application season, Duke got 18,100 applications, vs. about 31,700 this year.</p>
<p>Chicago is hardly the only college ever to have moved from a unique application to the Common App. I think it has been common for them to have application increases in the first two years of accepting the Common App. Cornell adopted the Common App a few years before Chicago, and went from 21,000 applications the year before to 28,000 two years later. USC bumped from 37,000 applications to 46,000 when it adopted the Common App. All of that is basically consistent with Chicago’s Common App-related increase. But none of them has has anything like the over 50% increase that Chicago has experienced since.</p>