A couple of points here. First, President Greene has implemented a number of innovative programs at Colby, one of which was the downtown Waterville residences. As a result, and perhaps for other reasons, Colby changed its total size from about 1850 to around 2000.
Colby has had no application fee since the mid-2000s at least. Like many colleges, in 2011 the supplemental essay was dumped for a shorter statement, which later also was dumped. My suspicion is that Colby became test optional to increase further the reported test results of applicants (which are already fairly high). Test optional status did not immediately increase Wesleyan’s overall application numbers (although it has a few years post test optional status), but it definitely raised the reported test scores of admitted students.