^ following
Will have to reassert that basically every school, at least within the top 50, had a record application year in 2017. There may be one or two exceptions, but otherwise those schools will probably continue to get harder and harder to get into (which has to do more with yield which has to do with packages/monetary assets than applicants). This assumes, of course, there won’t be another recession in the near future the hurts university endowments, since that could be disastrous at this point. Schools on the other end of the spectrum, which aren’t in the “elite” categories are taking a big hit right now though. This will especially happen in New York State where public university is not free so there’s not much of an incentive to go to a small, not very good private university.