Well I don’t know “general” for them but here are a handful of applicant numbers to consider for some random colleges ranked 100-ish and not selective
ASU 2019: 53516 applicants, 2023: 68800, 2024: google says 81700?!
CU Boulder 2019: 40740 , 2024: 68000
UofA 2019: 56466, 2024: 61603
U Oregon: 2019: 24579, 2023 39400 (can’t find 2024)
Temple 2019: 27261, 2024: 39681
Other than UofA in this little sample, 10-20k or more in numbers, in some cases 50% or more rise in applicants. Seems not insignificant to me? I haven’t checked them all but I assume it is also the case that these used to require tests and have moved TO.
The comment was preceded by “in general”. In general non super selected colleges and/or colleges with lower score ranges saw much smaller changes in applications than highly selective colleges for which test scores were more frequently seen as a barrier.
If I estimate which colleges went test optional as which colleges had at least a 20 percentage point decrease in portion of students submitting scores from 2019 to 2021, then the median application increase from 2019 to 2021 over these 600 colleges was only a 2% increase in applications. Of course one can find outliers that are far above or below this 2% median increase for a variety of reasons. It’s a generalization that has exceptions, rather than a statement that rings true for every individual college. Also note that you are comparing a 5 year period. There are many reasons applications can increase over a 5 year period besides just test optional.
Well wasn’t that how the other comparisons were being done here - pre Covid and now?
I don’t know where to get overall data. I randomly picked a few non selective colleges in the same kind of ranking area. How strange that they seem to have all been outliers according to your data.
What I find interesting from the increasing number of applications you shared is that there are more applications but less students going to college in general. The overall number of students enrolled in college, which include graduate students, hit a peak in 2010 at 21,019,438. It has declined since with the number in 2022 listed as 18,580,026. The enrollment numbers look to have increased in 2023 and 2024 with the latter projected to be 19,247,640.
The site notes that since 2010 enrollment has declined by 11.6%. Specifically for high school students enrolling in college, the number has declined by 7.1% since 2018.
I have heard that these declines are affecting mostly regional publics and privates. It’s very interesting though as this decline is happening we are seeing increasing apps not only at the highly selective but also at non-selective but still very well known schools.
I wonder how much this has to do with the Common App and applying to more schools including safeties with the test optional policies making the situation harder to predict.
It doesn’t look random. It looks like all the colleges you chose were all large publics. Perhaps there are other connections, such as colleges that you have heard a good number of people mention or discuss in recent years.
Among all the colleges with 10k+ applicants pre-COVID, you also chose the one that had the largest application increase upon going test optional (ASU). As you noted, ASU still continues to have large application increases with each year, with applications increasing another 40% since first going test optional. Enrollment also increased by a similarly large figure . I am not familiar with the reasons for the change at ASU, but it clearly involves more than just test optional. It may relate to their increasingly large focus on online programs, so much so that they renamed the campus from “Tempe” to “Campus Immersion”
As a whole, large publics had a larger average % increase in applications than other types of colleges with comparable selectivity/scores. Being more likely to be used as a backup/safety, with increased uncertainty may contribute. However, there are also many large publics that follow other patterns. For example, applications by year at University of Minnesota are below. I could list many others.
The reference above compares Fall 2021 to Fall 2019. Looking in more detail, ASU’s largest application jump occurred just prior to going test optional, rather than upon going test optional. Applications and enrolled by year are below.
Fall 2019 – Test Required (58% submit SAT / 58% ACT) – 34k applicants, 10k enrolled
Fall 2020 – Test Required (52% submit SAT / 57% ACT) – 54k applicants, 12.5k enrolled
Fall 2021 – Test Optional – 62k applicants, 14k enrolled
Fall 2022 – Test Optional – 69k applicants, 15k enrolled
Even prior to COVID-19, Arizona State University was fairly transparent about its frosh automatic admission criteria, which were (a) complete a list of high school course work, and (b) 3.0 GPA or high-enough SAT score or high-enough ACT score (some majors did have higher requirements).
Arizona State University’s pre-COVID-19 common data sets, section C8A, listed SAT or ACT as “recommended” and “required for some”. Presumably, that meant that frosh applicants with 3.0 GPA (or higher if specified for their major) did not need to submit SAT or ACT for admission.
So Arizona State University is probably a poor example of the effects of a COVID-19 test-optional period, if one is trying to use it as an example relevant to more selective schools or those where SAT/ACT was required for all frosh applicants.
I think part of the ASU application increase is due to UC’s becoming more unpredictable which occurred prior to test optional as the UC’s were taking more out of state students to overcome budget shortfalls. A new policy for capping the number of out of state students at UC’s went into effect in 2018 and while it might have helped predictability, once UC’s went test blind, it threw even more unpredictability into the mix. A larger number of Californians are applying to out of schools and due to proximity and the guaranteed admit, ASU serves as a safety for many. This wouldn’t be the case at U Minnesota, especially as the school is less appealing weather-wise and less promoted. ASU seems to market much more than many other schools.
The graph shows college enrollment peak in 2010 and gradually drop until 2022 NCES lists the enrollment change during this period as follows. The enrollment losses appear to be primarily in 2-year colleges and 4-year for-profit colleges.
4-Year College Enrollment: 13 million → 15 million
2-Year College Enrollment: 8 million → 4 million
Total College Enrollment: 21 million → 19 million
Unless it became more popular as a safety, so kind of a trickle down of TO uncertainty elsewhere. May well be true of the other schools in my sample too given they either auto admit or have pretty high admit rates.
That is interesting. I wonder if this decline in two year colleges is true in all states or whether some states such as California where there is a very defined CC to UC pathway may not have seen such a precipitous drop.
I do see lots of mainstream articles these days opining on whether college is worth the cost. These articles didn’t seem that common a decade ago but then the cost of college was much lower. That wouldn’t explain this drop in two year college decline. I expect some of that decline accounts for the increase in 4 year college enrollment.
No idea. I thought most for profits were four year colleges, especially given that the longer you can keep a student in a for profit, the more you can profit from them:)
I suspect the great financial crisis and recession contributes. With fewer jobs for HS grads available in 2007-09, there was a sharp increase in community college enrollment, peaking in 2010. More jobs contributes to the sharp drop since 2010, but there are no doubt other factors. These may include things like increased cost and students favoring online degree alternatives. Looking over a longer interval, the 2-year college enrollment was as follows. CA had a similarly sized drop to overall average.
2005: 6.5 million
2010: 8 million (record high), CA = 1.7 million
2015: 6.5 million
2021: 4.5 million (lowest since early 1980s), CA = 1.0 million
How much of the two year college decline was due to the closure of for-profit colleges offering associates degrees?
Public 2-year colleges dropped from 7 million to 4 million. For-profit 2-year colleges had a steeper drop overall, but contributed to an only small fraction of the total. The for-profit college drop had a large variation between states. For example:
CA for-profit 2-year colleges: 82k → 31k
CO for-profit 2-year colleges: 12k → 16k
Thanks for all the data. It’s really appreciated! Really surprised by the drop in enrollment for 2 year public colleges in California, given the transfer pathways.