<p>autumngl0ry - not sure how to answer you other than these are the best we’ve got. Big picture: colleges release their numbers in drips and drabs over the application season, as press releases or news stories (many amid much fanfare, I suppose to drum up even more publicity & create more application draw), and we picked those reports up here. The NYT also reports a consolidated listing of applications numbers and growth, updated several times during the season. I believe they get their information not only from college data releases but also from contacting admissions departments directly. Note that for RD, I see on prior posts of this thread that college releases started rolling in early January, just after the main RD applications due date, and the 1st version of the NYT list appeared late January, updated several times over the ensuing months. (A similar reporting dynamic exists for the early applications cycle, with 1st college releases appearing in November followed by December/January NYT listing, but I’m not aware that this list has been published yet for the class of '18.)</p>
<p>Although one can pokes holes at the supposed counting methods employed by the various colleges to end up with their self-reported numbers, in the whole, my take is that these numbers are pretty accurate…at least they don’t change that much (materially) over the season on a per-college level. [There have been a few exceptions like the SLU data mentioned above.] There is much debate on how applications are counted though (by some institutions that may take a more liberal view on what, exactly, constitutes an application), which I won’t elaborate upon here.</p>
<p>Application statistics for the class of 2017 are now history (unless someone would like to do further analysis of the data we have.) Time to move on to the Class of 2018. Xiggi has a thread going on early applications here:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1589387-early-applications-statistics-class-2018-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1589387-early-applications-statistics-class-2018-a.html</a>
…and I suspect a new thread on '18 RD applications growth will get going within the month as data releases start coming in.</p>