It’s a combination of multiple factors and trends and will likely continue, this was just a larger spike than expected.
Most public schools in the South are experiencing this. Kids from the NE and Cali that had parents who used to look down on those schools now seeing things in a different light. They see solid academics with good weather and a fun college experience at a relatively affordable price.
Academic rankings have improved and Texas is now on the cusp of the Top 25. That drives a lot of new applicants. There are a lot of top students who simply look at the rankings and go down the list of the Top 25 or so schools and apply to most of them. Texas is also pretty solidly in the Top 10 Public schools so that also drives applicants and they have a very strong CS program. Lots of kids from top HS’s are looking at alternatives to the Ivies or other Near Ivies that are really hard to get into and have very small classes (most under 2k).
Texas going on the Common App last year made this inevitable. It’s just very easy to apply from OOS.
For good and bad this is going to drive selectivity up even further and especially for OOS students. You are going to hear some crazy stories this year of kids accepted to MIT and Harvard and denied by Texas, book it. With UT capped at 90% in state and enrollment that makes the number of slots available very small but because the overall acceptance isn’t that low it is deceptive. Same thing happened at UNC. UNC’s admission rate is 17% which doesn’t sound that bad. Problem is they are capped on OOS and are a popular place to apply. So it is actually the most competitive OOS admit in the country at around 3-4%. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Texas do the same. That’s different than a place like Michigan that has 51% OOS students.
This is where all the trendy stuff comes in. Be it the football team or SEC move or whatever. Texas is just popular and trendy and Austin has always been attractive to people from OOS because it is Texas but it’s “not Texas” and known for being the eclectic dot in the State.
Did Hartzell mention the increase over last year or just absolute figures? It doesn’t seem like anything in particular has changed versus last year. The addition of common app was for fall 2024, correct?
A friend in NYC whose kid has peers shooting for Ivy League said UT, Cal, ucla, UM, UNC and UVA are perceived as the only public Ivies. If people don’t get into Ivy+ they settle for Michigan. Not necessarily admitted to Ross or engineering. This is an elite private HS by the way.
Well said! Cant even fathom the journey for say the high school class of 2030 when they have to apply. The landscape for applications has changed so much in just the last decade and it seems to be changing at an exponential rate now.
This is basically my Point #4. Each one of those schools has it’s own thing as well.
The UC schools have their own application system that’s good and bad but it makes it so that you can apply to 3 of them for the same cost and trouble. Thus that is why you see the Cal schools with the highest number of applications. Every kid in California that is maybe just looking at going to Merced or Davis can go “Well, might as well apply to UCLA/Santa Barbara/San Diego, I know I’m not getting into Berkeley” and lots of in between. UC schools also don’t allow any scholarships for OOS which makes most of their OOS pool people who don’t care, it’s an automatic $22,500 on top of fees with no relief.
UM doesn’t discriminate on OOS as mentioned so that keeps them popular but more stable.
UVA does ED which is unusual for public schools. They tend to attract East Coast folks though and people who are looking at private. UVA has a private feel to them as well kind of like William and Mary. VT is the more “public” feeling school in that state. It’s just different.
Already discussed UNC which I think is closest to where Texas is headed.
Another one that is up and coming is Illinois but mainly for Comp Sci, but Comp Sci is the major that drives the boat at a lot of schools now. UW as well but it is more limited in attractiveness because Seattle is so far away for people outside the West Coast.
Yes and no. Expect the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. I would not want to run a mid to low level Liberal Arts school. The Top 100 will be fine. The Top 25 are going to increasingly get competitive unless they change policies around the Common App to limit applications where now many top students apply to at least 15 schools or more.
Ah, so it’s predominantly due to the Common App. Definitely not due to a new President elected in November. Football success has some impact. SMU apps are up 40-50% but it’s also offering free apps (biggest driver). Football driven apps aren’t of the highest quality. Yield is key.
Didn’t A&M also recently move to the Common App? I wonder how its in state and OOS apps have increased.
Illinois is very strong in Business and Engineering, like UT, but just doesn’t have the cool vibe that the other public Ivies have. Like UT, it’s predominantly instate. Massive cost differential. UNC is about 20% OOS, correct? Don’t UCLA and Cal get about 150K apps, over 50% more than UT. Foreign apps are important to them.
The affordability piece is great for UT as well. They want increasing numbers are super smart, but economically diverse, applicants. Like Rice’s tuition promise.
It’s a little of everything. A&M hasn’t released numbers to my understanding but I expect they will have an increase as well, just not as dramatic. Many of the same factors impact them and they have also seen a bump in ranking. Main difference is A&M doesn’t get as many of the “Public Ivies” applicants who just apply to the same 5 to 10 public schools and while they are well known for Engineering they are less so for Comp Sci which is the hot major.
Regarding #5 it is also a true driver. Austin is getting a lot of press nationally. With tech companies moving there, more STEM applicants from OOS makes sense. Somehow I incorrectly thought being test required would also be a driver for lower applications.
Like I said the UC numbers are skewed by their application system. You can apply for up to 3 UC’s with really no extra effort or cost. It’s not much more to apply to all of them. That’s why you see the rankings are virtually the same for UCSB, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, etc. They are basically sharing the same pool. So if you are spending all the time on the UC App to apply to Berkeley or UCLA why not go ahead and apply to 2 others or 4 others? Add in that virtually every decent student in California is applying to the UC’s and California is the largest state. They also get the most international applicants because California is the most attractive to folks from Asia due to flights and culture.
The reality is that many of the UC’s are really overrated the UC System just is brilliant at gaming itself to keep rankings so high. Still some great schools but if you really think that the UC System has 6 of the Top 13 Public Schools because US News says so then you will believe anything. Most are just piggybacking on people applying to UCLA and Berkeley.
#5 is a Driver but honestly it isn’t anything that is new in the last few decades outside of recent football success but even that is dramatically different. I could find an article saying the same thing from 25 years ago.
We also noticed that compared to similarly ranked colleges UT doesn’t require a bunch of extra/supplemental essays. Ease of application (relatively speaking) probably also helps increase volume.
So in past years UT has something they called a priority deadline, which just meant that you would get a decision a little earlier. I’m trying to remember but there was a subtle difference between that and the new EA thing. The waitlist is entirely new though, that is completely different than CAP…we really don’t know exactly what it will look like in terms of numbers but it is a real waitlist like so many northeast schools have. People will come off the waitlist later in the spring as their enrollment numbers roll in.