Yes - I saw the UVa posting on Facebook. I thought it was a tad bit misleading. The Facebook post said:
“This year, UVa received a record number of early applications - a 31% jump from two years ago”.
While true that it was record number of early action applications, I found it interesting that the 31% increase was relative to TWO years ago. The growth in EA applications from 2015 to 2016 was 25%; whereas, the increase from 2016 to 2017 was 5%. So, while still impressive given the riots, the rate of growth decreased materially from the prior period.
Further, in-State early applications increased 9% from 2016 to 2017. Therefore, out-of-State applications grew only 3.5% from 2016 to 2017. So, perhaps OOS students and families were more concerned about the riots than in-state families. My hypothesis is that the riots did have an effect.