@minimango - how exactly do you think the natural disasters would affect the number of applicants?
We live in SW Florida, so were raked by Irene in early September. Schools were closed for a little over a week mainly because many areas didn’t get electricity back for that long. I haven’t heard anyone mention that this changed their college application plans, though. A record number of kids from our school and the others in the area still applied to college EA and ED.
Puerto Rico and a few of the Caribbean islands are a different story; they were decimated and are still not back on line. But I doubt those areas have enough applicants to materially change the number of applicants to most colleges.
But you’ve mentioned this - natural disasters impacted the number of applicants - twice so why don’t you share your theories?