Yes, I was referring to such reports. At the top, they say:
Through March 1, 2024, 1,313,763 distinct first-year applicants had applied to 834 returning members (an increase of 6% from 1,243,246 in 2022–23). a. Total application volume to returning members through March 1 rose 7% from 2022–23 (7,041,256) to 2023–24 (7,541,148). Applicants were also applying to slightly more members in 2023–24 than in 2022–23 (+1% from 5.66 to 5.74 applications per applicant).
That 1% increase in applications per applicant is much less than the increase in applications some colleges saw yoy, and I think that is also true cumulatively.
That to me actually would be a form of expanding into a new submarket. But if you are asking whether they are getting more applications now than they got in 2000 from, say, Maryland or South Carolina, that I don’t know, and I am not sure that data is publicly available.
I think given the patterns in who is applying to more schools, these may actually be different facets to the same underlying trend.
This is an interesting study:
The increase in applications per applicant was not even, it depended on various factors. And one of those factors was jut being in the Northeast, so that could be part of what happened at Connecticut College. But other drivers included International applicants, private high school students, early decision applicants, high test score applicants, and in fact just applicants who were already high volume.
Then as the report explain, these high volume applicants are flooding selective privates. Again, that could be partially a Northeast specific effect for Connecticut College, but I think students fitting the profiles above but not in the Northeast could also be contributing.
The picture I get from all this is applicants who would also have been Connecticut College applicants in the past are in fact likely to be applying to more other colleges these days. But the same is true in reverse–applicants who would also have been applying to various other colleges in the past are now more likely to also apply to Connecticut College.
The degree to which this increase in cross-applications actually includes specific states, or colleges within those states, is not something I see addressed in this data. So I don’t actually know if Connecticut College applicants these days are more likely to apply to, say, Charleston in the past, nor do I know if Charleston applicants are more likely to apply to Connecticut College.
But I wouldn’t bet against it either way.
Again, if you are talking about actual enrollments, then we know that Connecticut College is not the source of a net move of enrollments anywhere else.
Off hand this seems pretty obvious, right? We saw this as a microcosm in states like PA, CT, and MA. We are also seeing this nationally. There is a net loss at more regional/local publics, and a net gain at flagship/national publics. It seems plausible that whole dynamic actually doesn’t much involve national private colleges at all.
Again to be clear, on an individual level anything could be happening. But in terms of large net flows, the net flow doesn’t seem to involve national privates. It seems to involve mostly publics of different levels.