In a different national situation the following might have appeared to be a typo. Colgate recently reported an increase in applications of 102.6% from last year’s total. Has an increase of this magnitude been reported elsewhere? Any thoughts on the implications of this?
Their Dean of Admissions is likely laying awake at night wondering want this does to their yield.
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Brown U reported approx. 35% increase, not 100%+ but also unheard of before.
Casting the net wide in these uncertain times + test-optional? I’m very curious of results of a solid research on the topic when available.
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According to Early Decision Students Admitted to Colgate’s Class of 2025 | Colgate University , Colgate only had a 6% increase in ED applicants over last year, and had a large decline in ED applicants compared to 2019. The overall increase appears to be specific to RD applicants.
Considering the magnitude of the increase, it probably primarily relates to policies other than going test optional. Perhaps they have a lot of marketing about the new FA policy mentioned in the article, with claims of no loans/debt for families making less than $125k per year.
Few other colleges have published numbers for the overall class (early + regular) yet. Other than Colgate, the largest overall increase I’ve heard of is Harvard, whose website mentions a 42% increase at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/1/22/harvard-class-of-2025-applications-record-high/#:~:text=More%20than%2057%2C000%20students%20applied,week%2C%20the%20office%20announced%20Thursday . MIT had a larger increase in early applicants than Haravrd, so they may have a larger increase in overall as well, but have not yet published specific numbers.
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According to the article at University sees record-high number of applicants for Class of 2025 - The Brown Daily Herald , Brown had a 26% increases, not 35%.
My apologies, I misread the statistics from the same article. Still, the increase by almost 10,000 applicants is huge.
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At the same time as Colgate’s 103% increase in applications, applications to New York State’s surrounding university system have declined by 20%:
Based on the number of students accepted, Colgate anticipates a yield of no greater than ~26% this year:
From the 19-20 CDS, they had a 35% yield. However, that year they pulled 101 from the waitlist.
As a follow-up to this topic, Colgate has posted settled admission statistics for the class of 2025:
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