<p>Does anyone know the latest estimates of college application trends? I've heard lots of conflicting statistics... Next year as the peak, continued growth through 2012 then leveling off, significant drop after 2011...etc.</p>
<p>The United States population peak might not be the application peak for two reasons: </p>
<p>1) if the percentage of high school seniors who decide to apply to college continues to go up (which is the long-term historical trend), then the number of applicants could go up even as the number of high school seniors begins to go down, </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>2) if an increasing percentage of foreigners apply to United States universities for undergraduate study (which is also a long-term historical trend), then the number of high school seniors in the United States isn't the only number to look at. </p>
<p>My oldest son is in high school class of 2010 (unless we declare a grade skip for him in the next year or two). I expect that year to be more competitive than any year before. It may be that my younger children will face even more competition for getting into college, even though they are known to be members of smaller United States birth-year cohorts than my oldest son.</p>
<p>That works for me tokenadult. My youngest is slated for HS class of 2011!</p>
<p>The avg. # apps per grad is a great unknown going forward. The known trends (more HS grads) that point to an increasing number of people applying may result in those people applying to more schools. Consequently, raw application numbers won't tell the whole story. Acceptance rates and yield , (% accepted that actually enroll), also need to be looked at. Unfortunately yield numbers lag application numbers due to the difference in application and enrollment notification deadlines.</p>
<p>My kids are 2008 and 2010 -- I remember when we looked at a kindergarten for DS1, and the admissions folks were bemoaning how many boys were in that age cohort. For DS2, almost his entire Bar Mitzvah year consisted of boys! Maybe this will turn out to be a good thing admissions wise, since "The Ratio" is becoming skewed at LACs...</p>
<p>CountingDown, funny that you mentioned that. My D's is in the class of 2008 and she has twice as many boys in her class than girls. Makes for a very interesting class, all that testosterone!</p>
<p>All I know is that our high school class of 2010 is about 750 kids and 2007 is about 650. I was once told that the younger kids' class would be the largest ever, but I've also heard 2011 as the peak.</p>
<p>One other issue I forgot to mention is that the "flight to quality" is probably still continuing, so the application crush at the very most desired colleges may not abate for a long time, if ever.</p>
<p>So far, still lots of hearsay and anecdotal info. Any given community could have a trend which is not representative of the nation as a whole. Anyone have any "official" estimates or information? (Tokenadult, I agree with your comments about factors other than US population that impact the number of applications, but do you know when the US cohert for high school seniors starts to decline?)</p>
<p>Does it really matter? Are OUR kids going to achieve more, work harder because it's going to be more competitive? Should we start worrying now? Que cera, cera.....</p>
<p>My son's class of about 300 (we only have one HS and one MS) is definately overpopulated by boys. It's pretty strange. In his elemenatary school it was like a 2:1 ratio.</p>
<p>Another participant here has posted links to the federal Department of Education's Projections of Educational Statistics. Certainly, all of the children who will attend college in the next few years have already been born (all over the world), and the ones in the United States have been counted by the Census Bureau, but it really is the other issues that determine what college will be competitive for what applicant when.</p>
<p>according to the census bureau, the number of HS grads will peak in '11 or '12. However, the impact really varies by region, since HS grads in the NE and midwest (take a look at the student pop of Detroit, for example) will actually decline while the SE and SW will continue to increase slightly.</p>
<p>The number of applicants from outside the country seems to be growing so fast. I sense that that (and what may be a trend towards applicants in general applying to more and more schools) is making the heralded peaking of the American Baby Boom Echo less relevant to the college search in the next few years than we had all expected several years ago.</p>
<p>Is there broad-based information about the rise in non-US applicants to US colleges? I know the numbers were way down after 9/11 and that someone was tracking that, but I haven't seen anything recently about what seems to be a significant turn around.</p>
<p>The Institute for International Education, a nonprofit established after World War I, is the organization that tracks foreign student flows through surveys.</p>
<p>The number of foreign students in the US dropped dramatically after 9/11, in part due to tightening/strengthening visa requirements. Another reason is a huge push to recruit/attract foreign students by Great Britain and Australia. But the numbers are bounding back. Here's a link to a November '06 article from the NYT</p>
<p>great article katliamom, but it would be of more value to know how many of those 560k internationals were grad students vs. undergrad.</p>
<p>Thanks, katliamom.</p>
<p>For the data wonks: The College Board has a page w/ mountains of demographic data. Nationally, the number or HS grads is projected to peak in 09, then should decline very slightly or stay roughly static for about 6 years; graduation rates are then projected to increase even more dramatically than during the current "baby boom echo" spike. (There are strong regional differences; in the NE, the number of students will continue to decline after 09, while in the South, Midwest, and Southwest, the increase in HS grads soars.)</p>
<p>And tokenadult had it right back in one of the early posts, although HS graduations rates level off in 2 years, enrollment in College looks like it will continue to increase out as far out as they're projecting the numbers, to about 2014 :(</p>
<p>BTW, you can scan through the charts quickly by not loading each chart separately; just use the next button at the bottom of any chart and it'll take you to the next one.</p>
<p>my grades uberly populated by boys... 11:1 infact..lol im the only grl im class 0f 2012! I Dont know if i will be graduating w/ "the boys" if i dont go cuckoo b4 hand</p>
<p>Thanks, MarathonMan88, that's a great page with lots of interesting links in post #18.</p>