This morning, NBC4 of Washington DC reported VT’s application numbers for this year as…
Total apps - 26,000, up 7.5%
Engineering - 9,000 for 1650 spots.
Aren’t college apps in general expected to fall as the baby boomers age?
I think the number of students applying will drop but number of apps increase. The reason is that students today apply to more schools than people like me did 40 years ago. I applied to 4 college and my wife applied to 3. My daughter applied to 7. So she is making up the lower number of “people” applying. Just my speculation though.
I agree. My son applied to 7 as well so number of applications are up but not necessarily the number of acceptances. Still seems like a daunting task at VT to narrow all those down. Ouch!
I think college enrollment will continue its upward trend for the foreseeable future. The number of non-profit higher education institutions has not increased significantly for decades whereas student population seems to have doubled since the 70’s.
The number of 4-year institutions of higher learning in the U.S. is around 2500. The number of undergraduate students in these institutions was about 10 millions in 2012. This number was around 5 millions in 1970.
Here are a few data points that reflect the general trend…
Undergraduate Fall Enrollment in 4-Year Institutions
Year: Public, Private, For-Profit
1970: 3.4 millions, 1.6 millions, -
1980: 4.1 m, 1.8 m, 23000
1990: 4.7 m, 1.9 m, 51000
2000: 4.8 m, 2.0 m, 210000
2010: 6.5 m, 2.6 m, 1.3 m
2012: 6.7 m, 2.7 m, 1.2 m
source: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_303.70.asp
The overall population is growing. Not as fast as the baby boom, but still growing. So there are more people, even when the boomers start dying off.
The portion of the population going to college is also growing. It is now almost a requirement for many fields that once did not need any particular education. So more of the people are going to college, regardless of how many people there are.
The average number of applications is rising. People are applying to 7, 10, 12 colleges instead of 2-4. So the number of applications any college gets is growing faster than the college population is.
The colleges themselves mostly grow, a few percentage points a year. A college that sees a 1% growth in incoming class size each year but sees a 5% growth in applications each year will have to take a smaller and smaller portion of applicants. This makes them seem more selective, but it’s an illusion. If their application pool was entirely composed of those applications that they admit, and the ones they would reject did not bother to apply, they’d have a 100% admission rate, no rejections at all - and still have the exact same student body as a result.
I would like to see Virginia get another major university. Northern Virginia alone could support it.
George Mason seems to be establishing itself well enough. I can’t really see much need for another public university in NoVa.
Many colleges are actively trying to increase the number of applications with no interest in increasing enrollment. Many schools do not want to grow but encourage more applications so that they appear more selective as noted by FFCDAD. Many colleges are switching to the common app for the reason alone. They figure more students will apply because it is easier. Some are even lowering the application fee (or dropping it completely) so they get more applications.