In 2022, UCLA received almost 150,000 applications, Colgate's application totals jumped 148% (since 2020), and most of the highly selective colleges in Boston saw an application rise of at least 30% (also since 2020). But, overall, this major application surge between 2020-2022 is starting to plateau. Although many colleges continue to boast all-time application records and low acceptance rates such as NYU, Northeastern, and Clemson, we are not seeing the major increases that we saw In the past two years. In fact, many schools like Harvard and The University of California (all UCs combined) saw slight decreases.
The chart below is comparing applications from 2020 to 2022: You can expect most colleges this year to have similar numbers to 2022.
