Interest Surges in Top Colleges, While Struggling Ones Scrape for Applicants

Living standardized test requirements during the pandemic brought more hopefuls to the Ivy League and large state schools, while less-selective colleges face an alarming drop.

Waiving standardized test requirements during the pandemic brought more hopefuls to the Ivy League and large state schools, while less-selective colleges face an alarming drop. The nation's most-selective four-year institutions, both public and private, saw a record-breaking 17 percent increase in applications this year, according to the Common App. Small liberal arts schools felt a boon, with applications to Haverford and Swarthmore increasing by 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively. So did large state schools like the University of California, Los Angeles, where freshman applications increased 28 percent.read more