Covid-19 Causes Spike in Applications to Top Colleges, Falling Enrollment Across The Board

Aidan Crowley ‘21
March 2021

As graduation draws ever closer for this year’s seniors, the effects of Covid on the college application process become more and more apparent.

As elite colleges across America have dropped SAT and ACT test score requirements, this year’s applicants have been empowered to apply to schools that they once thought were out of their reach. As a result, the surge in applications has mainly affected the most selective schools.

Harvard University had a 42 percent increase in applicants this year, with more than 57,000 applicants this year. Other Ivy League institutions such as Columbia University have had similar spikes in applications, causing them to push back their decision dates to April 6.

With test scores no longer a factor, more weight has been placed on students’ extracurricular activities, recommendations and personal essays.

While there has been a surge in applications to top universities such as Harvard, there has been a drop in college applications and enrollment as a whole. This is a continuation of the trend from last year’s application season, where colleges saw a 22 percent drop in college enrollment from the previous year.

Many of these students opting out of college this year are from low-income families who no longer believe they can afford it due to financial hardships brought on by the pandemic. In particular, this includes students in families where no one has previously attended college. According to data from the Common Application, the standardized college application used by most U.S. colleges, there was a 2 percent drop in applicants who qualify for a fee waiver and a 3 percent drop in potential first-generation students.

Unless vaccinations ramp up, Covid-19 is not likely to go away by September. As such, prospective students will still have to decide whether it is worth it to pay full tuition for either very limited in-person instruction or a completely online experience. (Spoiler: for many lower-income students and students enrolled at more expensive institutions, it’s not.)

With this uncertainty, there will likely be a larger percentage of students that tries to apply for a deferral or a gap year from their school in hopes of moving onto campus come 2022.

At least until the dust settles from the Covid-19 pandemic, colleges’ test-optional policies don’t seem to be going anywhere. (Certain universities such as the University of California, Berkeley, for instance, have permanently taken test scores out of the application process.) A handful of universities such as Penn State (State College, PA) have already announced that they will extend their test-optional policy either one or two years into the future.