The Common App logged 10,786,782 first-year applications in the 2025-26 season, a 6% jump and the largest volume in the platform’s 50-year history. The End-of-Season Report also contains a number that undercuts the headline: 41.3% of member colleges received fewer applications than they did a year earlier, and 26.2% saw declines of 5% or more.
The record number of applications wasn’t driven by more students. The number of people who created a Common App account fell for the first time since the platform began tracking the metric in 2016-17, from 2,564,311 to 2,560,533.
It’s just that each student is applying to more schools: 7.06 applications per applicant, up from 6.79 last year and 4.73 a decade ago.
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Why It Matters
Over the last 10 years, applications submitted on the platform grew 154% while the number of individual students grew 70%. The simple fact is, we reached peak high school graduation several year back, but of the students attending college, more of them are submitting more applications.
The end result inflates every college’s application count while not moving actual enrollment numbers. It also distorts selectivity numbers, since admissions calculators and predicted-odds tools are built on acceptance rates that keep falling.
For families, the cost of applying to 7 colleges is real. Application fees at four-year colleges commonly run $50 to $90 each, so a seven-school list can mean $350 to $600, and that’s on top of testing and travel. Fee waivers and no-fee application options exist and are underused. Common App’s own fee waiver reached 580,419 applicants this season, up 6%.
For colleges, the cost is different and larger. Admissions offices dealing with a 6% volume increase (that doesn’t materialize into more admissions) are spending money on staff and resources to fight a losing battle.
Who Got The Applications And Who Didn’t
Common App’s Appendix breaks the year-over-year change down by institution type. Here’s some stats that stood out:
- Small colleges lost. Among colleges enrolling fewer than 2,500 students, 35.3% saw application volume drop 5% or more. Among members enrolling over 10,000, only 14.2% did.
- Public beat private. Applications to public colleges grew 7% while private colleges grew 5% overall. The number of public member institutions rose 10% to 363, while private membership grew 1% to 714.
- The most selective schools saw the least growth. Applications to colleges admitting under 25% of applicants rose just 3%. Colleges admitting 75% or more grew 8%, and those in the 25-49% band grew 6%.
That last point runs against the usual assumption that every extra application piles onto the same handful of elite schools. This year, the least selective institutions absorbed more of the growth than the most selective ones did.
How This Connects
The college student decline demographic cliff is arriving. WICHE projects that the number of U.S. high school graduates peaked in 2025 and will fall about 13% through 2041, and Common App explicitly cites those projections as a driver of its slowing growth.
Tuition-dependent schools without large endowments feel it first, which is why nine colleges are closing in 2026 alongside six mergers, and why institutions with name recognition are cutting anyway. Syracuse posted its first budget deficit in years after missing enrollment targets, and the University of Denver merged five departments into two to close a $30 million gap.
This also reframes how to read admissions statistics generally. Record application numbers don’t mean colleges got more popular. When the average student applies to seven schools instead of five, acceptance rates fall even if the same students would have been admitted under the old behavior.
Falling acceptance rates then feed student anxiety, which produces longer application lists, which pushes rates down further. Colleges have not exactly discouraged the loop, since a larger denominator makes any school look more selective.
What This Means For Families
A seven-school college list is now average. When crafting this list, families should ensure that it contains a couple of reach schools, a few matches, and at least one financial and academic safety where admission and affordability are both close to certain.
Running net price calculators on each school before applying costs nothing and eliminates the schools that were never going to be affordable, which is cheaper than an application fee.
It’s also worth knowing that the softest market is at small and mid-sized private colleges. Four in ten colleges lost application volume this year, and those schools have both the incentive and potentially the financial aid budget to compete for students who apply. A student weighing a small private college against a flagship may have more leverage on the financial aid package than the sticker prices suggest.
Editor: Colin Graves
Robert Farrington is the founder of The College Investor and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading voices on student loan debt and saving for college. He holds an MBA from UC San Diego Rady School of Management and has spent over 15 years researching, writing, and advising on student loans, 529 plans, financial aid programs, and saving and investing for young professionals.
Robert has been featured in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NBC News, and Forbes, where he has been a regular personal finance contributor for over a decade. His work combines both professional expertise and personal experience – he successfully navigated his own student loan repayment journey and has helped thousands of readers do the same.
He is committed to making the intersection of personal finance and education transparent and accessible. You can learn more about Robert on the About Page or on his personal site RobertFarrington.com.