Very few highly selective universities have yet released their Early Decision / Early Action figures. At this point every year, we’ve already reported application figures and admission rates at many highly selective universities. Thus far this year, we’ve reported official tallies at only Duke University, the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Boston College. But we’ve got our ears to the ground. We’ve got our sources. It’s how we were able to report that we expect Early Decision applications to be up around 36% at Cornell University. Cornell hasn’t released their figures yet. Ivy Coach’s readers, well, they’re ahead of the curve.

We Project UChicago Early Applications to Be Up Around 6%

And today they’ll be even more ahead of the curve because today, we are able to report what we know of the University of Chicago‘s Early Action and Early Decision numbers. While UChicago hasn’t publicly released application tallies to its Class of 2025 just yet, word on the street is that Early applications — between Early Action and Early Decision applications — are up by a margin of about 6% from this time last year. Now, the figure might end up being a little higher or lower but we can safely project that Early applications at the University of Chicago to its Class of 2025 are indeed up. Decisions should be out on December 21st.

UChicago’s Application Tally Is Consistent with Trend

The funny thing is if you read some of our nation’s most respected news publications these days, you might come away thinking that college applications are down. And they are down — at the vast majority of the 900+ American universities. But most of America’s universities are not highly selective. At the 25 or so highly selective universities, you’re going to find that applications are up and they are up big this fall. It would be prudent for these publications to distinguish the highly selective universities from the vast majority of America’s universities when reporting application figures this fall since headlines like “College applications slide, especially for low-income students” are a bit misleading to students and parents interested in schools that do not accept the vast majority of applicants.