The University’s Admissions Office forecasts a high number of applications for the Fall 2023 admissions cycle. Unlike last year, this year the admissions cycle will have two admissions notification dates. The early action deadline for Fall 2023 applications is Tuesday. 

At a meeting of the University Senate Educational Policy Committee Daniel Mann, associate provost for Enrollment Management, announced that as of Oct. 24, their office has received around 9,000 applications. However, Mann mentioned that according to the trends over the past three to four years, students wait till the last minute to apply. 

“We are expecting that probably 80% of the applications during the early application period are going to come in during the next week,” Mann said.  “We could maybe see as many as 40 to 45 thousand applications by (Tuesday).” 

According to Mann, for the last three years, the University has been receiving 45,000 applications for the entire year, whereas this year this number is expected to be reached by Tuesday.

“I know a lot of other universities have experienced a decline in their enrollments, and here we are a few years in a row, and we are experiencing record growth in that area,” said Dr. Linda Moorhouse, chair of the University Senate Educational Policy Committee, during the committee meeting. 

Both Moorhouse and Mann mentioned the Common App as one of the possible reasons for growth in the University enrollment. Additionally, Mann emphasized the role of marketing in the increased brand recognition of the University.

“We do a lot of work in the marketing, brand recognition, we work with public affairs as well as we have our own team in enrollment management that is doing stuff on various social media … We have really done a lot to try to enhance name recognition and branding,” Mann said.

However, the trend may not continue in upcoming years since the number of high school students is going to decrease in the next few years.

“We are only a few years away from an upcoming notable decline in the number of high school graduates in the Midwest,” said Andrew Borst, Director of Undergraduate Admissions, in an email. “While (the University) now receives more than double the number of applications for first-year admission than we did 10 years ago, we can’t assume that our application pool will continue to grow at similar rates in the next 10 years.”

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