Join us for “The Numbers You Need to Know,” a professional development event for counselors and advisors on Friday, September 18th at 1 PM ET/12 PM CT/11 AM MT/10 AM PT.
Common App Releases End of Cycle Numbers for 2025-2026
During the 2025-2026 college application cycle, 1,527,328 individual applicants sent 10,786,782 to 1,146 member institutions through the Common App. These numbers come from the recently released End-of-season Report from the organization itself. They also represent a 2% increase in applicants, a 4% jump in member institutions, and a 6% rise in overall applications.
I’ll write more about this in depth soon, so right now I want to focus on that application increase. Students now apply to 7.06 schools on average. Last year, it was 6.79, so it’s an overall small jump but still crossing a nice round number milestone. And 7 applications per student is tricky. Averages always mean there are people above the average. In this case, they may be heavily skewing it upwards. There are students who are planning on applying to a dozen Common App members in September each year, but end up hitting submit on only one. If a student is admitted Early Decision before submitting other applications, those will not count as a submitted application even if they did all the work.
The Common App does highlight the significant increases in First-Generation, Low-Income, African-American, Mixed Race, Rural, and Small Town students. (These are all defined closely by the Common App.) Common App also notes that more students submitted test scores than those that did not, a first since the COVID pandemic created widespread test-optional policies.
Staff Headcount Down Across Colleges, But Tenure Faculty Increase
CUPA-HR has issued its annual report on employment at institutions of higher education. Year-over-year, staff positions are down, while faculty positions are up. More granularly, tenure-track positions are up by 7%, while non-tenure-track and adjunct positions are up by smaller amounts.
The staff numbers are truly eye-popping however. The number of full-time staff positions are down 6.6% between 2024 and 2025. Part-time staff roles dropped off by a bewildering 23.9%. This is after full-time roles increased 6.5% and part-time roles increased 21.1%. Essentially, things remained even over two years, but whiplashing between years. (This is made worse by the chart CUPA-HR presents. The data is presented as percentage change each year compared to 0%, which makes the changes seem even more dramatic as they swing back and forth across the midline.)
Whistleblowers Allege Federal Antisemitism Investigations Did Not Follow Established Procedures
Former Department of Justice Attorney Haley Van Erem in the Civil Rights Division have submitted a letter to the House and Senate Judiciary and House and Senate Education Committees’ Ranking Members alleging mishandling of campus antisemitism investigations at Columbia, Brown, and Harvard Universities. These investigations were some of the second Trump Administration’s first moves regarding education.
Interestingly, the Government Accountability Project, who is representing Van Erem, makes it very clear that Van Erem and her colleagues were not opposed to the purpose of the investigation. Instead, the letter is a recounting of multiple fast-forwardings in the usual DOJ processes. Specifically, Van Erem repeatedly claims that fact-finding was not completed when higher-ups would move investigations to the next stage. This was done for political motivations, according to the letter.
A whistleblower complaint only informs people something has been happening, and it can’t change anything yet. But Harvard and Columbia are still fighting the DOJ in court over these investigations. Millions of dollars in funding is on the line, and the lawyers for each school just got a massive boost in showing why there were no Civil Rights violations found by the government. (Brown settled with the Administration already.)
We’ve published a book! How to Get Into College is a college admissions guide built from our Substack posts, detailing the ins-and-outs of the college application process. It’s not a step-by-step guide, but a working out of what happens in college admissions. You can get it below, and please share it with anyone you think would like it.
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