More Underrepresented Minority and First-Gen Students Applying to College
Credit: Ariel Skelley / Getty Images- The Common App recently released its latest data on college applications for 2024-25.
- Applications are up across the board but particularly for people of color and first-generation students.
- More low-income students are applying to college as well.
- The number of students submitting standardized test scores rose even though most colleges remain test-optional.
New data from the Common App shows significant gains in college applications among underrepresented minority (URM), low-income, and first-generation students.
That’s the headline from the organization’s most recent report tracking first-year application trends through Jan. 1, 2025. These reports reflect enrollment activity among the Common App’s 1,100 members, so while it’s not an exhaustive examination of admissions, it does capture data from a wide swath of colleges and universities.
Some prominent schools, such as Georgetown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the entire University of California system, don’t use the Common App, which leaves out data from some key institutions.
Nonetheless, the news this time around is generally good. Overall, first-year applications are up 5% year over year. Students are applying to more schools, too — 5.47, on average, compared to 5.37 in the 2023-24 application cyclelast year.
Public institutions (11%) gained more application volume than private colleges (3%).
The applicant pool, moreover, has grown more diverse. This year, the number of applicants identifying as underrepresented minorities rose by 13%, compared to a 2% increase among students who do not. Latino/a (13%) and Black (12%) applicants demonstrated the strongest growth.
Evidently the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on affirmative action hasn’t dissuaded people of color from applying to college.
At the same time, the number of white student applicants declined from 50% to 47.4%, continuing a decadelong trend. In the 2013-14 application cycle, 67.9% of applicants were white.
More applicants are first-generation students — that figure rose 14% this year — and come from low-income households, even as college costs continue to rise. The number of applicants from below-median-income ZIP codes rose by 9%, and the number of students eligible for fee waivers increased by 10%.
In terms of gender, female applicants (5%) showed more growth than their male counterparts (4%), while the number of students identifying as “X,” an option introduced in 2023-24, grew by 20%.
The number of international students applying rose slightly (1%), with Bangladesh (45%), Mongolia (25%), and Rwanda (25%) showing the largest increases. Overall, the number of applicants from Africa is down 14% compared to last year, while those from China are up 6%.
Curiously, the number of students who submitted standardized test scores rose by 10% even though 95% of Common App institutions still don’t require the SAT or ACT. Last year, a number of highly selective colleges reinstated standardized test requirements, and these institutions receive tens of thousands of applications every year, so perhaps those actions helped move the needle in the direction of more score submissions.
Here’s another indication that the return to testing among some Ivy-Plus schools may have spiked this figure: The number of first-gen, URM, and low-income students reporting test scores grew more than the number of students within these groups who did not submit them.
When elite colleges reinstated testing, they advanced the rationale that testing enables students from underrepresentedunderprivileged backgrounds to demonstrate academic potential, even if their scores fall below the college’s median. Many students were actually harming their chances of gaining admission by withholding scores.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, standardized testing could actually bolster diversity, not hinder it, according to this argument.
The upshot of all this data is that today’s college applicants, at least those using the Common App, have become more socioeconomically diverse and are increasingly likely to be first-gen students. Whether this profile describes the actual enrollment of first-year classes is another story entirely.