U.C.L.A. Receives More Than 90,000 Applications for Fall 2013

Click here to see our full table of application numbers for the college freshman class of 2013.

The application pool at the University of California, Los Angeles has swelled to a record high 99,559 undergraduate applications.

Though this figure includes 19,087 transfer-student applications, the statitic represents more undergraduate applications than U.C.L.A. has ever received. It is more, the institution said, than any four-year university in the country. It’s more than the population of Santa Monica, Calif.

While gathering The Choice blog’s annual application tally for the freshman class of 2013, one thing is clear: The competitive nature of college admissions has yet to reach a tipping point. As students continue to apply in droves to an increasing number of schools, the admissions officers must become more selective. This selectivity, of course, gives applicants more cause to become more competitive, and, year after year, increase the number of colleges to which they apply.

This cycle explains at least! some of the swell.

This is the time of year in which The Choice gathers such admissions data from scores of colleges and universities around the country, in an effort to provide some sense of the admissions landscape. Of the more than 100 institutions we’ve asked â€" which include a range of public and private schools â€" many have reported an increase in early admissions applications and applications from international students, even if the school’s total application tally held steady over the previous year.

We invite you to examine the chart for yourselves, but please exercise these words of caution:

• This is not a comprehensive list. We asked a small fraction of the more than 2,000 colleges and universities in the country, and many are not as competitive as the few dozen that are included on tis chart.
• The final counts may change. Each of the more than 50 institutions that responded to our query provided just a snapshot of their application tallies.
• We asked each institution if they used express applications, which may inflate application totals.
• Do not read too deeply into the trends. Applications rise and fall each year, sometimes notably and sometimes without definitive reason. We’ve provided a three-year history to give applicants a general sense of how many students typically apply to a particular school.

One notable uptick in this year’s admission cycle involves a demographic milestone: For the first time, the University of California system has received more freshmen applications from Latino students than from any other racial or ethnic group in the ! state. In! fact, almost all of the U.C. schools had double-digit percent increases in their application totals. (U.C. Berkeley‘s 67,658 applicants represents a 9.73-percent increase from last year.)

Applications to Ivy League schools held relatively steady. Princeton‘s 26,505 application total is a slight decrease from last year’s 26,663. Brown‘s 28,733 applications are just 62 applications more than last year.

We hope that these statistics will provide students and their families some perspective about the admissions process. At the very least, the chart is a quantitative reminder that you are not alone; there are others around the world, eagerly awaiting word as admissions officers review thousands of applications.

The Choice will continue to update its chart as more data become available. (Colleges that would like to be included in our annual chart may contact s at thechoicenyt@gmail.com.)

If you’d like to share your thoughts about application tallies and college admissions, please feel free to do so in the comments box below.