Data Visualizations

September 10, 2026

Fulbright publishes the application count behind every institution’s grant total. Almost nobody looks at that column. On February 3, 2026, the Fulbright Program named 114 colleges and universities as...

September 3, 2026

Seventy-two percent of Washington and Lee undergraduates belong to a fraternity or sorority. At New York University the figure is 2 percent for men and 5 percent for women....

August 26, 2026

Nonresidents make up 78 percent of the entering class at the University of Vermont and 3 percent at the University at Buffalo. Both are state flagships. This measures how...

August 21, 2026

In August 2026, two universities raised their income lines within a week of each other. Rice announced free tuition for families earning up to $200,000, beginning with students entering...

August 13, 2026

How does a coach at Williams or Swarthmore or Emory find out your child exists? At most of these colleges, nothing happens until the student makes contact. What varies,...

August 12, 2026

Consider the rower first. Nine of the twenty-six elite Division III colleges in this analysis field rowing at all. At those nine, rowing accounts for about 20 roster places...

August 12, 2026

Division III describes Bowdoin College, where 34 percent of full-time undergraduates play a varsity sport. It also describes New York University, where 1.8 percent do. Both admit fewer than...

August 5, 2026

In the fall of 2025, 67,101 students applied to the University of Maryland, College Park. Four years earlier the number was 50,146. A one-third increase in applications over four...

August 5, 2026

In September 2025, Wake Forest University welcomed the largest first-year class in its history. The 1,545 students who arrived in Winston-Salem outnumbered every entering class before them, and they...

August 5, 2026

Most universities that draw more applicants become harder to enter. Case Western Reserve did the opposite. Its applicant pool grew from about 33,000 for the Fall 2021 class to...

August 4, 2026

William & Mary reports an admit rate near 34 percent, a number that places it among solid public universities rather than the most selective ones. For most of the...

July 30, 2026

A high school senior in Bucks County opens her Penn State decision in December and finds good news and a complication in the same letter. She is admitted to...

July 30, 2026

Picture a student sitting down in October to decide whether to apply to Tufts under early decision. The commitment is binding, it arrives before any aid offer, and the...

July 30, 2026

Rice’s admit rate has barely moved in three years. It read 7.88 percent for the Fall 2023 entering class, 8.00 percent for Fall 2024, and 8.01 percent for Fall...

July 29, 2026

What is Carnegie Mellon’s acceptance rate? The answer is 11.07 percent for the Fall 2025 entering class, and for almost every applicant asking the question, that number is close...

July 28, 2026

Consider two applicants to Tulane with identical files. One applies early decision in November and commits to attend if admitted. The other applies in the regular round in January...

July 28, 2026

Purdue’s admit rate fell from 68.9 percent to 43.4 percent across five entering classes. That is the steepest five-year compression of any university examined in this series, and the...

July 28, 2026

Harvard received 47,893 applications for the class that entered in Fall 2025. Three cycles earlier, for the class that entered in Fall 2022, it received 61,221. The gap between...

July 28, 2026

Duke admitted more first-year students to the Fall 2023 entering class than to any other class in the past five years, and it did so in the one cycle...

July 27, 2026

Nearly seven out of eight students MIT admits decide to attend. In an admissions world where the most selective private universities fight over cross-admits and count a 45 percent...