Foreign Students Applying To US Colleges Fell 10% This Year

The drop is the clearest signal yet that American universities are likely to see steep international enrollment declines this fall. That will add to the mounting financial pressures facing many American colleges, already hit by a shrinking number of university-age students and questions about the value of higher education.

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The Common App report showed double-digit declines in applications from Asia and Africa, but the number of European students applying to American campuses also fell by 4%, reversing years of steady increases. That came after countries including France and Germany stepped up efforts to attract students disillusioned with the prospect of a US education.

Visa Changes

The number of domestic college applicants, meanwhile, rose by 4%, driven largely by a 9% surge from the Southwest US.

Over the past year, the Trump administration made several changes to student visa rules and undertook a concerted effort to limit the number of foreign students entering the country. During the 2024-25 application cycle, which ended shortly after the Trump White House first began its crackdown on student visa holders, the number of foreign applicants fell by just 1% from 2023-24.

Rodney Hughes, Common App's senior data scientist, said the recent plunge was the largest they've seen since they started collecting digital data in 2013.

"If it's harder to get a visa, that might make it less likely that students apply," Hughes said. 

The trend of declining foreign enrollment could accelerate after recent changes to decades-old policies limiting the ability of visa holders to change majors, switch schools and remain in the US after graduation.

The decline in applications was unevenly distributed across institutions, with data suggesting a larger cushion for the most competitive universities than for those with a lower global profile. International applications to the most selective schools, those that accept fewer than a quarter of their applicants, fell by just 1%, whereas those accepting more than half of applicants saw a roughly 20% drop, according to the study.

SAT Resurgence

The report highlighted a number of other trends in higher education as well. For the first time since 2019, more students reported standardized test scores on their applications than omitted them. The number of applicants sending in SAT or ACT scores rose by 11% over the previous year, and the number not reporting fell by 5%.

"Test scores certainly seem to be in vogue," Hughes said.

That development comes after a stream of high-profile universities including Yale, Columbia and Princeton announced they were returning to testing requirements after nearly five years of testing-optional policies. The pivot has resurfaced a debate over the benefits of standardized test scores at campuses across the country, including the University of California, where admissions officers have been banned from considering test scores since 2019. 

Both the decline in international students and the resurgence of standardized testing are policy victories for President Donald Trump. The administration has made clear that it views test-optional policies - which tend to benefit poorer, nonwhite applicants - as potential proxies for illegal affirmative action at top colleges.

But universities that don't require testing still far outnumber those with mandates. Only 5% of colleges require SAT or ACT scores from applicants, up from 4% last year but down from 55% in 2019, according to the Common App report.

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Among the report's other findings:

• More than 1.5 million students applied to US campuses this year, up 2% from the previous cycle.
• The number of applicants who qualified for a Common App fee waiver grew by 6% this year, and those from ZIP codes with low median incomes grew by 8%.
• Black applicants were the fastest-growing racial group, with an 8% increase over last year.
• Female students continue to apply to college at increasingly higher rates than men. Roughly 848,000 women applied to schools this year, up 3% from last year, compared to 678,000 men.