Chinese First-Year Applicants on Common App: Long-Term Decline, Recent Relative Resilience

Chinese-citizenship first-year applicant numbers on Common App reached approximately 32,300 in the 2017/18 application cycle, followed by several consecutive years of decline. The downward trend was interrupted in 2024/25, when the number of applicants increased for the first time since that peak.

According to Common App's end-of-season reports, Chinese applicants numbered 17,611 in 2023/24 and increased to 18,792 in 2024/25, a gain of 6.7%. The recovery did not continue into the following cycle, however. In 2025/26, the total fell by 357 to 18,435, a decline of 1.9%.

These recent changes suggest that Chinese applicant numbers are no longer following an uninterrupted downward trajectory. Nevertheless, one year of growth has not developed into a sustained recovery. Although the 2025/26 total remained slightly above its 2023/24 level, it was still substantially below the 2017/18 peak.

At 18,435, the 2025/26 applicant count was approximately 43% lower than the historical high of roughly 32,300. This long-term gap is considerably larger than the fluctuations recorded over the past two application cycles. The 2024/25 rebound is therefore better understood as a temporary improvement within a prolonged contraction, rather than a return to the market's earlier scale.

Viewed in isolation, China's recent Common App figures show an increase followed by a modest decline. Comparing them with other international applicant groups, however, reveals a more distinctive pattern.

In 2024/25, Chinese-citizenship first-year applicants increased by approximately 7%, compared with growth of about 2% among Indian-citizenship applicants. International applicants overall declined by roughly 1%. Chinese applicants therefore recorded an actual increase in numbers while the platform's broader international applicant population contracted slightly.

In 2025/26, all three groups declined, but by markedly different amounts. Chinese applicants fell by approximately 2%, compared with a 10% decline among international applicants overall and a 15% decline among Indian applicants. Common App also reported decreases of approximately 11% among applicants from Asia overall and 17% among applicants from Africa. The decline among Chinese applicants was substantially smaller.

The China–India comparison illustrates how their recent trajectories have diverged. In 2023/24, Common App recorded 17,611 Chinese applicants and 16,712 Indian applicants, a difference of just 899. By 2025/26, Chinese applicants numbered 18,435, while the Indian total had fallen to 14,424, widening the gap to 4,011. Both countries remain important international source markets on the platform, but their applicant numbers have moved differently over the past two cycles.

Two distinct developments are therefore worth separating. In 2024/25, Chinese applicant numbers increased in absolute terms. In 2025/26, they also declined, but by considerably less than several other international groups.

The recent resilience of Chinese applicants is relative to other international source markets within Common App. It does not indicate continuous growth in the absolute number of Chinese applicants.

Common App is a major undergraduate admissions platform, but it does not cover every U.S. university. Its number of institutions receiving applications increased from 625 in 2015/16 to 1,097 in 2024/25 and 1,146 in 2025/26. As the platform expanded, its institutional composition and applicant population also changed.

The prolonged decline in Chinese applicant numbers occurred despite this expansion, making it a notable development. However, changes in institutional participation complicate comparisons across application cycles. A decline in Chinese applicants using Common App cannot automatically be treated as an equivalent decline in Chinese demand for undergraduate education across the entire United States.

The University of California (UC) system offers a particularly important comparison. Its nine undergraduate campuses use a separate UC application system rather than Common App. As a major public university system, UC provides another perspective on international undergraduate application activity.

UC reported an 8.7% increase in international nonresident first-year applicants for fall 2025, while Common App's overall international first-year applicant population declined by approximately 1% during the corresponding 2024/25 application cycle. For fall 2026, UC's preliminary figures showed a decrease of only about 0.1%, compared with an approximately 10% decline among international applicants on Common App in 2025/26.

The two application channels thus displayed different international applicant trends over broadly corresponding periods. Their populations, however, are not identical. Common App generally identifies international applicants using reported citizenship, whereas UC uses residency classifications for admissions purposes. The two systems also cover different institutions, and UC's initially released figures are preliminary rather than end-of-season totals.

More importantly, the publicly available UC data examined for this study do not provide a comparable, systemwide series of Chinese-citizenship first-year applicants. The changes in UC's international applicant population therefore cannot establish whether Chinese applicants to UC increased or declined, much less whether Chinese students shifted their applications from Common App institutions to UC campuses.

What the comparison does establish is the importance of application-channel coverage. Different systems can report substantially different international application trends over similar periods. No single platform necessarily captures the direction of the entire U.S. undergraduate applicant market, and Common App's long-term decline in Chinese first-year applicants does not establish how the number of Chinese-citizenship first-year applicants across U.S. undergraduate institutions has changed.

There is also an important distinction between application activity and actual enrollment. Common App counts individuals who submit at least one first-year application during a cycle, regardless of how many member institutions they apply to. By contrast, IIE's Open Doors reports students already enrolled at U.S. institutions.

Open Doors recorded a 10.2% decline in Chinese undergraduate enrollment in 2024/25, from 87,551 to 78,583, even as Chinese first-year applicants on Common App increased by 6.7% in the 2024/25 application cycle. These figures are not contradictory. The former measures students enrolled across multiple entering cohorts, while the latter primarily concerns applications for entry in the following academic year. The two datasets also differ in institutional coverage and population definitions.

The recent Common App figures show two meaningful developments. Chinese-citizenship applicants returned to growth in 2024/25 after years of decline, then experienced a relatively modest decrease in 2025/26. Their recent performance was stronger than that of international applicants overall and several other major source groups.

At the same time, the size of the Chinese applicant population remains far below its 2017/18 peak. Its relative performance also partly reflects sharper declines elsewhere in the international applicant market. The differing trends reported by UC further demonstrate why these Common App results cannot be generalized to all Chinese undergraduate applications in the United States.

The evidence supports a narrower but more useful conclusion: Chinese first-year applicants have recently shown relative resilience within Common App, while a broader recovery in Chinese demand for U.S. undergraduate education remains unestablished.

The next research priority is to examine whether this pattern persists among a consistent group of Common App member institutions and whether comparable Chinese applicant, admission, and enrollment data from UC and other application channels reveal similar developments.