Washington: The number of students from India seeking first-year undergraduate admission to US colleges through the Common Application fell 15 per cent during the 2025–26 admissions cycle, reversing years of rapid growth.
India recorded 14,424 applicants, down from about 16,900 during the previous cycle, according to Common App’s end-of-season report released on August 20.
The decline was sharper than the two per cent fall recorded for China, which remained the largest source of international applicants on the platform with 18,435 students.
China now has 4,011 more international applicants than India. The gap had narrowed to about 1,000 during the 2023–24 admissions cycle after years of strong growth from India and a prolonged decline from China.
Common App did not identify a reason for the fall in Indian applications.
International applicants overall fell 10 per cent from the previous year. Applicants from Asia, the largest source region outside the United States, declined 11 per cent to 79,287.
The report said the Asian decline was driven by the 15 per cent reduction in applicants from India.
The change stands in contrast to the broader Common App pool. A total of 1,527,328 first-year applicants used the platform during the cycle, two per cent more than in 2024–25.
Those students submitted about 10.79 million applications to 1,146 member institutions. Total applications rose six per cent, indicating that students applied to more colleges even though the overall applicant count grew more slowly.
Each applicant submitted an average of 7.06 applications, up from 6.79 during the previous cycle.
India’s latest decline followed almost a decade of expansion.
Common App recorded about 7,900 first-year international applicants from India in 2016–17, compared with nearly 29,700 from China.
The Indian number rose gradually before accelerating to about 16,900 in 2021–22. It remained near that level for the next three cycles, bringing India close to overtaking China as the leading international source country on the platform.
The fall to 14,424 erased a significant part of those recent gains. China, meanwhile, declined from nearly 29,700 applicants in 2016–17 to 18,435 in the latest cycle.
A different pattern emerged among applicants already living in the United States. The number of domestic applicants identifying with an Indian background rose six per cent to 40,949.
That figure has more than doubled from nearly 18,500 in 2016–17. Domestic applicants reporting a Chinese background increased one per cent to 26,296 during the latest cycle.
The divergence means the number of US-based applicants identifying as Indian continued to grow even as applications from students residing in India declined.
The Common App report covers applicants to its member institutions and does not represent every undergraduate applicant or university in the United States.
India remains the largest source of international students in the United States. The latest available Open Doors data counted 363,019 students from India during the 2024–25 academic year, an increase of 10 per cent from the previous year.
(IANS)
