Colorado State University eliminates undergraduate application fee for in-state students
Colorado State University is eliminating its undergraduate application fee for Colorado residents.
The change took effect Aug. 1, when the application process for new students for the 2024-25 academic year began, said Heather Daniels, the university’s director of admissions.
Applicants who meet the university’s Colorado residency requirements will be able to waive the usual $50 fee when applying to CSU through the Common App, an online platform used by 1,039 colleges and universities across the country, she said Thursday. A drop-down menu will appear under the payment option for applicants in Colorado applying to CSU that will waive the fee.
CSU guarantees admission to all Colorado residents who meet its academic requirements, and eliminating the application fee removes another potential roadblock to enrollment, Daniels said.
As a general rule, CSU admits new students with grade-point averages of 3.0 or higher on a 4.0 scale and “a steady or upward trend in grades,” according to its admissions website.
“The first step in thinking about college is which ones you will apply to,” she said. “If in that one step, even $50 is an issue, let’s eliminate that barrier and see if that’s a possibility. … When you think about $25 to $100 per school, that adds up quickly.”
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CSU’s main campus in Fort Collins has seen a significant increase in applications from Colorado residents during the annual Free Application Days program launched in 2018 by the Colorado Department of Higher Education, Daniels said.
Of the 15,870 applications CSU received from Colorado residents seeking admission for the 2023-24 school year, 11,344 took advantage of the three-day free application period in mid-October 2022, according to data provided by Daniels and CDHE. That was the largest number applying to a single institution among the 63,976 applications submitted to the program’s 19 participating schools, outpacing No. 2, the University of Colorado, by 863.
First-year enrollment at CSU last fall was a record 5,517 students. Of those, 60% were Colorado residents, university officials told the school’s governing board last October.
“We’re very excited to make every day a free application day for Coloradans,” CSU President Amy Parsons said in a news release. “This new initiative, along with CSU’s extensive student support, underlines our commitment to providing access for students.
“We want to remove barriers to higher education and to open doors to all qualified students with the desire to earn a world-class, four-year degree.”
Colorado College and Regis University, both private schools, don’t charge undergraduate application fees, and Metro State University Denver also has eliminated them for in-state students. Other universities in the state, including CU-Boulder and the University of Northern Colorado, have added additional free application days at various times throughout the year.
CSU, though, becomes the largest university in the state to completely eliminate undergraduate application fees for Colorado residents.
“Part of our land-grant mission is to increase access to higher education, and part of where this is coming from is staying true to that,” Daniels said. “We’re really proud to have a pretty high acceptance rate for our Coloradans.”
Total enrollment at CSU-Fort Collins last fall was 27,956 — 23,794 undergraduate and 3,557 graduate students — school officials announced in October. Of those students, 65% were Colorado residents.
CSU will continue to participate in the state’s Free Application Days program, which runs from Oct. 17-19 in 2023, Daniels said, to take advantage of the program’s statewide marketing campaign and promotion by high school counselors.
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Although CSU and other colleges and universities in the state have traditionally offered need-based waivers to their application fees, the state’s free days program — which was expanded from one day to three in 2020 — has been credited with increasing the number of college applications received by participating schools from students of color and first-generation students. Forty-five percent of applicants who took advantage of the Free Application Days program last fall were submitted by students of color and 34% by first-generation students, according to CDHE.
Students of color made up 25% of CSU’s student body last fall, and 20% of its students were first generation.
Applications for admission to CSU from Colorado residents have increased about 58% since 2018, when the Free Application Days program began, Daniels said. Her office received 6,205 more applications from Colorado residents for admission in 2023-24 than the 9,665 it received in 2019-20.
Overall applications have increased by about 49% over that same time period, she said. CSU received more than 12,000 more applications for admission this fall than it did for admission in fall 2019.
“The application is just one step,” Daniels said. “Students have to apply, then be admitted, then they have to enroll. We start, obviously, with a large pool of students that apply and then a smaller number, ultimately, are admitted.
“But we always want as many applications as possible, because it’s just expanding access to education.”
Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: CSU eliminates undergraduate application fee for Colorado residents
