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Comment by armchairhacker | Hacker News Reader

Are CS applications surging too? What about other fields? It seems like more people are applying to college in general.

Both my current and previous university, year after year keep having record numbers of applicants. And IIRC the CS program is getting more and more competitive.

I'm not sure about liberal-arts though.

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I wonder if it's people not taking a gap year, after all there isn't much point if you can't travel.

I think a lot of people took a gap year last year (who otherwise wouldn’t have). Why pay for college if you won’t get to actually go?

Many of those people are showing up now as applicants.

To graduate faster

That's perhaps the logical answer if the certificate is the outcome you care about. But I know a lot of students who decided that it made more sense just to take the year off and go back to school when things were hopefully more normal again.

I could have been clearer. I agree with you [in that I wouldn't have personally delayed], but I think a substantial fraction of the college-bound crowd made that tradeoff calculation.

Bringing an anecdotal evidence to your question. That's actually what I did. Currently taking a gap year (more like two) to go study a MSc in AI. I have a previous background and experience in finance.

At this point I assume every young, college aged male I speak with is majoring in software. I'm right more often than wrong. That doesn't account for changing majors, etc, and I'm certainly biased.

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