Prospective students and parents walk past one of the wildcat sculptures on the University of Arizona Mall during a guided tour of the campus in late March.
Applications dropped dramatically for this year's fall semester — by about 24% for in-state students, 33% for out-of-state students, and 81% for international students.
The data shows the UA increased its acceptance of in-state students while decreasing it for out-of-state students, goals university administrators have embraced, saying they want to give more access and financial aid to Arizona students.
This would be a drop of nearly 23% from the fall 2025 semester, which itself saw a 19% decline from 2024.
For the fall 2026 semester, the UA changed its admissions process and set a new, hard application deadline of Nov.
1 last year for early acceptance; later applications were processed through the spring of this year.
The UA also said it was switching to a “holistic review” process to sift through student applications, in which the UA considered students’ experiences, achievements and aspirations as well as GPAs, different than in past years.
UA Faculty Chair Leila Hudson said “one of the most troubling aspects of the admissions shortfall” is the decline in in-state applications.
Hudson said if the numbers are accurate, “it appears that whatever strategy the administration is trying to execute is running into headwinds and is not panning out as they would have wanted.”
The drop in in-state applications is harder to explain and “the most concerning,” he said.
Keith Maggert, a UA associate professor in molecular and cellular biology, said the changes to the admissions process this year were seen by his department as a “major problem” and the reason a lot of students weren’t accepting UA’s offer of admission.