Bates College is doing away with its $65 application fee, a change leaders expect will bring in more applicants as it lowers the financial barrier to students.

Leigh Weisenburger, vice president for institutional affairs, said the college had been talking for some time about the move, which is meant to align with Bates’ overall mission of access and affordability.

“As we think about access and equity writ large, how can we remove barriers to application?” she said. “Where are there other hurdles that might prevent a student from applying?”

Bates, a private liberal arts college of about 1,800 students in Lewiston, became test-optional — meaning it stopped requiring students to submit SAT or ACT scores — in 1984. Earlier this year, the school partnered with QuestBridge, the national match program that connects low-income students with elite colleges (Colby College and Bowdoin College are also partners).

Weisenburger said for the past decade, there has been a movement in higher education away from application fees, which don’t generate much revenue anyway considering how many students have that cost waived.

Still, application fees, which average about $50, can deter low-income or first-generation students from applying. Private colleges like Wellesley in Massachusetts and Reed in Oregon eliminated their fee decades ago, but more schools have joined the trend in recent years. In 2019, about 90% of public colleges and 57% of private colleges had an application fee.

Bates joins other Maine schools in eliminating the charge.

Colby in Waterville does not collect any application fees. All of the schools in the University of Maine System eliminated application fees for domestic undergraduate students years ago, a spokesperson said. The University of Maine at Farmington was the first public university in the state to take the step, in 2014.

Today, the system offers other options for students to bypass the application process entirely, through a direct admissions program for Maine high school students and the Transfer ME program for Maine Community College System graduates.

Bowdoin in Brunswick began automatically waiving the fee for any student applying for financial aid, or any first generation student, back in 2016.

Bates applicants previously could use one of several forms to request a fee waiver. Weisenburger said the school would also just waive the cost if a student emailed to say it was a financial burden, but the complexity of the process is also part of what the college hopes to eliminate.

“It just seemed like the right moment to press play on something that we know to be a barrier and will provide relief, economically for families, but also de-escalating any stress a student might have in the process,” she said.

Weisenburger expects Bates to receive more applicants this year because of the change, although administrators don’t know exactly how many. The college received a record 10,029 applications in 2024.

To accommodate a potential increase, she said the college is prepared to increase the number of adjunct readers, which the school brings in each year seasonally to help review applications.