HERSHEY — Penn State University said it’s on pace to receive a record number of applications.

President Rodney Erickson told the board of trustees on Friday that the university anticipates getting about 125,000 applications this year for its main and branch campuses. That would be an increase of 2.5 percent over the previous record set in 2011, the year former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was indicted on child sexual-abuse charges.

Applications were flat in 2012 and plunged 7 percent in 2013. The school has received 9,000 more undergraduate applications so far this cycle than at the same time last year.