The Big Ten has a long-standing policy of not pursuing schools not named Notre Dame. It receives applications for sure.
Some are accepted and some are not.
Bwahahahahahha
That's not how it works. That's not how ANY of this works.
B1G has a short list for expansion and is in communication with those schools through back channels at any given time. So does the SEC, of course.
Then when the conference announces "we're considering expansion" the backroom deals are almost all, already worked out. This is the only way it could possibly work because otherwise either the B1G, or one of the target schools, could end up looking foolish.
We saw exactly that happen when Mizzou begged for admittance. They were accidentally caught up in the web, because they were a school that "applied" when they weren't on the B1G's short list and no back channel communications had occurred.