by Brett E. Kennedy, Managing Director
As May 1 nears and many college bound students are preparing to make the decision as to where they will attend college this fall, we can take a moment and reflect back on what this year’s admissions and aid process has looked like. It has been quite a wild ride!
Students and their families were faced with navigating the admission process in a pandemic. For many high school students, that meant remote learning for their high school classes with many high school extracurricular activities cancelled. For the most part, everything from the marching band to the robotics club was put on hold. Many high schools moved to pass-fail grading. Taking the ACT or the SAT became very difficult to do in a safe way with test administrations being cancelled or postponed.
Colleges also had to map out how to handle traditional admission recruiting when most campuses were closed to visitors. Many campuses had their admissions staff work remotely and recruitment travel was cancelled or significantly reduced. If the high schools were closed in the pandemic, why would an admissions counselor visit a city? Certainly, colleges were creative in offering virtual tours and information sessions by Zoom but this was a whole new way of recruiting an applicant pool. Was an interview over Zoom the same as taking an in-person tour? Recognizing the challenges in taking the ACT or the SAT, many colleges moved to being test-score optional for at least this admissions cycle. Colleges were faced with making admission decisions with an unprecedented number of unknown factors for each applicant.
What was the impact of this decision? The impact has depended, often, on the level of selectivity of the college. Super-selective colleges, like Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Stanford and the like, saw meteoric increases in applications for admission. In a test score optional year, many students rolled the dice and tried to get into these rarefied institutions. Unfortunately, many of these applicants were not strong candidates for these super-selective colleges. Strangely, the year that test score optional admissions was rolled out on a large scale will probably be the most selective year ever for many colleges with higher standards to gain admission. The simple truth is that the decision to apply to the most selective colleges by many was not well thought out.
Most of the super-selective colleges and the flagship state universities like the University of Maryland College Park, the University of Virginia, the University of Alabama, the University of Oregon and the rest appear poised to have more than enough new, incoming students. One analyst has suggested that the second and third tier state colleges that often have directional names like the East, West, North and South may have some challenges in recruiting a sufficient number of students. Of course, the enrollment-driven smaller and less well-known private colleges across the nation continue to be challenged to generate applications and, in turn, enrollments. In fact, the NACAC College Openings report has already shared that more than 200 colleges are still accepting applications for admission in the days before May 1. NACAC only expects the list to grow in the days and weeks ahead.
What does all this craziness mean for students? Students and families need to understand the absurdity of an admissions process where the advent of large-scale test score optional admission creates the most selective year for higher education. The simple reality is that students need to consider a wide variety of colleges with differing levels of selectivity, differing cultures and differing things that they value. I can help a student find colleges that are an academic fit, a social fit and a financial fit. Reach out today so that I can share how I can help.