The Coronavirus and Admissions
Coronavirus & Online Learning: An Opportunity
March 19, 2020Question of the Day: SAT & ACT
March 23, 2020[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ffC17JEiQ[/embedyt]
Updates on Essays, Testing, and High School and College Operations
3/28 Update: Shifting Sands or Wobbly Legs?
Last week, I wrote that colleges would over-admit (more than usual) this year. This week, the Wall Street Journal covered the issue. They also concluded that “students…awaiting decisions from colleges across the selectivity spectrum can expect higher acceptance rates….”
I believe this will also be true for students on the waitlist. A national survey found that over 25% of students are considering staying closer to home. The international admissions picture is a mess, and more students are considering taking gap years. It will be a slow-moving and volatile admissions cycle.
Looking longer-term, a great many colleges will have under-enrollment next year. This is likely to hasten the inevitable closing of many colleges and universities. I advise you to consider the financial health of an institution before committing.
Updates on Essays, Testing, and High School and College Operations
The TOEFL & International Admissions
The ETS has rolled out an at-home version of the GRE and, more importantly, the Test of English as a Foreign Language. The exam will be video proctored, which may throttle the pipeline. International students were facing a canceled TOEFL, travel restrictions, and visa issues (closed consulates mean no visa interviews). This removes one major impediment. It is unknown whether the US state department will work to accommodate students.
This may or may not hurt domestic students competing for slots in programs with high international enrollment. It is too early to tell.
Test-Optional
We’ve seen a jump in colleges going test-optional for admissions, mostly small colleges and regional universities. Some bigger names like Case Western, Tufts, and Boston University have followed suit. (although the bigger names have only committed to between one and three years as a trial).
As a rule, schools going test-optional are those that have nothing to lose. On the low end, high acceptance rate colleges (many of which are quite good) go test-optional to bump their application numbers and yield. At the high end, colleges like Wake Forest or the University of Chicago have the resources to be selective and test-optional. Both types of institutions cite the same reason: the democratization of education, and there is some truth to that. But there is also institutional benefit: money at the low-end, image at the high-end.
The big part of the bell curve, the colleges in the middle, are most dependent on tests: they need them for both practical and ranking reasons.
Colleges in the middle are selective, but they lack the resources to vet every application in committee format. Scores expedite the inclusion/exclusion process. Colleges never admit to this, of course. It is also true that a lackluster test score does not exclude an otherwise excellent applicant.
Colleges have a playground crush on the ranking system. They kick its shins when their friends are looking but cozy up to it in private. For no good reason, save convenience, ACT & SAT scores are a significant part of rankings. That’s why colleges give big scholarships for high scores, even though test scores are a weak predictor of college success.
I don’t mind test-optional admissions. In fact, in a perfect world, my job wouldn’t exist. I do think there are flaws in the ethical arguments, practical difficulties, and questions of how “optional” is optional. I’ll discuss the test-optional dilemma further in the coming weeks.
Above all, planning on test-optional is restricting where you can apply. Hoping that your dream school goes test-optional is a terrible idea. Never hang your future on a single hope, because that hope will become fear.
Transcripts
Many high schools are transitioning to pass/fail or not giving credit at all. For the class of 2020, the latter is the issue, federal financial aid requires a high school diploma. I’m not concerned about this. If the federal government change policy, state legislatures will change graduation requirements. In truth, American education policy abhors disruption and is indifferent to accomplishment. Don’t rock the boat comes in well ahead of education.
AP & IB Considerations
I cover that on my education update.
Graduate School
For the most part, graduate school admissions are complete for this year. As I wrote last week, programs that are mostly or entirely domestic students had little to worry about. Programs with heavy international enrollment are breathing easier with the rollout of the home-based TOEFL. They still face the issues of travel restrictions and visas, but things are looking up.
Students applying for 2021 may have a different application experience. Many graduate programs have looked at dropping the GRE, and the move makes sense for quite a few programs. It is unlikely that programs requiring quantitative research (most social sciences) or STEM programs will follow suit. The same is true for professional programs, like PA, vet, and PT school.
There may be a spike in graduate business programs going test-optional, but I don’t expect a broad shift. The GMAT is rolling out an in-home version next month, and business schools have a test-free path, the executive MBA. Business school applicants tend to be older, and programs want to see how your verbal and quantitative skills have held up. Finally, business schools market on prestige and exclusivity. They may worry that test-optional admissions would be bad for their image.
I doubt the value of the LSAT, but I also doubt it will go away. It is a well-entrenched exam. By some estimates, the LSAT score represents about 80% of the weight in an admissions decision.
The MCAT, DAT, and PCAT are metrics of a student’s ability to handle the level and scope of the coursework. They are tests of minimum educational competence. You have to have a fundamental knowledge of biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, etc. to succeed in those programs.
Professional programs have yet another angle for keeping admissions exams. The LSAT, MCAT, DAT, PCAT. and GRE (in some cases) are used in admissions to programs that prepare students for a licensed profession. Students need to be able to pass licensure exams, be they board or bar. Passage and placement rates are important for all programs.
3/19 Update: Shifting Sands or Wobbly Legs?
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LJ6CAhTpUs[/embedyt]
In a lot of ways, the admissions cycle never ends. As one group gets its acceptance letters, the next slog through entrance exams and dreads their applications. There’s no precedent for our current predicament and there are a ton of variables in play at the institutional and at the program level. I’m going to tell you what I know and what I think are some reasonable conclusions.
There are two categories of students affected: those finishing the process and those beginning the process.
Starting the Process
Testing & Distance Learning
I already wrote about the testing issue for graduate and undergraduate students. I’d recommend you check it out. I also wrote an article on how to best use your new flexibility to boost your applications.
College Visits
Schools have suspended campus tours and info sessions. To me, that’s not a big deal. People often have skewed priorities when they look at colleges. All too often, students and families look at colleges like they’re buying a home. The natural beauty of the campus should not be a primary consideration, for example. Intangibles should rank far behind brand name, quality, size, location, and value. Rank those in any way you choose, but, for most students, those should be the key variables.
A part of me, the cynical part, dislikes college tours. Campus visits are the keystone of every college’s recruitment efforts. Marketing and business journals actually publish papers on how colleges can maximize the financial benefit of their college tours, and specialized consultants ply their trade on campuses nationwide.
Tours are polished and choreographed pieces of salesmanship. They are not a holistic picture of the institution. One study even found an inverse correlation between the importance of the tour as a deciding factor and the student’s satisfaction with the institution. In other words, the more important the student found the tour, the less happy they were with their choice of college.
The other part of me thinks tours are important for several reasons. Tours make the college process “feel real” to students. There is something to be said for walking around campuses and getting a feel for what you like and don’t like. There’s also valuable information on the tour and presentations. Most of all, the conversations students have with their families on the way to and from tours make a world of difference. It’s good for both students and parents to discuss money, logistics, independent life, and the future.
No College Visits: What to Do
Get online and look around at what colleges have to show you. Colleges and media companies are working nonstop to rollout augmented online “campus tours”. You’re less likely to fall for any whitewashing in an online format than in person. Don’t stop with the official sources. Get on reddit or discussion boards and see what current students say–especially students in your program/major. If you’re hard set on-campus tours, It’s likely real tours will resume this summer. Make time to sit down with your student or parents and look together. Have those all-important conversations. They’ll work just as well in the living room as they do in the car.
I Can’t Get Started
If you can’t get going on college or grad school apps, remember it’s your life. Ultimately, it’s your responsibility. Break the gigantic task of choosing where to apply and how you’ll apply into small, actionable steps. It’s also true that we put off things that we’re afraid of, I know I have, so you may want to think about what is holding you back. We suffer a lot more in our imagination than in reality. If you feel like you need an objective perspective, contact us.
Activities, Interviews, Volunteering, & Everything Else
Please don’t stress that your spring season/musical/community service project is canceled. Everyone is in this position, choose to see it as freeing and find some new and interesting things to do. Not only will new activities give you new skills–hopefully for life–but you’ll probably have something interesting to put down on your application. You may even get an essay out of it. At the end of the day, Netflix binges don’t turn into acceptance letters.
Alumni interviews for college are often conducted via phone or Skype. If in-person interviews aren’t possible those options will be available.
Volunteering is tricky. On one hand, this is a great opportunity for you to distinguish yourself while helping out your community. That said, infected but asymptomatic young people were largely responsible for spreading the virus in China. Use discretion, be careful (if not for yourself then others), and consider ways to help that limit your exposure.
AP & IB exams haven’t had any announced changes yet, so plan like they are going ahead on the dates given. That said, you’ll need to work harder and smarter to get the scores you want. As things develop, I’ll revisit this issue. In the interim, if you need help with advanced coursework, contact us.
If you’re a college student, nail your grades this semester… if you have them. It’s likely your college/university will go to a pass/fail for the semester but don’t bank on it. If they do go pass/fail, don’t coast. This is especially true in courses in your major or that require cumulative knowledge. For example, if you’re in pre-calc and you have to take calculus, don’t use online calculators to do your homework, quizzes, and exams. It’s going to put you at a serious disadvantage in the next term.
Don’t worry that you can’t work in the lab, or with your poli sci professor. Everyone else is suffering the same fate. Continue looking for summer research programs or internships (if you haven’t secured one) and plan as though they’ll be unaffected.
Again, you are all in the same boat. Use this time to work, explore, and develop. This is an opportunity.
Overall, the current climate isn’t a good thing for graduate admissions officers or their undergrad counterparts. But, I don’t expect immediate action. While colleges and universities believe that COVID is a major problem, there’s not enough information for them to act at this juncture.
Furthermore, they have bigger fish to fry. March is a big month for college admissions, particularly at schools of moderate to high selectivity. Right now, college and graduate school admissions officers are preoccupied with filling next year’s class. They will stay focused on next year’s class while they wait on the situation to settle out.
Waiting On Acceptances
I often tell families that the admissions process is a black box. Colleges don’t publicize what they do more than they have to. Further, there is usually a bit of cognitive dissonance (sometimes even dishonesty) between what colleges say and what they do. But, colleges have a very predictable need which allows us to partially predict their behavior.
Like Goldilocks, admissions officers need to convert the “just right” number of accepted students into attending students. Too hot and you’ve got too many students and colleges scramble to convert dorms, deal with classroom sizes, etc. Too cold and there aren’t enough bodies and college runs a fiscal deficit, with underpopulated dorms and half-empty classes.
At present, most colleges have moved their admitted students days online. These post-admission visits are a great sales tool for colleges and programs, and admissions officers are losing sleep over how their numbers will be affected.
While few, colleges will have a comparative advantage over their peers in this environment, admissions officials have to wonder what the effect will be. Without that “second pitch” to students and families, may students trend towards the familiar?
I think the effect will be greater on colleges and universities that pull students from far away, both domestically and internationally. These are typically selective and highly selective institutions. If the crisis drags on, students may decide to stick closer to home or pursue online education, at least initially.
Larger universities–typically public–already have infrastructure in place to offer up to two years of credits online. Smaller, well-funded, colleges can quickly transition.
Colleges are starting to respond. Companies that specialize in “online experiences” have been working around the clock to create virtual tours, and virtual admitted students days. Administrators are re-tooling their presentations to fit the shorter attention span of the video viewer. Most importantly, many colleges are beginning to extend their acceptance deadlines after May 1.
While I don’t think this will result in added financial aid for most students, students who accept early may get an added boost to housing and scheduling options freshmen year. If students are accepting slower, you’re bound to be close to the front of the line.
This may be an advantageous year to be on the waiting list. There will be more reshuffling of students than usual, and more students may come off the waiting list. If you’re on a waiting list, continue to communicate with the college, but do so tactfully and strategically (contact us for advice).
A Note about Graduate School Admissions
