Update 3/19: Coronavirus & Admissions Shifting Sands or Wobbly Legs?

Coronavirus: College & High School Update 3/29
April 9, 2020
Flip the Script: One Thing to Put You Ahead in Admissions
April 9, 2020

[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. That’s not a big deal to me. Families have skewed priorities when they look at colleges, and they 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

Graduate schools will likely either be barely affected or greatly affected. Graduate programs that admit a high percentage of international students will be most affected, for travel as well as practical reasons (the TOEFL is not currently being administered in most nations). Other programs that have a more regional, or domestic, appeal won’t have as many issues filling out their classes. If the closures continue, many programs will have difficulty moving necessary functions and curriculum online. In some cases, like Medical/PA/PT school, it would be impossible. 

It seems illogical, but smaller class sizes are at greater risk of over or under-enrollment. In a smaller law school or med school with a 1st year class of about 100, a loss of 20 students is a 20 percent drop. You can imagine the effect on a grad program of 50 or less. Whether grad schools will relax admissions is an open and unanswerable question, and it will be up to each program to make that determination

I’ll continue to write and shoot videos about admissions and the corona virus as this develops. In the interim, feel free to contact us for help. Remember, we always answer questions for free.

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