Admissions Blog

What Needs to Change in College Admissions

Posted on June 3, 2021 by Patrick O'Connor

The ups and downs of the quarantine gave college admissions officers and school counselors a taste of application life to come, as the birth rate for high school graduates continues to slide, and the need to develop new approaches to recruit students increases. As the profession continues to try and improve college access, and knowing that small differences can make a big difference, here are some considerations for both sides of the desk to ponder this summer over a well-deserved glass of lemonade:

Colleges—move your deadline dates. November 1 (early applications), January 1 (regular applications), and May 1 (many deposits) are all big dates in the college application world—and they all fell on a Sunday or a holiday this year. I don’t understand this, since the admissions offices weren’t open, and the vast majority of high school seniors had no access to counselors or other application helpers the day of and before the deadlines.

This needs to change. Yes, students need to be responsible, and should learn to plan ahead—but perhaps that lesson is better applied to deadlines for things they’ve done before (like papers), not with things they are doing for the first time (like applying to college). The first Tuesday in November, the second Tuesday in January, and the first Tuesday in May would solve this problem nicely, increasing the quality and quantity of applications to boot. Georgia Tech made the move, and they get kaboodles of applications. It’s an easy, but important, change.

High Schools—stop working holidays. Moving the January 1 deadline to a date when high schools are in session is also overdue for school counselors, who have taken a serious shellacking this year with all the student mental health issues arising from COVID. School counselors have always been overworked, but never able to use the December holidays to recover, since they were expected to help their students make January 1 college deadlines.

It’s time to take a stand. Assuming the colleges move their deadlines, counselors need to learn to let go. Send a note to all senior families early in November, letting them know your vacation is—well, a vacation. If you really can’t let go of your students for that long—or if the colleges unwisely cling to January 1– set two days of vacation for online office hours, and take a breath all the other days. You have mastered online office hours this year. Let them be your friend.

Colleges—keep innovating. One (and perhaps the only) upside of the quarantine was the ability of college admissions offices to adapt major chunks of their traditional approach to recruitment. Test optional, drive-thru tours, and online high school visits suggested it might be OK for everyone to get their hopes up, that some real college admissions reform was in the air.

Yes. Well.

In a post-vaccine world, we see more signs of returning to “normal” than creating new normal. Reinventing the entire admissions process is no easy feat, to be sure, but how hard might it be for admissions offices to spend half a day this summer doing “What ifs” to one part of the application process? Do that for five years, and you have a new admissions paradigm, and a more accessible one—the thing you say you keep wanting.

High schools— mental health and college access aren’t either/or. I will legitimately blow my top if I read one more post from a high school counselor insisting that the increase in COVID-related mental health needs makes it impossible to do any effective college counseling.

School counseling as a profession has long been showing a mental health bias at the expense of quality college counseling, and this year just seems to have widened the gap. Counselor training programs plant the seeds of this bias— training programs devote about 7 classes to mental health training, and none to college counseling—and all of this must stop, if only because the dichotomy is a false one.

Discouraged, depressed high school students light up like a hilltop church on Christmas Eve when I tell them college gives them a fresh start to life and learning, proof enough that college counseling affects mental health. That, plus the American School Counselor Association says college counseling is part of the job. Counselors truly are overworked, so they can’t do everything they want in any part of counseling. That said, college can still be part of a key to a better self. More counselors need to see that, and act on it.

Everyone—stop beating up on the Ivies. The Ivies and their equally tough-to-get-into institutions largely decided to go test optional this year. For some reason, this gave a lot of students with B averages the hope that they too could pahk the cah in the yahd, now that they didn’t have to reveal their test scores.

So—more students applied to the Ivies this year than last year. The Ivies didn’t admit more students this year than last year. That means their admit rate had to go down, and more students were denied.

That isn’t news—it’s math. And if you want to blame the Ivies for encouraging students to apply who didn’t really stand a chance of getting in, you’re going to need to make a thousand more jackets for that club. If you think the Ivies take too few Pell-eligible students, say that. If you think they admit too many legacies, stay that. But don’t beat them up for proving the laws of basic ratios. Any other college in their shoes would have to do the same thing. (Besides, it’s the national media who has left our society with the impression that there are only 25 colleges in America.)

Everyone—about Kiddos. It’s no secret that college is largely a time of youth, especially with the expansion of adolescence into the early twenties and beyond. But college is also a time to help young people embrace the opportunities of adulthood, skills and attitudes that sometimes require setting the desires of self to one side.

This goal would be more easily achieved if we saw students—and if they saw themselves– as capable of embracing a larger sense of self by referring to them as students, not Kiddos. They don’t need to grow up in a hurry or, with the right kind of help, succumb to the media images of college choice as a high stakes pressure cooker. But they also need something more than just a pat on the head and a verbal affirmation that’s the equivalent of a lollipop. Let’s try calling them students.

What to make of Tufts’ Early Decision Deadline Extension

Posted on November 17, 2020 by Admissions.Blog

While occasionally colleges extend application deadlines in response to hurricanes or other natural disasters, Tufts’ announcement in October that it would extend its Early Decision I (EDI) deadline from November 1 to November 17 in response to COVID-19 and various natural disasters didn’t pass the smell test.

It’s one thing to be or appear charitable by giving struggling students a few extra days or a week to complete their applications; yet, giving every applicant seventeen extra days to submit applications EDI is an extreme act that reeked of desperation.

Now, we are getting Common App data that supports our suspicions.

Inside Higher Ed shared that Common Application colleges are seeing average application declines of eight percent this fall. Meanwhile applications for first-generation students and those eligible for fee waivers are down sixteen percent so far. A full sixty percent of Common App colleges are seeing application declines. In addition Common App colleges and universities in the Northeast and Midwest experienced the steepest declines in application volume – down a full fourteen percent compared to last year.

While we don’t yet know if Tufts is one of the schools with application declines, by pushing its EDI deadline out nearly three weeks the university is signaling that it at least wanted more EDI applications to review for some reason (it could be a dip in application numbers, some other internal application target not being met by late October, and/or just the desire to make more money – after all, Tufts does charge $75/application).

This was all expected and is one of the main reasons why colleges were so fast to go SAT- or ACT-optional for members of the high school class of 2021. Colleges rightly worried that pandemic closure-induced job/income losses and the ongoing pandemic itself would scare students away from wanting to live and learn in close quarters far from home. This is an acute worry at second tier or lower colleges that cost a pretty penny to attend. Interestingly, with so many colleges now SAT- and ACT-optional it is likely that the biggest name colleges are benefitting most from the test-optional trend while others like Tufts that have more limited name-brand appeal are more likely to be overlooked by students newly-emboldened to apply to reach colleges they would have never considered if their SAT or ACT scores were any good.

For instance, let’s say you are a straight A student with a 1010 on the SAT; in a typical year you would never apply to anything other than your state university an a few others with relatively low test score averages. This year, you say to yourself, “I might as well put in an app or two to Harvard and Yale since they won’t look at my scores.” Notice how Tufts (or other similar schools) was not mentioned in such a hypothetical student’s line of reasoning. That’s because most college applicants have never heard of Tufts. Those who have are also probably holding off on applying EDI to Tufts when the school also offers EDII. This is because many typical EDI Tufts applicants are now going to try and swing for the fences at Brown, Penn, Princeton, or Harvard. Tufts likely finds itself in a doughnut hole of a situation.

January 2021 Update: Tufts is thrilled with itself because overall it got thirty-five percent more applications this admissions cycle compared to last year. Yet, in Tufts’ self-congratulatory press release, Tufts attempts to memory hole the fact that pushing back its ED deadline nearly three weeks probably played at least a small role in the increase. The main driver, of course, was Tufts’s decision to go test-optional, which resulted in HALF of Tufts applicants this cycle opting not to submit ACT or SAT scores with their applications! It will be interesting to learn what percentage of those accepted ultimately did or did not submit their SAT or ACT scores. As things stand now, it’s pretty clear that Tufts simply wanted to drive up its perceived selectivity as much as possible by driving down its top line acceptance rate and used test-optional applicants to do so. Should Tufts ultimately accept a significant percentage of its Class of 2025 via the test-optional pathway, how selective can Tufts really be considered? Maybe its acceptance rate will plummet, but, objectively, it will no longer be a college that prizes academic excellence above many other factors. This is because assessing a student by his or her grades in high school as they only measure of academic achievement denies reality that is obvious to most astute observers: most American high schools have become environments of rampant grade inflation and short-term self-esteem boosting and very little more. While SAT and ACT scores are imperfect measures of academic excellence, they are a least objective standardized measures that allow colleges to compare what applicants know upon submitting their application regardless of what curriculum applicants experienced in high school. Test optional colleges may still reject more students than they accept, but what they are basing their admissions decisions on is more akin to what those holding a velvet rope at a night club base their admissions decisions on than any sort of academic achievement metric.

Making a Calm College Decision

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Patrick O'Connor

This is typically the week many high school seniors are a little tense about their college plans. The last few colleges are sending out decisions this week, and they tend to be the colleges where the admit rates are a little less than getting struck by lightning, so the hopes are high, while the odds remain low.

Now that the big week is finally here, here’s a quick list of things you should focus on to make a quality decision for life after high school:

What you do with the college experience matters more than where you go. Most counselors save this advice for the end of articles like this, but these are unusual times. Chances are, if you’ve applied to a highly selective school, you have what it takes to do well there—it’s just that the college runs out of room before they run out of great applicants. This means that the talents, habits, interests, and way you look at the world has prepared you to do great things wherever you go. The college you attend won’t automatically make you a success; that will still be up to you. So your future will still be in your hands, no matter what the colleges have to say this week.

It looks like another record breaking year. There are fewer students graduating from high school this year, but that isn’t keeping many colleges from seeing new highs in applications—and some that are seeing declines are still admitting less than 20 percent of their applicants. Combined with an increase in the number of students many colleges took through early action and early decision plans, that leaves precious few seats to give out this week.

Yes, No, or Maybe, read the entire letter. A student I am close to—OK, it’s my son—was so happy to read he was admitted to his first choice school he didn’t bother to read page 2 of the acceptance letter. I did, and it’s a good thing, since it included information on the merit scholarship that made his attendance their possible. Other yes letters have information about when deposits are due, and those are important as well.

Letters that waitlist you are even more important to read, since staying on the list may require you to do something—email, send back a card, update your application—by a specific date. Even the letters of denial could give you information about transfer options that may now come into play. So read the letter from start to finish, and have a parent do the same.

Read, and update, your financial aid information. There’s a good chance all your colleges are going to be sending financial aid packages this week. These are based on the financial aid information you gave them two months ago, when the world was a quiet place, before the stock market lost 30 percent of its value—and possibly before you or your parents lost their job.

The only way a college will know your financial picture has changed is if you tell them, and this is college—so it’s not time to be shy. Pick up the phone, call financial aid, tell them your new story, and be ready to send supporting documents. You’re this close to making the dream real. Keep working.

File financial aid for the first time. It’s certainly true most colleges have given all their aid away to students who applied for it in February, but many of those students turn down packages, or go to a different school. If you now need help paying for college, get the forms in yesterday—check the college’s website to find out all the forms they need, and where you should send them. Calling to ask is an even better idea.

Ask for an extension to the May 1 deposit. Many colleges understand that this spring isn’t exactly normal, which is why they are moving their deposit deadlines to June 1 or later. If your college isn’t doing that, you can still call and request an extension for personal reasons. They might say no, but the only way they say yes is because you ask—kind of like the only way they admitted you is because you applied. Make. The. Call.

Apply to more colleges. Except for the Top 50, every college in this country is still taking applications for fall admission—and, as mentioned before, some will still have financial aid to offer you. If you’re looking at changing your college plans due to all the changes in the world, lots of colleges are eager to hear from you for the first time…

Consider transferring …and thanks to some pretty strong transfer options, you could still end up graduating from your dream school, even if you can’t start there. The best way to plan a transfer is to call the college where you want to finish, and ask about transfer options. Building the plan from the end means you know where to start, and what classes are best to take to minimize the credits you’ll lose when you make the shift. Ask for transfer admissions when you call.

Talk to your counselor. One upside of all of this is that counselors now have more time than ever to talk college with you, since they don’t have to do lunch duty. I know, I know—they have 8,000 students on their caseload, and they might not know you well. They will once you tell them who you are, and what you need—and that window is now more wide open than ever before. Most schools have sent students direction on how to reach out to counselors. As is the case with most things in life, what you do with that information is now up to you.

Boston College Regular Decision Acceptance Rate Now 22%

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Admissions.Blog

Boston College will notify Regular Decision applicants of their admissions decisions via email on Thursday evening, March 19, 2020. Admitted students in the United States will be mailed acceptance packets in the days that follow. Admitted students with permanent addresses overseas, and those not earning admission, will receive email notifications only.

Boston College had 1,325 spots to fill from a Regular Decision applicant pool of 26,700. To hit its enrollment goals, BC produced a Regular Decision acceptance rate of twenty-two percent. The mean composite SAT for Regular Decision admits was 1467 and the mean composite ACT score was 34. Admitted students come from forty-nine U.S. states and two US territories and seventy-eight different countries.

Overall, Boston College received roughly 29,400 applications for 2,325 openings in the Class of 2024. One thousand of these spaces were filled via Early Decision, which resulted in an ED admissions rate of thirty-seven percent. BC switched from Early Action to Early Decision during this admissions cycle. Last year, BC’s overall acceptance rate (when it offered EA and RD) was twenty-seven percent.

Meanwhile, BC will offer 6,500 students a spot on it waiting list, which the university acknowledges, “feels large;” yet, BC felt it “necessary given the many uncertainties facing society this year.”

Tulane Shares Class of 2024 Early Decision and Early Action Stats

Posted on January 22, 2020 by Admissions.Blog

Tulane University has shared news about its Class of 2024 applicants who applied Early Decision and Early Action.

Tulane received 27% more Early Decision applicants this cycle compared to last cycle, according to Jeff Schiffman, Tulane’s Director of Admission.

“For an estimated freshman class of around 1,875 students, we admitted 631 students under our Early Decision I plan, for slightly over one-third of the incoming class. Of our ED group 30% were students of color or international.” added Schiffman. That latter statistic is a thirty percent increase since 2016.

Meanwhile, Tulane also admitted 3,725 students under its non-binding Early Action round of admission.

To put the most recent numbers in greater context, Schiffman shared that in, “2017, the percentage of students who accepted Tulane’s offer of admission (the yield rate) was 25.4%. Because this percentage increased to 34.0% by 2019, we have not been able to offer admission to as many students as we have in the past. Over these same years, the admission rate decreased from 21.2% to 12.87%. The average number of enrolled students in the freshman class over the past five years was 1,875, and we are planning for a class of a similar size this year.”

When sharing information about Tulane’s Early Decision stats for the latest admissions cycle Schiffman did not differentiate between Tulane’s Early Decision I (EDI) and Early Decision II (EDII) numbers. While Tulane has offered EDII of late, it doesn’t regularly publicize EDII as an application option until late in any given calendar year.

If you got into Tulane, well done! Have you bought some Tulane swag yet?

Villanova Releases Early Action Stats for Class of 2024

Posted on January 15, 2020 by Admissions.Blog

Villanova University’s Michael M. Gaynor, Executive Director of Undergraduate Admission, has shared news this morning as the university releases its Early Action decisions later today.

According to Gaynor, Villanova received 13,353 Early Action applications for its Class of 2024. When all was said and done, Villanova’s Early Action admit rate for this admissions cycle was 25.3%.

Gaynor indicated that of those accepted to Villanova EA this cycle, the middle 50% weighted GPA on a traditional 4.00 scale was between 4.20 and 4.53, the middle 50% of SAT scores were between 1420 and 1510, and the middle 50% of ACT scores were between 32 and 34.

Meanwhile, earlier this admissions cycle Villanova received 1,053 Early Decision applications and the university anticipates that approximately 36% of its Class of 2024 will be accepted Early Decision. As of this time, Villanova has not provided its ED acceptance rate for this admissions cycle.

Villanova became quite selective two years ago when it instituted Early Decision for the first time. Yet, this admissions cycle, even the most hyper-selective colleges have experienced application declines and/or acceptance rate increases ED/REA/SCEA.

If you got into Villanova, well done! Now celebrate, by wearing your college colors!

College Counseling: The Year in Review

Posted on December 17, 2019 by Patrick O'Connor

There are many years in the college counseling world that come and go without a lot of fanfare, but this certainly wasn’t one of them. Thanks to America’s ever-growing fascination with the college application process, counseling received more than its share of the limelight in 2019. Here are the highlights:

The Scandal Known as Varsity Blues Leave it to a small group of parents with way more dollars than sense, and a con man feigning to be an independent college counselor, to create even more angst over selective college selection than ever before. Since this story involved Hollywood, money, and some of the three schools the New York Times considers representative of the world of college admissions, way too much time and energy was devoted to understanding what this kerfuffle meant to college admissions as a whole. The average high school senior takes the SAT once and goes to college within 150 miles of home. Varsity Blues meant nothing to them. The same should have been true for the rest of us; instead, this issue is now running neck and neck with Popeye’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich for the year’s Story That Wasn’t Award.

Change to NACAC Ethics Code It made fewer headlines, but the Justice Department’s investigation into NACAC’s Code of Ethics could prove to have far more implications to the college plans of seniors than Varsity Blues could hope to. With colleges now allowed to offer incentives for students to apply early, and with colleges able to continue to pursue students who have committed to another college, the May 1 deposit date is still in effect, but may prove to have significantly less effect.

College Testing and the University of California The value of the SAT and ACT popped up in the headlines all year, as even more colleges decided test scores no longer had to be part of their application process. At year’s end, the test optional movement got a big media splash, as the University of California announced it was reviewing its testing policy. Combined with a lawsuit filed against the UCs claiming the tests are discriminatory, it’s clear that business as usual in the college application process is on its way out. Will more changes ensue?

The Harvard Case and Race Affirmative action advocates celebrated a legal victory this fall when a court ruled Harvard’s admissions procedures do, and may, use race as a factor in reviewing college applications. The case drew national attention in part because it was initiated by a group claiming Harvard didn’t admit enough students of Asian descent. It’s likely to stay in the headlines when the decision is ultimately appealed to the US Supreme Court, a group that, as it currently stands, has been known to be highly skeptical of race-based programs—meaning this year’s lower court victory could be pyrrhic at best.

Improved Research on College Counseling Academic research has never gotten its due in the world of school counseling, and that’s certainly true in the more specific field of college counseling. That trend may be changing, as a report from Harvard lays the groundwork for a more data-based approach to measure the difference counselors make in their work. The findings include an indication that counselors tend to be more effective in college counseling if the counselor was raised in the same area where they work, and, as a rule, are more helpful providing information to the student about the college the counselor attended. The report suggests this may be due to undertraining in college admissions as part of counselor education programs– to which most of the counseling world replied, no kidding. Look for more to come here.

Billions More for More Counselors, But Who Cares It’s hard to remember the need for more counselors was one of the favorite topics of the media just two years ago. A sign of American’s true indifference—or short attention span—rests with a congressional bill that provides up to $5 billion for new school counselor positions, a bill that is currently languishing in committee. Is this bill a victim of an absence of school shootings, impeachment, or both? Given what it can do, is there really any reason this bill can’t be a focus of action in 2020? That’s really up to us.

How to Recover from Early Decision or Early Action Rejection

Posted on December 3, 2019 by Craig

Depending on when you are reading this, you may be just days away from learning whether or not you have earned early action or early decision admission to your top choice college or university. Or you may have just gotten the news you dreaded most.

If you get in, celebrate and congratulate yourself (and all those who have supported you) for such a terrific achievement.

If you don’t get in, don’t flip out! It is human nature to become quite sad when one does not get what one wants. We all handle disappointment differently, so some of you who are rejected may scream, cry, or stay in bed all day, while others may simply go for a run, workout at the gym, or eat a lot of ice cream.

While you can react in any of the above ways in the moments and hours immediately following bad news, I suggest that you reengage with the college admissions process quickly in order to increase your chances of getting acceptance letters from colleges that you have applied to (or will apply to) regular decision.

Make sure to finish up your applications strong before your regular decision college application deadlines. Make sure to request on that your transcripts be sent to regular decision colleges if you have not already done so. And make sure to have CollegeBoard and/or ACT, Inc. send your test scores promptly to all colleges still pending on your list.

Watch below for some more tips on how to recover from ED/EA rejection.

How to Respond to an Early Decision or Early Action Deferral

Posted on December 2, 2019 by Craig

Don’t become devastated by an Early Decision or Early Action admissions deferral. Fight back and earn your spot at the college of your dreams.

If the college or university that defers you remains one of your top choice colleges, there are a number of steps you can take to give yourself a fighting chance for regular decision. Watch the video below or read on to find out how.

-Write directly to the admissions office informing it that this college or university is still your number one choice, that you appreciate the fact that you will be up for consideration for admission again in the regular admissions cycle, and that you would definitely attend if accepted.

-Make sure that you keep the admissions office updated with any and all new developments since your initial application. Any new honors, grades, scores, activities, and awards are worth mentioning in this letter. Make sure that your high school counselor sends out your new transcript promptly at the end of the first semester ( or 2nd Trimester). This means that you want to keep earning very high grades for the duration of your senior year.

-Depending on the school, sometimes deferred candidates can interview again or for the first time. Find out if this is an option by contacting the admissions office. The very act of calling to ask shows that you are still eager to attend.

-Remain positive in all communications with this college or university and with your school counselor and communicate to your school counselor how much you still want the opportunity to attend this college or university.

-Contact all contacts that you have talked with through the college admissions process that are in any way related to this college or university. Remind them that you are still dedicated to this college or university and ask them if they have any recommendations as to how you can demonstrate your continued commitment to this college or university.

Finally, make sure to complete your remaining applications (and interviews) to a very high standard. Make sure that you have safety schools on your list that excite you. This will give you more college options come March/April.