Admissions Blog

Undergraduate Admissions Uncensored

FAFSA failure leaving families in the lurch

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The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which so many college applicants, students, their families depend on in order to acquire much-needed aid for the cost of a college education, has completely failed this admissions cycle after undergoing a botched redesign and relaunch by the US Department of Education.

In response to the announcement that FAFSA applicant information will not be available to colleges until March, the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) and other associations are urging colleges to extend their enrollment and financial aid deadlines beyond the traditional May 1 reply-by date.  This is to ensure students and families have time to consider their financial options before making enrollment decisions. In response to the FAFSA delay, NACAC CEO Angel Pérez also issued a statement.

While the U.S. Department of Education announced a FAFSA College Support Strategy to provide additional personnel, funding, resources, and technology to help colleges process student data and deliver financial aid, this doesn’t make things any easier for students and parents waiting for financial aid packages from colleges and universities.

Many estimate most colleges won’t be able to deliver final financial aid packages to students and families until late March at the earliest. Every American college and university traditionally tries to provide financial aid packages as early as possible after a student is admitted in order to entice a student and his or her family to commit to attend and deposit. The failure of the FAFSA this admissions cycle is causing massive headaches and heartburn for college administrators everywhere, but particularly at colleges that harness aid to spur matriculations and maintain enrollment numbers that are the lifeblood of the vast majority of institutions.

While the Department of Education has extended the FAFSA submission deadline to June 30, that really doesn’t help colleges that traditionally need the bulk of committed students to deposit by May 1. Most selective colleges have not extended their financial aid application deadlines anywhere close to June 30, and many high school seniors want to be finished deciding where they plan to go to college by no later than the traditional reply-by date of May 1 so that they can focus prom, the end of senior year, and the joy of high school graduation. The failure of the FAFSA has the potential to cast a pall over all of these typical rights of passage.

While a number of colleges have also extended their financial aid application deadlines and pushed by their commitment deadlines to May 15 or June 1, which is unprecedented, others, like Elon University, are doing their best provide preliminary financial aid packages to students based on data received from the CSS-PROFILE.

Ultimately, with the dream of a simpler FAFSA having turned into a nightmare, the FAFSA breakdown and delays are causing the most pain and suffering to students and parents who desperately want the information they need in order to end their college application processes once and for all and with the peace of mind that they’ve selected the best institutions in alignment with both family goals and family budgets.

UMass to Release Regular Decision Notifications on March 5

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UMass Amherst will release Regular Decision (RD) admissions decisions on the evening on Tuesday, March 5, 2024.

In the past, UMass Amherst released RD decisions in waves. This year, all RD applicants will receive their decisions on the same date. RD applicants will receive an e-mail letting them know an admissions decision has been posted. Students are instructed to log into their UMass Amherst admissions portal to check their posted admission decision on the “Student Status” page. RD applicants will receive one of three decisions: Admit, Waitlist, or Deny.

UMass will invite all accepted students to campus shortly after decisions are released.

Earlier this cycle UMass announced that it received a record 30,000+ Early Action applications.

Boston College Accepts 28% of Early Decision II Applicants

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Early Decision II applicants to Boston College will be notified of whether or not they’ve been admitted this evening, Tuesday, February 6, 2024. The news will be delivered through applicants’ Applicant Status Portals, and admitted students living in the United States will also receive paper copies of their admission packets through the US Postal Service.

Boston College reviewed 1,500 Early Decision II applications and anticipates enrolling approximately 415 students from this round. Approximately one quarter of applicants will be deferred to Regular Decision. Given the strong academic profile of BC’s Early Decision applicants this year, the university has extended a slightly larger number of offers during the Early Decision rounds. As of late, Early Decision applicants to Boston College are accepted at roughly twice the rate as Regular Decision applicants.

Total applications to Boston College have remained relatively consistent with last year’s volume. More than 35,000 students have submitted first-year applications, and BC’s admissions committee is currently reviewing 31,000 applications for Regular Decision. Last year BC received a total of 36,537 applications. This year’s Regular Decision notifications will be released in March. BC’s application totals by round for the 2023-2024 admissions cycle, are as follows:

Early Decision I 2,808
Early Decision II 1,493
Regular Decision 31,173
Total 35,474
BC has also announced that its financial aid staff will use the data that families submit via the CSS Profile to provide financial aid awards to those admitted this admissions cycle. While these awards don’t yet include specific funding sources and won’t until BC receives FAFSA data, the award amounts will be accurate. Students and families can confidently use any awards that come with acceptance letters to make their decisions. Once BC receives the data from the FAFSA, which is currently delayed due to U.S. Department of Education incompetence, awards will be updated to note whether the scholarships, loans, and employment opportunities in their awards come from federal, state or BC sources.

Dartmouth to Request SAT or ACT for First-Year Applicants Again

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Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College has announced that it will yet again require high school students in the United States to share either an SAT or ACT score as part of their application for admission. The change takes effect for students applying for Fall 2025 admission (those students who will begin their applications in Summer or Fall 2024).

“The reactivation [of the test-required policy] has been modeled on a very comprehensive research study by a group of faculty,” said Lee Coffin, Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, in an interview with The Dartmouth.

“We’re getting more and more applications from all around the world, and so in order to find high achieving students, test scores turn out to be a really helpful tool,” said Bruce Sacerdote, Dartmouth Class of ’90, who was part of the research group of faculty. “Our analysis shows that we potentially miss out on some great applicants when we don’t have [test scores].”

“Social science has a concept called the ceiling effect,” Coffin said. “When you plot people in a curve, there’s a cluster at the top of the curve. That’s our applicant pool. Most of the people who apply to Dartmouth are straight A students.”

The New York Times has shared more motivations for the decision, here is the working group’s report, and Dartmouth’s full updated standardized testing expectations for first year applicants, which actually are different depending on whether an applicant goes to high school in the US or goes to high school outside of the US. To learn more about what this means going forward, get my thoughts in the video below.

Tulane reduces number of students accepted Early Decision II

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Tulane’s Gibson Hall

Tulane will release Early Decision II (EDII) notifications to first-year applicants on Monday, February 5, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and just as during Tulane’s Early Decision I (EDI) round, Tulane has reduced the number of EDII acceptances to provide more opportunities for students – particularly those from first generation or low/middle income backgrounds – who did not feel comfortable making a binding commitment to Tulane. Tulane has also intentionally left more space in its entering class to admit students who were deferred in its Early Action round or who applied Regular Decision.

According to Tulane’s admissions office, those accepted EDII had an average core unweighted GPA of 3.62 and an average standardized test score – for those who submitted a score at all – of 1450 on the SAT and 32 on the ACT. First generation students and students from Louisiana also make up a larger percentage of the accepted student cohort than they did last year, while international numbers held steady.

Tulane also prioritized avoided waitlisting students EDII applicants who were deferred in the Early Action round as to not leave them in limbo for a second time. For the most part, students who applied Early Action and converted to EDII will be accepted, denied, or offered a nonbinding spot in Tulane’s Spring Scholars through which students start their Tulane experience in Rome, London, Barcelona, Paris, or Tokyo. Spring Scholars have until May 1st to enroll, so they have plenty of time to consider their options.

4 Free Resources to Prep Students for the New Digital SAT Debuting March 9

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On Saturday, March 9, 2024, the SAT is going digital for American test-takers the first time in almost 100 years! Two million students take the SAT every year, and the transition from a paper-based to digital format marks a huge change to the college entrance exam. 

The new 2024 Digital SAT will be unlike any previous paper-based SAT exam. Here are a few of the key differences: 

(1) Digital Platform 

The Digital SAT will be administered on the College Board’s Bluebook app. This is a testing platform that will allow students to take the Digital SAT online. However, students will not take the SAT at home. Instead, parents still need to sign up their child for a test date to take the Digital SAT at an approved testing center just as they did for the old, paper-based SAT. Students will have the option to take the Digital SAT on their own laptop or use a device from the testing center. 

(2) Adaptive Testing 

The Digital SAT is adaptive. However, the Digital SAT is not like many adaptive standardized tests such as the GMAT or the GRE that get harder or easier based on your answer to the previous question. Instead, the Digital SAT adapts module by module, not question by question. This means the second module’s difficulty level is based on your performance in the first module. If you perform well in the first module (on either SAT Reading and Writing or SAT Math), the second module related to that subject will present more difficult questions. This will give you the opportunity to attain a higher score overall. Conversely, if you perform poorly in the first module (on either SAT Reading and Writing or SAT Math), the second module related to that subject will present less difficult questions. This will limit your opportunity to achieve a higher score overall. 

(3) New Question Types 

There are many new question types on the Digital SAT that were not on the previous paper-based SAT exam. These include the following: 

  • The SAT Writing section now includes “Rhetorical Synthesis” questions that measure a student’s ability to selectively extract information from bullet point notes to achieve a writing goal. 
  • The SAT Reading section now includes “Command of Evidence” questions that measure a student’s ability to use both written and numerical data to draw conclusions.
  • The SAT Math section now includes “Probability and conditional probability” questions that had previously been removed on the paper-based SAT. 

Shaan Patel is the Founder and CEO of Prep Expert.

To get ready for the Digital SAT, here are 4 free resources you can use to prepare: 

(1) College Board Bluebook App 

Download the College Board’s testing app at https://bluebook.collegeboard.org. This application contains multiple full-length College Board practice SAT exams that contain official test questions. 

(2) Khan Academy’s Website 

Visit the Khan Academy’s official website at https://khanacademy.org. Navigate to the section of the website that is dedicated to “Digital SAT.” Here you will find College Board SAT questions that you potentially have not seen before. 

(3) College Board’s Website 

Visit the College Board’s official website: https://www.collegeboard.org/. Navigate to the section of the website that is dedicated to “Digital SAT Practice and Preparation.” Here you will find College Board SAT questions that you potentially have not seen before. 

(4) Prep Expert’s Digital SAT Book Launch Event 

Attend my Digital SAT Book Launch online webinar at https://prepexpert.com/booklaunch. I am hosting an online book launch event on Sunday, March 3 to release my new book Prep Expert Digital SAT Playbook. The webinar is free to attend and I will share test prep tips for parents and students on how to ace the new Digital SAT! At this online book launch webinar event, you will learn the most powerful tools to maximize scores on the new Digital SAT. In addition, attendees will also receive free bonus chapters, masterclasses, cheat sheets, practice tests, and more. If you are a high school student or the parent of a high school student, you won’t want to miss this online Digital SAT book launch event! Register free here. 

Good luck on the new Digital SAT!

Elon’s On-Campus Summer Pre-College Journalism Program is Completely Free

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Not all summer pre-college programs for high school students cost a pretty penny. In fact, one such program for aspiring journalists is completely free and takes place on one of America’s most beautiful college campuses!

While year three of the virtual component of the Emerging Journalists Program at Elon University starts tonight – January 16 – in the dead of winter, there is still time for current high school juniors (11th graders) to apply for Elon’s free, fun, and immersive summer journalism experience, which takes place on Elon’s campus from June 17 through 28, 2024.

According to Colin Donohue, Elon’s Emerging Journalists Program (EJP) Director, the on-campus and immersive summer residential learning workshop component of the EJP is open to rising seniors from diverse socio-economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds and is completely free thanks to a generous grant from the Scripps Howard Fund.

Elon University is a private university in Elon, North Carolina, which is a half an hour from Greensboro and an hour from North Carolina’s capital, Raleigh. Last year’s summer EJP cohort produced a newspaper, a forty-minute newscast, and a website. Here’s a video snapshot of what last year’s participants did while on Elon’s campus. Students who complete the summer immersion program are also assigned two mentors — an Elon communications student and a professional journalist — to help identify, report, and produce multimedia stories during their senior years of high school.

If you think the Emerging Journalists Program would be an exciting opportunity for you or your student, learn more and apply at www.elon.edu/ejp. Application review will begin soon and priority will be given to applications submitted before March 1.

55,000 applied to Purdue Early Action; 97% of those admitted submitted test scores

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Cary Quadrangle at Purdue University with an animated Boilermaker on the roof.

Purdue University will release its Early Action (EA) decisions to first-year applicants through each EA applicant’s Purdue Application Portal starting at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, January 12. This includes decisions for its long-standing campus in West Lafayette, Indiana and its new campus in Indianapolis, Indiana’s state capital.

After several years of record-breaking enrollment, Purdue saw another uptick in applications received by November 1, 2023. Purdue received more than 55,000 applications by its November 1 Early Action deadline, which represents an increase of 3,000 applicants from the 2022-2023 admissions cycle.

With Purdue’s “test expected” approach to first-year admission, 44,000 Early Action applicants applied with a test score, and 97.2% of the students offered admission through Early Action submitted test scores.

The middle 50% SAT scores for accepted students for Fall 2023 who submitted SAT scores was 1210 – 1450 while the middle 50% of ACT scores for accepted students for Fall 2023 who submitted test scores was 27 – 34, though there was great variation between schools and majors. For instance, Purdue’s competitive Computer Science major had an acceptance rate of just 29.5% for Fall 2023 and the middle 50% of test scores of accepted Computer Science students was 1490 – 1560 on the SAT and 33 – 35 on the ACT. Yet, Purdue’s College of Education had a 74.5% acceptance rate and the middle 50% of test scores of accepted College of Education students was 1070 – 1260 on the SAT and 23.5 – 29 on the ACT. More Class of 2027 admissions data can be found on Purdue’s website.

Students who have not yet applied to Purdue but who want a chance to become part of Purdue’s Class of 2028 have until Purdue’s Regular Decision deadline of January 15 to apply.

As part of Purdue’s effort to avoid over-enrolling students, Purdue is also relying more heavily on deferred decisions for the 2023-2024 admissions cycle; therefore, EA applicants should not be surprised to get a deferral on January 12. Defer is not a deny decision but a method of allowing Purdue to assess space and availability before making a final decision through its Regular Decision review process. Deferred applicants are encouraged to complete a Letter of Continued Interest form in their Purdue Application Portal.

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If you – or someone you know – has been deferred from Purdue, in the video below I share expert tips on how to craft the most compelling Letter of Continued Interest possible to increase your chances of getting in Regular Decision. Good luck!

More Applying, Fewer Getting Accepted to Tulane Early Decision

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Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana will release its Early Decision I (EDI) decisions tomorrow, December 5, 2023, at 5:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time.

Those about to receive decisions – and those who follow this type of thing – should know that Tulane experienced a 20 percent increase in Early Decision applicants this admissions cycle while reducing the number of Early Decision I acceptances for the second year in a row in order to provide more opportunities for students unable or unwilling to make a binding commitment to Tulane, “particularly those from first generation or low/middle income backgrounds,” according to Tulane’s admissions office.

The vast majority of EDI applicants will receive one of three decisions: an acceptance, a denial, or a nonbinding offer to join Tulane’s cohort of Spring Scholars. Spring Scholars do not have to tell Tulane of their decision until May 1, 2024.

Meanwhile, Tulane also received 30 percent more Early Action applications this year than it did last year. Early Action applicants will get their admissions decisions by January 10, 2024 at the latest.

UMass Amherst receives record 30,000+ Early Action applications

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University of Massachusetts Amherst is gearing up to release all of its Early Action (EA) admission decisions on the evening of Wednesday, January 24 during an admissions cycle in which the public university had over 30,000 students apply through Early Action, a new record. Just last year, UMass received 28,461 EA applications, while as recently as the 2018-2019 admissions cycle UMass Amherst only received a relatively paltry 20,440 EA applications.

In the past, UMass Amherst has released EA decisions in waves. This year, all EA applicants will receive their decisions on the same date (January 24). EA applicants will receive an email letting them know when an admissions decision has been posted. At that point, applicants will be instructed to log into their UMass Amherst admissions portal to check their posted admission decision on the “Student Status” page.

EA applicants will receive one of three decisions: Admit, Waitlist, or Deny; UMass Amherst does not defer any EA applicants to its Regular Decision pool.

According to UMass Amherst admissions, and based on EA application volume, it’s likely that majors within the Manning College of Information & Computer Sciences, the Isenberg School of Management, and the Marieb College of Nursing will be the most competitive for admission this year.

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Did you do all you could have done in order to give yourself the best shot of getting into UMass Amherst? Watch my previous video, “How to get into UMass Amherst,” below.