The pandemic has played havoc with many things this year including college admissions. Applications at some schools were up dramatically, while other institutions appear to be falling short.
For students who don’t test well, the pandemic proved a blessing as most colleges and universities announced they would not require SAT or ACT scores. At the University of Virginia, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Greg Roberts thinks that’s behind a 17% increase in the number of applicants.
“Some students probably don’t think their scores reflect who they are as human beings or students," he explains. "Without those scores they feel like they have a shot for admission, and so they threw their hat in the ring.”
Other Virginia schools reporting an increase include Washington and Lee with 32% more applications, Emory and Henry up 30% and Virginia Tech, where the director of undergraduate admissions, Juan Espinoza, says applications beat last year’s number by 36%.
“We surpassed 42,000 applications compared to just a little under 31,000 applications last year,” he says.
Making standardized test scores optional was one reason, but – he says – Tech made other changes in 2018 that are likely behind this bumper crop of applicants.
“We noticed that there were about 2,000-3,000 applications each year that were being canceled, and what we discovered quite quickly was that those were missing materials – typically transcripts or test scores,” Espinoza recalls.
So they decided to let students report their own grades rather than waiting for high schools to send transcripts.
“If the student is offered admission and they decide to accept our offer of admission, we will request final transcripts," he explains. "They know that we’re going to do this, and I’m really pleased to report that after three years of doing this we have yet to rescind a single offer of admission due to inaccuracies related to the self-reported academic record.”
And for the first time, they allowed students to use the common app – a platform that enables them to fill out one application and send it to multiple schools.
The challenge now is predicting how many students will accept an offer. Juan Espinoza says that’s harder to gauge, since the pandemic forced his team to cancel campus tours.
“One of the best indicators if an offered student is going to accept and show up in the fall is that campus visit. Lacking that very important predictor is going to make our jobs a little bit harder. Every admissions director is nervous about this cycle. It is really unique, and the competition is just going to get more rigorous this year, as a lot of other universities missed their enrollment goals last year, so they’re going to be really trying to increase their class size to make up for any shortfalls from the previous year.”
And in Charlottesville, Greg Roberts says his team will put more students on a waiting list rather than risk admitting too many applicants.
“We usually try to play it a little bit safe on the front end, because it’s easier to add students from a wait list than it is to take students away once you’ve offered admission if you are actually over-enrolled. In fact, you can’t.”
One other possible reason for high rates of application is the general uncertainty of our time. At the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia analyst Tod Massa says students who might otherwise have applied to a few schools are hedging their bets – submitting a dozen applications or more.
And he adds that while schools with very strong brands are crowing, plenty of universities have seen fewer applications this year. Community colleges are already down, and Massa says people thinking about job security may be seeing that those doing best in this recession have a four-year college degree.
***Editor's Note: Radio IQ is a service of Virginia Tech.
