The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

The pandemic, of course, had a powerful impact on college admissions this year.   It was nearly impossible for high school students to visit campus; college admissions offices halted visits to high schools; and standardized testing dates were canceled.

The first two factors led students to apply to a larger number of schools in order to cover all their bases, as they didn’t have the chance to develop a well-vetted list of schools based on visits and conversations with college reps. The third factor, the inability to sit for an SAT or ACT, prompted most colleges to go “test optional” for this admissions cycle.

The test-optional movement is not new.  Several colleges and universities have been practicing it for years, citing research that calls into question the predictive value of standardized testing to gauge a student’s academic performance in college. While the number of test-optional colleges has grown over the years, the more selective colleges have generally shied away from it. Until this year.

Now students who previously felt inhibited from applying to a highly selective university because of less-than-stellar test scores were now motivated to apply to these schools; moreover, these colleges welcomed this shift.  For years, colleges and universities have sought more diversity—geographic, socio-economic, racial, cultural, etc.— in their applicant pools but felt they had to justify the lower standardized test scores of their “riskier” admits. (Or, if they didn’t justify them, they felt public pressure to justify them!). This year, the colleges were as liberated as the students when it came to making a match, and application numbers at brand-name and/or very selective schools skyrocketed.

Of course, these colleges didn’t accept any more applicants than usual, they just denied more.  Or put them on waitlists.  A lot of waitlists.  This practice of wait-listing applicants is the corollary to high school students applying to more and more colleges; just as students are trying to keep their options open because they are uncertain which schools they might truly thrive at, colleges use their waitlists to keep their options open in the face of their uncertainty over just how interested an applicant actually is.

An applicant’s uncertainty about a school (and a college’s uncertainty about the commitment of an applicant, for that matter) isn’t just the result of not being totally familiar with it; it can also be a consequence of cost (which often isn’t apparent to families until late in the application process), or location, or perceived rigor—especially felt by high school students who spent the last 16 months being remote, or by students from traditionally underserved populations. It is these very students who were among the newly-liberated by this year’s widespread test-optional practices.

In other words, there are potentially many more reasons this cycle than in past ones for a student to decide not to accept a college’s offer of admission. Of course, these students will accept an offer from somewhere. In any event, and for the reasons I’ve outlined, next fall there will likely be many more traditionally underserved students in the freshman classes of colleges across the nation.  How will they do when they get there?

The question concerns me because the answer depends on how well these students are supported by the colleges.  These students will come to college with not only the historical concerns of students of this ilk but with these challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.  If the past is any guide, many of these students will not complete their degree.  Moreover, given the increasing numbers of these students on college campuses next fall, it stands to reason that an unprecedented number of them will leave college without their degree because, generally speaking, colleges do not have a strong record of providing the kind of support that underserved populations require.

It is tempting to see college admissions as a zero-sum game; for every student who gets into a very selective college, there are many who do not.  Students who get the golden ticket are assured of a bright future; students who get passed over are not. And this year, more than ever before, there were many more excellent students passed over by the highly-selective (or, as many college counselors are now calling them, “highly-rejective”) colleges and universities.

Of course, we know that not all graduates of highly selective colleges have satisfying or fulfilling lives, but do we understand that students from less selective colleges do?  Do we believe that a student who engages in college—even a less-selective one— and all it has to offer can be rewarded with a great job and/or admission to a shiny graduate school program?

I have seen the rewards for students who truly engage their undergraduate experience—no matter where that undergraduate experience happens. Students from strong high schools will continue to do better, to engage more, in college than their peers from weaker ones; this year, I suspect that the gap will be even more pronounced.