Coronavirus Pandemic Has College-Bound Students, Parents Rethinking Higher Education Decisions

Applying to College
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"Pandemic Affects College Decisions, Survey Shows

Families’ fears have heightened due to the COVID-19 outbreak — particularly for prospective parents and students who will be first-year students in the fall of 2020. Families across the country are rethinking their final college decision.

Quatromoney and TuitionFit have teamed up to create a national flash survey to understand how the COVID-19 outbreak could affect college enrollment patterns for high school seniors.

The survey results showed that 25.7% of respondents are rethinking their college choice due to the coronavirus outbreak. Thirty percent of parents are slightly more inclined to rethink their high school senior’s college choice.

Students were only 23.6% more likely to change their college decision, and 12.6% of families are considering deferring their acceptance for a year so they can attend their first choice, according to the survey." …

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-pandemic-college-bound-students-150908357.html

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Yeah, I’ll say it again. I don’t think colleges are going to allow a large percent of their freshman class to defer. I will be curious to see how colleges respond to gap year requests.

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Some colleges have been admitting some fall applicants to start in the spring semester for load balancing or other purposes. Perhaps instead of being seen as a less desirable type of admission, some students who believe that the fall semester will be online may see that as a more desirable type of admission.

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@homerdog we were going to wait to the last minute to decide and deposit- hoping she could get one last visit in, but the strategy changed. She picked her school, we deposited, and she got her gap year approved already. I’m just glad we got that out of the way.