Covid-19 impact on Admission Decisions

Any thoughts on how the pandemic will impact admission decisions for RD or EA deferred? I have read that universities will see a decrease in international student enrollment as a result of the coronavirus.

I’m not in admissions, but I would guess that most of the admissions decisions have been made at this point and they are just preparing the info to publish. Candidates will fall into one of three categories: Accepted, Rejected or Waitlisted. If they admit a certain number of international students and some, or even all, decline the offer due to the pandemic, they will pull from their waitlist to fill up the class. I don’t think they are going to make any quick change in decisions for this fall class, although it might impact the next class of admits.

I would think the waitlist would hold real possibilities this year. One, because of the virus and lack of ability to visit schools right now, plus concerns making students want to stay close to home, they may not get the yield they otherwise might. And, the stock market volatility is making a lot of families rethink their most affordable options. A state flagship might become harder to get in, because it’s often an affordable and quality option for local kids. But expensive private schools might pull from waitlists more this year.

I agree with chardonMN completely. The financial impact will be much greater than the international impact. I would not send my kid here for full price in this economy.

Repots are that schools are “flying blind” with no models to anticipate yield. Waitlists are expected to be longer. I’ve also seen some info that schools may slightly weight students (when all else is equal) for geographic proximity to campuses as they may are more likely to have either visited and/or have familiarity. There are big unknowns about financial aid and retention.

I got taken off of the waitlist at Clemson last week, which is very early. They could definitely be pulling kids off the waitlist early or are currently doing that.

The pandemic is certainly impacting our decision. Even with the merit received, tuition would be 80k more over 4 yrs than our highly ranked in-state options. On top of that, I am now concerned that annual tuition increases will be much higher than previous years to make up for loss revenue. As such, in-state options are looking more attractive at this point.

I work at a major state university and I can tell you we also will have to make up lost revenue somehow. In state overall of course will be less expensive, but don’t think for a minute state universities aren’t going to have some major, major impacts from this.

When do people think kids will know whether or not they will spend Fall semester on campus? I would think this is going to be a major factor in gap year decisions.

How can anyone know the answer to that question at the moment? For sure universities absolutely want campuses to be open in the fall for a 1000 reasons (faculty member elsewhere hat).