Hi everyone. D was waitlisted at Grinnell but just received an email admitting her by way of a new program called Global Entry in Costa Rica through Verto Education. It will place a “select” cohort of 12-15 students to spend the fall 21 semester in Costa Rica. The cohort would return to Grinnell in Spring 22 to re-join the class, with full credits on coursework. Sounds a little like the Skidmore Fall semester in London.
It said Grinnell’s acceptance rate for the Class of 2025 fell to 10%!
Did anyone else receive this email or have any knowledge of this?
Friend of S21 got that offer sometime last week. He asked S21’s opinion bc of shared interest in Grinnell and bc we’ve traveled a few times to Costa Rica. But in the end the kid said after all the chaos of COVID and online school this year he just wanted to live in a dorm like a typical college kid. Evidently the program has the students moving around a bit. My son actually seemed to like the program and thought he would do something like that but not for his first semester.
These programs seem like great opportunities to study abroad, but I don’t know if this year is the right year for it. I also don’t understand why it helps the college in non pandemic times. Right now there could be advantages. Are they trying to dedensify bc of COVID? Maybe they are thinking spring they can have more students on campus bc pandemic will be subsiding.
Can you provide a transcript of the email? I’m very curious about the 10% acceptance rate. I haven’t been able to find any reliable information on the class of '25 acceptance rate.
Not having to count the stats of kids who they send abroad in the fall for USNews.
(Probably bigger one) To fill empty rooms/beds and receive tuition in the spring due to early graduation by kids who graduate a semester early thanks to AP/transfer/summer credit.
Those ideas both make sense, although talking with the people I know in admissions they’re pretty disinterested in any harvard-esque z-list ■■■■■■■ or stats manipulation (although encouraging everyone under the sun to apply in order to create a lower acceptance rate is a different story. The open beds from December grads tends to be balanced out by more people studying abroad in the fall than the spring
I actually managed to find an explanation going through some internal school files though.
Surveys have shown that sometimes transfer students have a decreased “sense of belonging” due to a lack of social connection before arriving in a very tight knit community (which can lead to lower grades or re-transferring). From what I can tell, the plan is using this as a pilot program to potentially more or less replace transfer students (eventually). The hope is that by essentially pre-picking transfer students, and having them study together from the start, they’ll feel more integrated at Grinnell when they arrive. So I suppose the stats it’s trying to manipulate are retention and graduation rate.
I have mixed feelings about it. We’ll see how it turns out
In which case, why even ever bother taking transfers then? To keep the class years very evenly balanced?
Big publics often take in a lot of transfers because they often have more higher-level courses they can fill compared to low-level ones. But I doubt that is a big issue at a LAC.
Or maybe the idea is to eventually route all transfers through this program first?
I don’t actually work in admissions, so there are definitely others that know better, but I’m pretty sure most of the point of transfers at places like Grinnell is to get a class closer to what it was before ppl transferred out. In an average year, like 20ish freshman leave, so eventually they would probably increase the program to that.
Tbh I don’t think it’ll last. I think the concept is cool, but I just think that people will be too hesitant to enroll in the program. It’s not a scam, and it seems to be well intentioned, it’s just very different