Hearing of a lot more college 1st years here locally who are deciding to gap at least a semester if not a year. Some were planning to go up until this week and then changed their minds b/c they want a more normal start to college.
Still wondering how that will shake out for our kids. I think it’s possible that because of attrition/transfers among upperclassmen, some colleges will have bigger than usual freshmen classes in Fall of 21. #bettermakeroom is my hope at least!
@AlmostThere2018 can you elaborate on how you think it will potentially lead to larger classes? I’m thinking the opposite, between all the delayed 2020’s and upperclassmen who take a gap year there won’t be nearly as many spots for our 2021’s.
@dadof4kids – There was an article in the NYT back in the Spring that interviewed a lot of admissions folks at colleges and they talked about a favorable admissions environment for Class of 2021 due to the following factors : 1) fewer international students applying to or returning to US colleges, 2) more students who, unfort., stop out (or never start) college b/c of financial concerns, and 3) a previously known demographic dip (Class of 21 is the smallest in years).
How this plays out at selective colleges is likely different than for other colleges, of course. For them, the biggest impact would seemingly be international returning students who can’t or don’t want to come back. I also think that more upperclassmen, after another disrupted semester, may transfer to be closer to home during these times and/or to save money. Anecdotal, but a good friend of my D18 (who’s a rising Junior at Davidson) decided to transfer to his public flagship this year. He was dealing with mental health challenges b4 COVID and just decided he wanted/needed to be closer to home given, well, everything. . .
Maybe this is rose-colored glasses, but it’s my belief that there will still be room for our kids. It’d certainly be nice to know whether a college is targeting smaller / normal / large class size next year, but they prolly won’t even make that decision until early next year b/c it depends on where we are with the pandemic/vaccines, etc.
I do have one prediction: public flagships will see big boosts in applications and yield because of being closer to home and greater affordability. Of course, many publics will face some trying budget cycles, so they too have their challenges.
I agree with @AlmostThere2018. However, I still think there is a lot of uncertainty. From what I’ve read, they are still letting kids decide to take gap years until the end of July for the following year. I just hope they put a cap on it so it doesn’t intrude too much for class of 2021 kids.
I do agree that there will be a big reduction in international applications and people will be more likely to stay closer to home near their flagship schools.
I predict that early decision admission rates will be much higher since schools are concerned about yield. That is one of the only things they can possible predict with an ED application.
The ACT website crashing, on a day everyone knew would have massive demand and also on a day where everyone was required to perform extra steps to update their profile, was almost as surprising as the sun rising in the east today instead of the west.
Hint, when you find yourself and your business model ablaze, you should probably focus on putting our the fire and stop lighting matches. Just a thought.
Although personally I’m cheering for the SAT/ACT disaster to continue, because I think it puts pressure on colleges to rethink its importance.
As I mentioned, we are working on rounding out the second half of our list. As we looked at school videos, I noticed that while we were once gung-ho to send DS across country for that true away from home college experience, I think the school now would have to be quite compelling in fit and attributes to make the cut. Though I certainly hope things will be better a year from now, I definitely feel more inclined to keep him in our region of the US.
I hope you guys are right but I am skeptical, at least as it pertains to selective colleges. The demographics have been getting worse every year, but acceptance rates continue to drop. So I don’t think that factor will affect them much. I think their numbers might be down from internationals this year, but my concern is they have a bunch of kids have been accepted that won’t be able to come this year. I’m guessing there is a good chance they slide in with the 2021’s instead. So even if the class itself is bigger, it will have a lot of kids in there who took either a voluntary or forced gap year.
I guess I’m thinking that there will be a normal number of kids applying for 2021. It’s going to be all the extra 2020s that plug up the system.
But maybe that’s just because of my pessimism/optimism blend. I’m pessimistic about how this will affect our kids. On the other hand, I’m optimistic enough about the long-term that I’m OK with my daughter applying to schools mostly that are 1500+ miles away.
I do think for 90% of colleges the 2021s will have an easier time though. Those places were struggling already to be honest. The local directional is down a few hundred from its peak, and a different directional in a different state that S 18 started at had a dorm that was mothballed already because it wasn’t needed anymore. Those places are going to struggle even more now.
Jon Bokencamp had an appropriate tweet a while ago. IIRC it was
“What do you think is going to happen with —
Let me stop you right there. No one knows.”
I’ve probably quoted that tweet a couple dozen times to people. Never in the correct context that he meant it. But honestly that applies to pretty much everything right now.
@NateandAllisMom – My D18 came this close to going to college in SoCal – 3000 miles from home. It was a late breaking decision to choose an LAC less than a 3 hour drive from us. She didn’t pick it because it was closer, but I have thought about this sooooo much since March. It’s been a relief to know she’s within easy access.
I think for my S21 right now he still feels fine with a college that is a 2 hour or so nonstop flight. Which for us means East Coast to Midwest. I don’t see him going farther than that. In a pinch we could drive to most the places on his list in 10 to 12 hours max – except Wisconsin which would be more like 15. Hmmm…
I’m starting to get very worried that spring visits also won’t be happening. D really feels like she needs to see kids on campus to make a best choice. I don’t know how to piece together info that would help her. I almost feel like we should just go to some schools this fall even if they don’t have tours and see if she can get any feeling about the school at all. We know kids at Wake and Richmond…well, one at each. We kind of know some one at Davidson too. I don’t know if we should just get the heck down there in Sept before things go even more awry. If spring comes and all students are sent home, spring will be an even worse time to visit.
I think there’s an excellent chance that D 21, along with a ton of other kids, will set foot on campus for the very first time when they move in August 2021.
We’re currently not planning on any Fall visits. My S mentioned he’s banking on Accepted Students days, but who knows, right?
Would a crazy idea be to get in the car during the Christmas break and drive to colleges to seem them? No students on campus is the obvious downside but my H and I could take the time off for a long road trip to hit at least a few places. Might be a good insurance policy in case Spring visits can’t happen. . .
Also we got a pleasant surprise on D18’s semester bill. She got an additional 2K/year Economics Department scholarship. That just about covers her honors college fee, business department fee, library fee, off campus housing fee etc. ,ect…
I feel like I would need to see students on campus to get a better feel for it. I hope we will be a le to visit in spring. Option 2 is to rely on cc posters to describe what campuses are like and watch youtube.
We’re putting off more visits for now as S21 has definitely decided on what schools he’s applying to and isn’t considering ED…therefore we’ve decided to deal with visits once we know the schools that are really options for him in terms of acceptance/affordability.
We’d originally planned to see 8 of the 9 schools ahead of time but have only seen 2. Given current circumstances, we don’t have a school close enough to us to make it worthwhile to go see now - that is, not worth seeing in a situation where we wouldn’t be able to see campus with students and interact in a more typical and full way at a school S21 might not be accepted to on a drive that is far enough to make us have to take multiple days off from work, deal with hotels, etc. in a pandemic. Of course, that makes me wish he had a school closer to home on his list - wish I could find one that seems a good fit.
I’m really just thinking spring is going to be worse than fall and there may be no students on campus. If that’s the case and we missed our fall window, that would be awful for D.
I would visit in the fall where that’s possible, agree that it’s unlikely things will be different for second semester.
We are going to try to visit this fall, even if there aren’t students on campus, even if there aren’t admissions sessions/tours. Having to be physically in school only two days per week for the fall lends itself to more easily allow us to do some visits.
We’re also constrained by being in GA - some states where S21 has schools on his list would ask or require us to quarantine for 14 days if we came up to visit, so that’s not especially feasible. We’ve also had a hit to our income due to COVID, so making less-useful visits to schools where S21 may not get in or that may not end up being affordable enough is something I’m having trouble justifying right now.
Sigh. I definitely agree that Spring may not be any better. Fall just isn’t really working for us, so I guess I’m punting given our particular circumstances.
