My son’s school had a flu and some other virus outbreak a few weeks after they returned from winter break. Since his school is more of a regional school, the majority of kids are within a couple of hours drive. The school did encourage those who were sick to go home to recover, but also recognized not all could. My son was one of the kids who got sick. He tested negative for strep and flu but had all the signs of COVID-19 (mid-February in NY so who knows?). For kids like him, they were supposed to remain in their rooms, and notify their RA. Arrangements would be made for boxed meals to be picked up in the dining hall either by an RA or friend. Aside from obtaining food, there was no need for someone to care for him - sleeping, drinking lots of fluid and taking medication was managed by him. Phone calls and texts from me checking in every day. RA and suitemates were also available if he needed something. Even if he were home, his care would have been no different except I’d be opening his bedroom door to check in rather than call him.
I suppose it would be different for kids living off campus at his school - then yes, they would be completely on their own to manage their care.
Posters should be able to judge from a distance what happens when schools like UT, UNC, Rice, Emory and the like open in the fall, as they likely will. There is little support for closing colleges in states where everything else is reopening soon.
The best available medical information is that a vaccine is years away, and that young people are at very low risk of complications and will almost assuredly be exposed to the virus at some point. Given that, your personal level of risk aversion should determine the course of action.
They do not want to commit now because they do not have enough information to make an informed decision. Of course, it is possible that when they are forced by time constraints to make a decision, they may still not have enough information to make an informed decision.
I expect CSUF will have no problem attracting enough students because it is the cheapest option available to the vast majority of their applicant pool. However, the timing is particularly interesting, coming before the end of April. So I wonder if they might even want to discourage some accepted students from taking up their spot if there has already been a major shift of students choosing low cost, close to home options and they now anticipate being oversubscribed?
It will be really interesting to see whether there is a similar effect at the UCs - will an extremely high yield from instate students outweigh the loss of OOS students in numerical terms? Even Berkeley and UCLA have less than 50% yield, so there is plenty of room for an increase. This obviously won’t be a good financial trade off for the university but could lead to more risk of overcrowding, and perhaps even the possibility of offering students the chance to defer after May 1, which UCs haven’t allowed in the past.
In other words, a fairly typical college like what most college students attend, rather than the premium residential college experience that most posters on these forums are focused on.
However, just like colleges (and everyone else), students and parents do not have enough good information (like the true number of cases and deaths, in order to get the true rate of bad outcomes and risk of infection) to make an informed judgement based on their own risk aversion. It is likely that most students and parents will use assumed or guessed information to fill in the blanks and then make a(n inherently poorly informed) judgement based on that and their risk aversion.
Regarding herd immunity being the savior, it’s going to take months and months to reach the 60-70% of the population for herd immunity to be effective and this assumes you cannot get the virus more than once.
According to USC News (4 20 20):
“Based on the results of the first round of testing, the research team estimates that approximately 4.1% of the (LA) county’s adult population has an antibody to the virus.” Note: this is 55x the number of reported COV-19 cases.
In addition, since we as a society, are now more aware of protecting ourselves (wearing masks and social distancing), we are going to (inadvertently) slow the infection rate down to the point that it will take a lot longer to reach herd immunity, if that is an end goal.
The bottom line is that herd immunity in the U.S. is going to take way too long to achieve and we will probably find a vaccine long before herd immunity is an effective “treatment”.
I don’t know. It is about the professors and having less students. On some of these threads people are talking about the professors getting sick since they are older then the students. Just brainstorming some idea’s.
I don’t mean to sound coy but that is not happening at either my daughter’s LAC or my son’s Big Ten school. Both are loading work on and the live classes that are discussion based etc have gone on without a hitch…OK…the first 2-3 didn’t go well then it is turning out good. Maybe the professors are just trying to get everyone through but that doesn’t seem right either.
Some of this is funny to me. My son’s going to be a senior next year for college. If his first semester was online and it was greatly cheaper , heh, I would take that but he will be in an apartment anyway…OK…just dreaming here…LOL…
Ohio has been doing a really good job at controlling the outbreak, and at working with scientists and modelers to figure out the best way to control the outbreak. It is peaking about now, and is expecting to be done with the outbreak by the end of May. Of course, unless the state closes its borders, there are issues with states which are not doing such a good job, or simply had more cases, and therefore will still have large numbers of infected in June. Still, there is a good chance that Ohio will be opening schools and colleges in September.
Our S is taking 5 classes ( 1 to finish BS, 4 towards his MS) and they are keeping him busy (lectures, psets, projects). He’s working with a friend (3 time zones away) in one of the classes and they are having fun meeting up to tackle the material. Motivated student? Yes, but according to him the material and course content are just fine.
I must be reading your post differently than others. Seems like you’re saying your son’s top two choice schools are being cagey about allowing students to take a deferral. Some schools have been very upfront about allowing students to decide on deferral as late as August. I think it’s a tough spot for schools, though, since most years only a very small fraction elect to defer. It’s just one more financial hit if a big chunk of students elect to defer. They may be more willing to discuss individual cases, rather than during an admissions webinar, for example, just because they don’t want to encourage a wider audience to defer.
Sounds like UPenn is offering all internationals from class of 2024 to take GAP years, which may be forced as they might not be able to get visas anyway.
That would result in very few Class of 2025 internationals slots…as presumably most, if not all, of the gap year students from class of 2024 would fill up that cohort.
I agree. A Nobel prize winner isn’t just prestige for a university. It can mean literally MILLIONS of dollars in research money that flow to the school. The ability to attract other top scholars. The ability to attract top graduate students, who then can share their passion and talent while TA-ing undergrads. The fact is exceptional faculty has a real trickle down effect that can mean an enhanced academic experience even for the undergrad who never even sees that exceptional faculty member. Exceptional faculty is what makes the Ivies, Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, UNC, etc etc the powerhouses that they are.