I would like to know that as well but not sure we will ever know. I imagine each college will have different enrollment strategies. If they replace all of the gap year kids, do they have space for such a large sophomore class in fall 2021? will they take fewer kids graduating high school in 2021?
California’s electronic coronavirus case reporting system is broken, leaving local officials in the dark about the spread of COVID-19 and blocking the ability of counties to get restrictions lifted until the system is fixed. The broken system is resulting in the undercounting of cases, but by how much is unknown.
How this affects K-12 school reopening:
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The state watch list has been frozen, so schools in counties currently on the watchlist (majority of CA’s population) can’t reopen until the system is fixed. My county was trending in the right direction (so we thought), and there was a real hope we could get off the watch list this month. Now, who knows.
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The ability of elementary schools to get waivers to reopen regardless of watchlist status has been thrown into serious doubt, since counties can’t assess if the reopening is safe if they don’t have accurate data. Many private/parochial K-6 schools in my area, and some publics as well, were filing for waivers and were feeling pretty confident about being able to reopen.
First-year students were scheduled to move in 8/18, with classes starting the 24th.
Yeah. Wow. For these schools moving in next week, they can’t pivot much later than today. Wondering how Amherst is feeling right about now. They’ve been planning so much all summer and now the rest of the schools around them are changing their tune. I really hope Amherst goes through with their plan!
Yep. I think most colleges have been “slow playing” us with grandiose reopening plans for the fall to keep students enrolled (i.e. tuition dollars) but fully expected to place more restrictions once we got closer to the start of the academic year. They wanted these families committed as its harder for them to change course so late in the game.
There is no way spring semester will be better with more and more colleges going fully online and no on-campus housing (expect maybe internationals/athletes) after fall semester. The only way this changes is if the Notre Dame’s and other mostly in-person classes colleges have “success” with their plans this fall? Will see?
I’m now just hoping that Fall 2021 looks a little better than Fall 2020?
Schools are taking kids off the waitlist, and it sure looks like they are doing so to replace those kids taking a gap year. Not all of them and maybe not on a one-to-one replacement, but, yes, wsit lists have been extended and reports of kids being accepted long after usual wait list closures has been happening.
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Does closing the dorms also close the dining halls? This would create a problem with all my children different state schools as many of the off campus students keep some sort of meal plan. We opted out of the meal plan this year because all of the state schools we are dealing with made it clear there were no refunds if the semester was cut short so we will go with dining dollars and pay as you go. Many of the fraternities do not have kitchens and students have been living there all summer ordering from local restaurants but plan to use the dining hall in the fall.
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I am not 100% sure about UMASS, but S18 who goes to UVM and lives off campus was not able to buy into a dining plan and the same is ture for off-campus students at D20s school, UWisconsin-Madison.
Definitely an incentive to appeal to what your customers’ want (most in terms of colleges wanting in person classes). We always agree that colleges are businesses so shouldn’t be a surpise when they act like one.
That being said, they have been dealing with a moving target. And you want (and really need) to provide some time for planning. Can’t say on Friday that classes start next Monday. But at the same time, local and even state situations are changing (daily/weekly). Tough place to be for colleges.
I remember when Notre Dame announced it was starting early. Sounded like a good idea at the time. Now, maybe having an extra couple of weeks wouldn’t be a bad thing.
We shall see. Expect there will be some successes and some failures/setbacks. A situation with no good options.
There are other colleges starting this week. TCU welcoming freshmen. All have roommates. Very little testing going on. I really feel like many of these decisions are political at this point. How can TCU in Texas with high virus rates open but Mt. Holyoke cannot? No other explanation other that college presidents are dealing with different restraints from their governors.
@River65 Don’t know about undergrad but due to deferrals Harvard Business School admitted its entire waitlist and they are still about 100 students short of their goal.
@User2987456 Yes. All dorms and campus facilities are closed to people who don’t have in-person classes this upcoming semester.
I JUST said this to my son (who is in roughly a junior/senior–it’s complicated, and getting more so!) this morning. I told him to give some serious thought to what he’ll want to do if (I’m guessing, pessimistically, that the correct word there is “when”) Berklee remains online in spring.
I’m personally very much okay with Berklee’s decision to go completely virtual, as is my son, who is working well at home on his classes, practicing, etc. Fortunately, he’s really self-directed, at least when it comes to his music. In my opinion, it was a brave and responsible move on Berklee’s part; there was just no non-convoluted, fail-safe way that they would be able to bring students back, and I think Boston in general is probably better for that decision as well. AND they let us know relatively early.
However, my son is starting to run out of required courses for his degree that really don’t require in-person instruction, ensembles, private lessons, etc.–the stuff he looked forward to when he applied, and that mean a lot to a music student.
At this point he just wants to get the degree and move on to grad school or working (preferably as a film-scorer) when it’s reasonably safe to do so. I don’t know when that will be…
NYU is an easy commute from where we live. I don’t know if it would make any sense for him to transfer so late in the game (and it would be a second undergrad transfer for him, although in the current situation I would think that NYU might see the reasoning), but it’s a thought. At least he might be able to get SOME in-person instruction, without the added worry that comes with the housing situation.
There have been students on different threads admitted off the waitlists at Pomona and Stanford this week. At schools like that many students will accept, leading to possible movement at the schools they had committed to. What a year.
All NY school districts just got the go ahead for in person learning.
@mamom2018 Did you receive a communication about off-campus UW-Madison students not being able to purchase a dining plan? The housing and dining website suggests they still can.
A sorority in Chapel Hill apparently believes that although every student at UNC has agreed to follow social distancing rules, during sorority rush these rules don’t apply. There’s video. Dozens of entitled little princesses streaming out of a house, no masks of course.
The mayor of Chapel Hill is furious, as well she should be. Every single student who can be identified in that video should be expelled. It’s time to swing the big hammer.
This is what is on their Smart Restart page:
Residence hall and dining facility access
To reduce the number of people entering and exiting residence halls this fall, the university will limit access to residents only; no guests will be allowed.
This policy also will apply to all campus dining facilities operated by University Housing, including Gordon Dining & Event Center and Four Lakes Market inside Dejope Residence Hall. Access will be limited to Housing residents and Housing staff only and will not be available to the general public, to students living off campus, or to faculty and staff not working in Housing.
With NY now being able to open schools, I would think this bodes well for the rest of the country. NY was once the hot spot with the most cases and deaths. Now we are testing at around 1%…(70,000 test/day ) and we are very densely populated…but our numbers are low.
I think with the amount of testing some colleges are promising, along with protocols, returning to campus can definitely work.
I’m sure that didn’t help, but my understanding is that the major pressures came from the town of Amherst and the RA union.
Well, I sort of agree, but think it is WAY too early to be quite so pessimistic about Spring semester. Many colleges don’t start until very late January (and they can adjust their calendars to push back to a 2/1 start if that helps). That’s 5.5-6 months from now. We have seen things change with coronavirus dramatically in much shorter timeframes. A few things could happen to make that semester much better:
*. There honestly is some pretty shockingly good news about vaccines that could be ready to go possibly by December. Obviously not a done deal yet, but the great thing about Operation Warp Speed is that they are producing the vaccines this fall, before approval, so if/when approval happens, they can be distributed at unprecedented speed. We all need to pray for this, even if we don’t normally pray 
*. Testing. It looks like we are FINALLY going to be getting these cheap, rapid tests going in significant ways in the next month or two, and by January, there certainly is the possibility that these could be incredibly wide spread. These can be real game-changers in preventing spread/controlling and making everyone feel safer. If huge swaths of the population can take a $1 test every two days, that has got to stop the spread of this. That’s $15 per person per month. For people who are out and about (including college students, faculty, and staff), that makes a lot of sense.
*Lessons learned/best practices from colleges this fall. Yes, there will probably be messes and failures, but if there are some success stories, their approaches can be replicated with greater confidence. Right now all schools are flying blind and developing plans with no experience; for 2nd semester they can see what works and feel more confident about outcomes.
*. Maybe other things I can’t think of. One thing that certainly helps is that therapeutics are supposedly improving and I understand there are very promising ones on the way. For me, I don’t find this as compelling as figuring out how to avoid getting the virus through vaccine or testing/control, but if the death rate plummets, that can only be good.
Anyway, it’s true that 2nd semester might mean mostly remote classes, but I’m not willing to assume that yet. 5-6 months is a long time away! My fingers are crossed!