Since I have a HS senior I’ve been watching all the different approaches trying to understand the key s to success. Tufts is doing the same things as a lot of colleges that are struggling, except for using the Broad Institute and being in a low virus area.
Most colleges are at the mercy of a limited local testing capacity and when the virus spikes the community demand + college demand out strips the lab capacity. Some are trying to do the lab work on campus, but in most cases that’s not working.
I think it is great that Tufts is offering free testing to residents on streets abutting the college. It is limited however.
This from the website “Streets that abut the Medford/Somerville campus and other nearby streets were chosen for the program. Currently, Tufts University only has the capacity for 300 tests per week for this program. If we have increased capacity, we may add more streets to the program.” Perhaps they can be pressed to increase capacity as a way to give back to the community.
Currently (like this week) Medford is not a red zone city designate so there is not expanded free testing (by Broad) but Somerville is a designated red zone. So residents of Somerville can have free testing at many sites and not just those that Tufts covers. It is also laudible that Tufts offered its dorms for health care housing during surge. Having a sense of shared responsibility is important I think in evaluating how these colleges have dealt with covid. Certainly urban colleges like Tufts have a more difficult challenge than rural ones. And congrats to Tufts to demonstrating they are up to it.
@AlwaysMoving – Wanted to provide one example of on-campus testing that appears to be working. I am hesitant to say that it is working because it could change on a dime.
Cornell adapted testing technology used in their Vet school and now tests every student, on & off campus, twice each week.
@homerdog, great news on Bowdoin, sounds very similar to the recent announcement from Williams for the Spring semester. Do you know if there will be a Spring break, or will the semester be continuous and end ahead of schedule (Williams is going to eliminate Spring Break and have a continuous semester)? Would be interested to know how other NESCACs or Ivies are going to handle Spring break? Also, if NESCAC does compete, many teams travel for Spring break which may not make sense this year.
Spring break was shortened to a four day weekend. Kids won’t be allowed to leave campus but the college will have activities for them if they don’t want to just sleep and watch Netflix!
Since UIUC was mentioned I will give an update - 7 day positivity rate is .012
My student has 2 in person classes, some activities are in person, gym is open , study spaces available, university offered movies/concerts in FB stadium, etc.
My student and friends are making it work. As a parent I’m pleased with things so far.
I don’t actually know. Yale is using Broad Institute for testing of their on & off-campus students, but that plan was arranged prior to approval of the saliva test. I have not heard if they plan to adopt the saliva test next term. Another smaller, local college is using it in CT.
I believe the NBA players were administered PCR and saliva tests at the same time in order to test the accuracy of the saliva test, but I don’t know how it has worked now that it has been rolled out to some campuses.
Cornell is using their own pooled testing with nasal swabs. Seems to be working, so far!
Heard on the news today that University of Michigan undergrads have been placed under a shelter-in-place order for 2 weeks due to rising case numbers. Lots of unhappy people in Ann Arbor right now.
It had an impact at CU Boulder. I’m not saying they didn’t go back to partying when the quarantine was lifted, but it seems like they got the message to keep it in check.
Yes, many unhappy students, most saw it coming, unfortunately these two weeks will be very different from how many had been living - thus the rise in numbers
I remember hearing that, but on top of being flabbergasted by the horrible decision-making, I was wondering how this could even happen. At most schools that are doing on campus mandatory testing, I think the “authorities” know you tested positive, and whisk students off to isolation jail before they can infect others. Is this because it is a saliva test that you process yourself in your own dorm room, so you can just pretend you tested negative and no one else would know?
By the way, although we can unfortunately see that there were poor decision-makers at UIUC, and I’m sure we’ve all heard other similarly upsetting stories in the news, I continue to believe that people who would go out and party/shop/etc after receiving a positive test are still a rarity. I have to believe that ;-).
I will get flagged for saying this…I would choose well endowed private schools over peer public schools. Private schools have a lot more leeway in terms what they can do and they do not need to adhere a lot of their state’s regulations. Not every state has best practices when it comes to protecting its citizens, so I wouldn’t expect their state schools to do better. We see Duke and Rice being in the hot states and they are able to keep their students’ infection rates very low.
I think Covid management should give parents (consumers) very good indication on how well a school is being managed.
Not everyone can afford these well endowed schools. I have a ACT 36, 1590 SAT top 1% rank student, but CSS schools are not on the table when the other parent is not required, nor willing to contribute to college and both he and his wife are MDs. So that means NO “Well endowed” school choices for my daughter. GAP year or barreling head first into Covid U is the only choice we have.
While mostly true, University of Chicago and (usually) Vanderbilt do not require the non-custodial parent information in divorced parent situations. Princeton requires the non-custodial parent information only if the custodial parent has not (re)married.
Of course, the difficulty of getting admitted to such colleges also means them not a choice for many students.
The numbers coming from the large state schools in the south are severely undercounted. Many students are not encouraged to test and don’t. Florida, NC, Alabama, you name it. Kids are just infecting themselves (not on purpose) through gatherings and just doing their best not to spread. Then they are “immune”. This is what is happening.
By whom? Certainly not the majority of people posting in this thread and not by a larger portion of posters on this board compared to the percentage of kids attending well endowed private schools versus public.
@oldfort I agree. I have one at Colby two in a public high school. My son in college is having a good experience with classes in person. My two in high school are learning from their bedrooms. We live in Massachusetts in an area with a relatively low test positive rate but our district couldn’t figure out hybrid due to lack of money for all the busing (we are a large regional district). Many of my friends have kids at UMass and those kids are learning from home or in apartments in Amherst. Money makes a huge difference in all of this unfortunately. Same thing with the private high schools in our area–in person learning for all the private school kids while the public school kids are home.