I know many students who will choose to defer freshman admission if schools choose to go online for fall 2020. If a large number of students take a gap year, will it decrease freshman admission rates and increase transfer for the 2021 cycle?
There have been multiple threads already on the subject of freshman admission for next year.
As for transfers, what I’ve heard is schools are expecting an increase in transfer applications due to the fact that many seniors have committed to schools they’ve either never visited or never got to go to “admitted students’ day” for.
I am no professional. However, I would estimate there would be little change or a small bump in admissions, but nothing too drastic for transfers. The reason being is that I think the pool will be more competitive. Kids that were going to transfer originally still will and students that were going to transfer but decided to forgo that idea after realizing the year would be online will be reapplying. This means more people will be applying, so even if the number of spots increases, the rates of acceptance would likely still be similar. In addition, I would expect that universities are expecting to return for sure fall 2021. This means that they will likely expect a good number of kids to be interested in school and will try to pace their yield rate accordingly so that they do not overcrowd their school. I think it seems that this year seems the most variable for schools and the highest likelihood in admissions because kids pulled their apps due to the virus and many will not be able to attend and need to reapply (transfers cannot defer decisions).