Tag: admissions

  • School Admissions Anxiety Hits Parents of Young Children, Too – The 74

    School Admissions Anxiety Hits Parents of Young Children, Too – The 74

    A few factors have made selecting an elementary school particularly challenging in recent years. For one, there are simply more schools for parents to pick from over the past few decades, ranging from traditional public and private to a growing number of magnet and charter programs. There are also new policies in some places, such as New York City, that allow parents to select not just their closest neighborhood public school but schools across and outside of the districts where they live.

    As a scholar of sociology and education, I have seen how the expanding range of school options – sometimes called school choice – has spread nationwide and is particularly a prominent factor in New York City.

    I spoke with a diverse range of more than 100 New York City parents across income levels and racial and ethnic backgrounds from 2014 to 2019 as part of research for my 2025 book, “Kindergarten Panic: Parental Anxiety and School Choice Inequality.”

    All of these parents felt pressure trying to select a school for their elementary school-age children, and school choice options post-COVID-19 have only increased.

    Some parents experience this pressure a bit more acutely than others.

    Women often see their choice of school as a reflection of whether they are good moms, my interviews show. Parents of color feel pressure to find a racially inclusive school. Other parents worry about finding niche schools that offer dual-language programs, for example, or other specialties.

    Navigating schools in New York City

    Every year, about 65,000 New York City kindergartners are matched to more than 700 public schools.

    New York City kindergartners typically attend their nearest public school in the neighborhood and get a priority place at this school. This school is often called someone’s zoned school.

    Even so, a spot at your local school isn’t guaranteed – students get priority if they apply on time.

    While most kindergartners still attend their zoned schools, their attendance rate is decreasing. While 72% of kindergartners in the city attended their zoned school in the 2007-08 school year, 60% did so in the 2016-17 school year.

    One reason is that since 2003, New York City parents have been able to apply to out-of-zone schools when seats were available. And in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, all public school applications moved entirely online. This shift allowed parents to easily rank 12 different school options they liked, in and outside of their zones.

    Still, New York City public schools remain one of the most segregated in the country, divided by race and class.

    Pressure to be a good mom

    Many of the mothers I interviewed from 2015 through 2019 said that getting their child into what they considered a “good” school reflected good mothering.

    Mothers took the primary responsibility for their school search, whether they had partners or not, and regardless of their social class, as well as racial and ethnic background.

    In 2017, I spoke with Janet, a white, married mother who at the time was 41 years old and had an infant and a 3-year-old. Janet worked as a web designer and lived in Queens. She explained that she started a group in 2016 to connect with other mothers, in part to discuss schools.

    Though Janet’s children were a few years away from kindergarten, she believed that she had started her research for public schools too late. She spent multiple hours each week looking up information during her limited spare time. She learned that other moms were talking to other parents, researching test results, analyzing school reviews and visiting schools in person.

    Janet said she wished she had started looking for schools when her son was was 1 or 2 years old, like other mothers she knew. She expressed fear that she was failing as a mother. Eventually, Janet enrolled her son in a nonzoned public school in another Queens neighborhood.

    Pressure to find an inclusive school

    Regardless of their incomes, Black, Latino and immigrant families I interviewed also felt pressure to evaluate whether the public schools they considered were racially and ethnically inclusive.

    Parents worried that racially insensitive policies related to bullying, curriculum and discipline would negatively affect their children.

    In 2015, I spoke with Fumi, a Black, immigrant mother of two young children. At the time, Fumi was 37 years old and living in Washington Heights in north Manhattan. She described her uncertain search for a public school.

    Fumi thought that New York City’s gifted and talented programs at public schools might be a better option academically than other public schools that don’t offer an advanced track for some students. But the gifted and talented programs often lacked racial diversity, and Fumi did not want her son to be the only Black student in his class.

    Still, Fumi had her son tested for the 2015 gifted and talented exam and enrolled him in one of these programs for kindergarten.

    Once Fumi’s son began attending the gifted and talented school, Fumi worried that the constant bullying he experienced was racially motivated.

    Though Fumi remained uneasy about the bullying and lack of diversity, she decided to keep him at the school because of the school’s strong academic quality.

    Pressure to find a niche school

    Many of the parents I interviewed who earned more than US$50,000 a year wanted to find specialty schools that offered advanced courses, dual-language programs and progressive-oriented curriculum.

    Parents like Renata, a 44-year-old Asian mother of four, and Stella, a 39-year-old Black mother of one, sent their kids to out-of-neighborhood public schools.

    In 2016, Renata described visiting multiple schools and researching options so she could potentially enroll her four children in different schools that met each of their particular needs.

    Stella, meanwhile, searched for schools that would de-emphasize testing, nurture her son’s creativity and provide flexible learning options.

    In contrast, the working-class parents I interviewed who made less than $50,000 annually often sought schools that mirrored their own school experiences.

    Few working-class parents I spoke with selected out-of-neighborhood and high academically performing schools.

    New York City data points to similar results – low-income families are less likely than people earning more than them to attend schools outside of their neighborhoods.

    For instance, Black working-class parents like 47-year-old Risha, a mother of four, and 53-year-old Jeffery, a father of three, who attended New York City neighborhood public schools themselves as children told me in 2016 that they decided to send their children to local public schools.

    Based on state performance indicators, students at these particular schools performed lower on standard assessments than schools on average.

    Cracks in the system

    The parents I spoke with all live in New York City, which has a uniquely complicated education system. Yet the pressures they face are reflective of the evolving public school choice landscape for parents across the country.

    Parents nationwide are searching for schools with vastly different resources and concerns about their children’s future well-being and success.

    When parents panic about kindergarten, they reveal cracks in the foundation of American schooling. In my view, parental anxiety about kindergarten is a response to an unequal, high-stakes education system.

    Bailey A. Brown, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Spelman College

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • As the supply of applicants declines, college admissions gets kinder and gentler

    As the supply of applicants declines, college admissions gets kinder and gentler

    by Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report
    November 18, 2025

    PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y. — As she approached her senior year in high school, the thought of moving on to college was “scary and intimidating” to Milianys Santiago — especially since she would be the first in her family to earn a degree.

    Once she began working on her applications this fall, however, she was surprised. “It hasn’t been as stressful as I thought it would be,” she said.

    It’s not that Santiago’s anxiety was misplaced: The college admissions process has been so notoriously anxiety inducing that students and their parents plan for it for years and — if social media is any indication — seem to consider an acceptance as among the greatest moments of their lives.

    It’s that getting into college is in fact becoming easier, with admissions offices trying to lure more applicants from a declining pool of 18-year-olds. They’re creating one-click applications, waiving application fees, offering admission to high school seniors who haven’t even applied and recruiting students after the traditional May 1 cutoff.

    The most dramatic change is in the odds of being admitted. Elite universities such as Harvard and CalTech take as few as 1 applicant in 33, but they are the exception. Colleges overall now accept about 6 in 10 students who apply, federal data show. That’s up from about 5 out of 10 a decade ago, the American Enterprise Institute calculates.

    “The reality is, the overwhelming majority of universities are struggling to put butts in seats. And they need to do everything that they can to make it easier for students and their families,” said Kevin Krebs, founder of the college admission consulting firm HelloCollege.

    This has never been as true as now, when the number of high school graduates entering higher education is about to begin a projected 15-year drop, starting with the class now being recruited. That’s on top of a 13 percent decline over the last 15 years.

    Santiago, who lives in Hamilton, New Jersey, was waiting for a tour to start at Pace University as a video on repeat showed exuberant students and drone footage of the leafy, 200-acre grounds about 30 miles north of New York City, where the university also has a campus. 

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    Pace was one of 130 New York state colleges and universities that during October waived their application fees of from $50 to $90 per student, per school. That’s just one of the ways it’s trying to make admissions easier. 

    “That was a little eye-opening, when we received that letter,” Sueane Goodreau of Ithaca, New York, said about the free application offer as she waited for a tour of Pace’s campus with her high school senior son, Will. Compared to when her older daughter applied to college just three years ago, said Goodreau, “it does feel a little more receptive.”

    There was an even bigger incentive offered by Pace: Prospects such as Santiago and Goodreau who visit are promised an additional $1,000 a year of financial aid if they enroll. Applicants who come to visit a campus are twice as likely to enroll as those who don’t, research has found.

    The students’ names awaited them on a welcome sign at the reception desk in the office where tours depart. “You Belong Here,” pronounced another placard, on an easel in the waiting area. There was a QR code they could scan if they wanted to chat one-on-one with an admissions officer — who, in earlier times at many schools, were often unapproachable.

    “I feel like I’m already a student here,” Santiago quipped.

    The reason the university encourages that feeling? It’s simple, said Andre Cordon, dean of admission, in the distinctive pink Choate House at the center of the campus: “We want more students to apply. We don’t want to put up hurdles.”

    So many hurdles previously stood along the route to college admission, it’s become a part of popular culture. “Everyone thinks we’re sadists — that we like saying no,” noted Tina Fey in her role as a Princeton admissions officer in the 2013 movie “Admission.” 

    Related: The number of 18-year-olds is about to drop sharply, packing a wallop for colleges — and the economy 

    Perceptions such as those are hard to change. Not only do young Americans aged 18 to 29 believe it isn’t any easier to get into college than it was for people in their parents’ generation, 45 percent of them think it’s harder, a Pew Research Center survey found. More than three-quarters say the admissions process is complex, and more than half that it’s more stressful than anything else they’ve done during their time in elementary, middle or high school, according to a separate survey, by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC.

    “People have that notion that all campuses are in the same category as MIT, Harvard, Stanford” with their impossibly low acceptance rates, said Cordon. (Pace took 76 percent of its applicants last year, university statistics show.) And “teenagers are still teenagers. There’s anxiety no matter what. They overthink things, and they overthink the admissions process.”

    There’s also still a lot of genuine emotion in the process, he said. For many parents, “It’s a pride thing. It’s a status thing. It’s showing off. Or from the student’s side, it’s, ‘I want to make my parents proud.’ ”

    In the new world of university admissions, however, that no longer necessarily even requires filling out an application.

    “Congratulations! You’ve been admitted,” a new California State University website tells prospective students, before they enter a single piece of information about themselves. 

    Cal State is the latest system to deploy so-called direct admission: They will automatically accept any student who earns at least a C in a list of required high school courses, starting in January for students in some and expanding the following year to every high school in the state.

    Related: To fill seats, more colleges offer credit for life experience

    Public universities or systems in Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawai’i, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin also now offer various forms of direct admission — some beginning this fall — accepting students automatically if they meet certain high school benchmarks.

    Several systems now allow students to apply to several public universities and colleges with a single application, avoiding the time-consuming process of completing different forms, writing essays, collecting letters of recommendation or paying fees. 

    Through Illinois’s new One Click College Admit, for instance, high school students can have their transcripts provided instantly to 10 of the state’s 12 four-year public universities and all of its community colleges and get back a guaranteed offer of admission to at least one, depending on their grades.

    “Especially first-generation students, they don’t have that knowledge of how to apply to college,” said José Garcia, spokesman for the Illinois Board of Higher Education. “That’s among the people we’re trying to reach — those who might be intimidated by the name of an institution or not feel confident in their academic abilities or their grades.”

    Several of these programs have been advocated for public institutions by governors and legislatures worried about a continued supply of college-educated workers in their states as the proportion of high school graduates going on to get degrees declines.

    “Basically we need to have a bigger pipeline,” said David Troutman, deputy commissioner for academic affairs at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. “We have to do everything we can to open that door to all students, not just a few. So we have to make sure we’re making the process as painless as we can.”

    Now private colleges are jumping aboard the direct-admission bandwagon. More than 210 have arranged through the Common App — an online application used by about 1,100 institutions nationwide — to extend offers of direct admission for the coming academic year to students who filed the Common App but have not applied. That’s almost twice as many as signed on last year, when Common App says 119 institutions in 35 states made more than 733,000 unsolicited offers. 

    It’s still early to definitively know the effect of this on whether students ultimately enroll. In Idaho, which in 2015 became the first state to try direct admission, enrollment of first-time undergraduates at participating public universities rose 11 percent. 

    Direct admission by itself does not resolve the other reasons students forgo college, however, said James Murphy, director of postsecondary policy at the nonprofit Education Reform Now, which advocates for more access to and diversity in higher education.

    “It’s the furthest thing from a panacea,” Murphy said. “How do we know? Because colleges embraced it so quickly. Any reform taken up so quickly by colleges is likely to have more benefit to colleges than to students.”

    While direct admission might help colleges get closer to enrollment targets, for example, he said, “it works best when it’s paired with financial aid and other resources that actually make it easier” to pay.

    Waiving application fees has driven increases in applications, some research has shown. During the month that fees were waived last fall in New York state, a quarter of a million students applied to the public State University of New York, up 41 percent from the same period the year before, according to the state’s Higher Education Services Corporation, or HESC. 

    Related: After years of quietly falling, college tuition is on the rise again

    While college applications may not seem expensive, at around $50 each, many students “aren’t just paying one application fee. They can be paying multiple fees,” which add up, said Angela Liotta, HESC’s director of communication. 

    Universities and colleges are trying other ways to ease the process. More than 2,000 continue to make submitting the results of SAT and ACT scores optional, for instance, something many started doing during the pandemic. More have extended their deadlines or recruited after the traditional May 1 cutoff, when incoming classes were previously considered locked in. 

    Students are noticing. One way is through the massive amount of marketing materials they’re getting, begging them to apply. The median high school student gets more than 100 letters and emails from colleges and universities each month, a survey by the education technology company CollegeVine found — an old-style approach that CollegeVine found turns out for this generation to be generally ineffective.

    Will Goodreau, who was visiting Pace, for instance, got “so many emails and texts,” he said, laughing. “I must have given somebody my number for something.”

    All of these things appear to be slowly changing students’ perception of admission. In that NACAC survey, fewer of those who had already gone through the process — while they still found it challenging — considered it as challenging as students who hadn’t started yet.

    There could be more changes ahead. A lawsuit was filed in August against 32 colleges and universities that practice so-called early decision, under which students who apply before the usual admission period are more likely to get in, but are obligated to enroll. The practice, which the lawsuit seeks to end, helps colleges fill their classes, but prevents students from shopping around for better offers of financial aid.

    Whatever happens, students and their parents should know that “they’re actually the ones in control of this process,” said Krebs, of HelloCollege. “The reality is that at a lot of schools, if you have the grades, you’re going to get in.”

    Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, [email protected] or jpm.82 on Signal.

    This story about applying to college was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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  • California State University Embraces Direct Admissions

    California State University Embraces Direct Admissions

    There was a 9 percent increase in enrollments from the pilot county as compared to the previous CSU freshman class.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | gemenacom, ghoststone, Jose Gonzalez Buenaposada and vi73777/iStock/Getty Images

    The California State University system launched a direct admissions pilot last year, offering qualifying high school seniors at school districts in Riverside County admission to 10 of its institutions. The program turned out to be an unqualified success: The number of graduates from the district who enrolled at a CSU campus this fall jumped 9 percent.

    Now the system is expanding the program, thanks to legislation signed last month that will allow CSU to extend offers to students in every school district in the state starting in the 2026–27 admission cycle. The offers will grant admission to 16 of the 22 CSU campuses; the six most selective institutions will not participate.

    The program ties in with the system’s goal of creating access to higher education for all Californians, said April Grommo, CSU’s assistant vice chancellor of strategic enrollment management.

    “Being able to proactively inform students that they are eligible for the CSU has provided a lot of positive results,” she said. “We had a lot of students and families that did not realize they were eligible to go to a four-year university.”

    With this program, California joins a cohort of about 15 states that offer students some form of direct, guaranteed or simplified admissions. The intent is to streamline the admissions process and make students aware of institutions they may not have otherwise considered, as well as to bolster institutions’ enrollment. Such programs have proven broadly successful, according to Taylor Odle, a professor of education policy studies at the University of Wisconsin.

    “My work, in partnership with states and national nonprofit organizations, shows that direct admissions programs can not only increase students’ early-college going behaviors but also subsequently raise their college enrollment outcomes,” Odle wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “These benefits are particularly large for students of color, those who will be the first in their family to attend college, and those from lower-income communities. States who have implemented direct admissions also consistently report higher enrollment levels following implementation.”

    While different states use the term “direct admissions” slightly differently, Odle defined a true direct admissions program as “guaranteed (students are admitted to college; not an invitation to apply), universal (all students can participate), proactive (students don’t need to do anything to receive a direct admissions offer), simplified (students don’t need to apply; simply ‘claim their spot’ via a streamlined process), and free (no cost).”

    In CSU’s case, qualified students—those who meet the system’s requirements regarding the courses they took in high school and who have a minimum 2.5 grade point average—receive mailers informing them that they have been admitted to all 16 participating campuses.

    In the Riverside County pilot program, about 17,400 graduating seniors received admission offers. The system saw a 15 percent year-over-year increase in students from the county who completed an application for a CSU institution—direct admits don’t complete the full application, just a truncated version of it in order to accept the offer of admission—and led to the subsequent bump in enrollees. The majority ended up at Cal State San Bernardino, the closest campus to Riverside County—across the state, most CSU students attend an institution within 50 miles of their home—but others traveled farther, in some cases to study in specialized programs.

    Along with the direct admissions offers, the system also launched a series of events to expose Riverside County students to CSU’s different campuses and programs. Called Discover CSU Days, the events featured panels of current students from Riverside County.

    “A lot of Riverside County students are first-generation and low-income, so we talked to them about why the CSU is a good option for them,” said Grommo.

    Students could enroll that same day, with some campuses waiving housing and tuition deposits for those who did.

    Odle said that with so many institutions reporting positive outcomes from their direct admissions programs, such initiatives may soon become the “new norm.”

    “More states and systems of higher education should be in the business of identifying challenges, designing and implementing pilot programs to address them, rigorously studying them, and then making expansion decisions (like this) based on evidence,” he wrote. “Given CSU’s access and service mission to the state, it makes sense that it joins a variety of other systems nationally at implementing this evidence-based practice to raise enrollments and reduce gaps in access.”

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  • 70% of Americans say feds shouldn’t control admissions, curriculum

    70% of Americans say feds shouldn’t control admissions, curriculum

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    Dive Brief: 

    • Most polled Americans, 70%, disagreed that the federal government should control “admissions, faculty hiring, and curriculum at U.S. colleges and universities to ensure they do not teach inappropriate material,” according to a survey released Wednesday by the Public Religion Research Institute. 
    • The majority of Americans across political parties — 84% of Democrats, 75% of independents and 58% of Republicans — disagreed with federal control over these elements of college operations. 
    • The poll’s results come as the Trump administration seeks to exert control over college workings, including in its recent offer of priority for federal research funding in exchange for making sweeping policy changes aligned with the government’s priorities. 

    Dive Insight: 

    The poll from the nonpartisan PRRI isn’t the first survey to suggest that large swaths of Americans disagree with the Trump administration’s approach to higher education policy. 

    Slightly more than half of Americans, 56%, said they disapproved of how President Donald Trump was handling higher education-related issues, a May poll from The Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago found. 

    However, the AP-NORC poll found a stark political divide, with 90% of Democrats disapproving of Trump’s approach and 83% of Republicans approving of it. 

    More specifically, 73% of Democrats said at the time that they disapproved of the withholding of colleges’ federal funds for not complying with the government’s political goals. Conversely, 51% of Republicans approved of that approach. 

    Another poll — this one of Jewish Americans conducted by Ipsos and researchers from the University of Rochester and the University of California —  found in September that 58% said they disagree with the Trump administration pausing or canceling vast sums of federal research funding to Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

    In both cases, the Trump administration has accused the universities of not doing enough to address antisemitism on campus and demanded sweeping policy changes. However, federal judges have largely blocked the government’s attempted suspension of their research funding. 

    In the Ipsos poll, 72% of Jewish Americans said they were concerned about antisemitism on college campuses. But the same share said they believed the Trump administration was “using antisemitism as an excuse to penalize and tax college campuses.” 

    The Trump administration has so far cut deals with four colleges: three Ivy League institutions and, most recently, the University of Virginia, the first public institution to strike such an agreement. 

    More deals could be coming down the pike. 

    Earlier this month, the Trump administration offered priority research funding to nine colleges if they signed a compact dictating certain policies impacting their tuition, admissions and academics. Those provisions spanned from adopting a five-year tuition freeze to potentially dissolving campus units that “purposefully punish” and “belittle” conservative ideas. 

    While most of the colleges rejected the compact, Trump appeared to open up the deal to any interested institution. Additionally, two of the initial nine colleges — the University of Texas at Austin and Vanderbilt University — haven’t yet said publicly if they will sign or reject the compact. 

    Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said he would provide feedback on the compact, adding that he looked forward to “continuing the conversation,” according to The Vanderbilt Hustler. 

    Meanwhile, UT-Austin officials have been silent on the compact lately, though the chair of the UT System initially said it was “honored” its flagship received the proposal.

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  • Why mentorship networks are essential in the college admissions process

    Why mentorship networks are essential in the college admissions process

    Key points:

    As the vice president of academic affairs and a member of the admissions committee at SSP International (SSPI), a nonprofit organization offering immersive scientific experiences, I review hundreds of applications each year from rising seniors for our flagship program, Summer Science Program. What we’ve learned is that many of our bright and talented students are navigating their academic careers without access to the same supports as similarly high-achieving students.

    Where other Summer Science Program applicants might benefit from private tutors, college consultants, or guidance from parents familiar with the college application process and the high stress of today’s competitive college market, these students rise to the top of the applicant pool without leaning on the same resources as their peers.

    This is especially true for first-generation students who will be the first in their families to graduate from high school, go through the college admissions process, apply for financial aid, and enroll in college. Not only do they need to be more resourceful and self-reliant without the support of their personal networks, but they also often take on the responsibility of guiding their parents through these processes, rather than the other way around.

    School counselor shortage

    For many students who are underrepresented in academia, their exposure to different colleges, careers, and networks comes from their school counselors. While the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends a minimum student-to-school counselor ratio of 250:1, the nationwide shortage of counselors led to a national average ratio of 385:1 between 2020-2023. That is a lot of strain on counselors who already serve as jacks of all trades–needing to keep up with evolving college admissions processes, understand the financial circumstances of hundreds of families, provide emotional support, and stay on top of the job market to advise accordingly. This ultimately affects the level of personalized counseling students receive.

    Making the college admissions process accessible

    In 2020, SSPI launched College Link, a mentorship program offering Summer Science Program alumni access to one-on-one or group mentoring. Mentors support students during their transition from high school to college through guidance on financial aid, early decision/early action processes, college applications, personal essay writing, resume workshopping, and more. To date, College Link has served over 650 mentees and recruited over 580 mentors sourced from SSPI’s 4,200 alumni network.

    This mentorship network comprises individuals from various backgrounds, leading successful and diverse careers in academia and STEM. Mentors like Dr. Emma Louden, an astrophysicist, strategist, and youth advocate who also helped develop the program, provided SSPI’s recent alumni with insights from their real-world professional experiences. This helps them explore a variety of careers within the STEM field beyond what they learn about in the classroom.

    Demographic data from last year’s Summer Science Program cohort showed that 37 percent of participants had parents with no higher education degree. That is why College Link prioritizes one-on-one mentoring for first-generation college alumni who need more personalized guidance when navigating the complexities of the college application and admission process.

    College Link also offers group mentoring for non-first-generation students, who receive the same services from several mentors bringing great expertise on the varying topics highlighted from week to week.

    With the support of College Link, nearly one hundred percent of Summer Science Program alumni have gone on to attend college, including MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Caltech and other prestigious institutions.

    Using College Link as a blueprint

    As the U.S. continues to face a counselor shortage, schools can further support students, especially first-generation students, through the college admissions process by creating mentorship networks using the College Link model. Schools can tap into their alumni network and identify successful role models who are ready to mentor younger generations and guide them beyond the admissions process. With the widespread implementation of Zoom in our everyday lives, it is now easier than ever to build networks virtually.

    Mentorship networks in schools can provide additional support systems for high school students and alleviate the pressures school counselors experience daily during college admissions season. Let’s continue to ensure the college admissions process is accessible to all students.

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  • Inside North Carolina’s direct admissions program

    Inside North Carolina’s direct admissions program

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    This fall, North Carolina is one of the latest states rolling out a direct admission program that offers high school seniors acceptance to a range of public and private colleges. 

    Through direct admissions, colleges proactively admit students based on high school academic performance metrics such as GPA, SAT scores, or the amount of credits they received. 

    Around the start of the school year, more than 62,000 public high school seniors in North Carolina were offered direct admission to select colleges through the NC College Connect Program. Eleven of the University of North Carolina System’s 16 colleges, 29 private colleges and all 58 of the state’s community colleges are participating. 

    The UNC System first piloted NC College Connect last year in partnership with state agencies, the governor’s office and North Carolina’s community college system. The system launched the program to increase access to higher education in the state, Shun Robertson, UNC’s senior vice president for strategy and policy, said in an email. 

    For many high school seniors, “the process of applying to college, transferring between institutions, and navigating the maze of financial aid feels like an insurmountable series of hurdles,” said Robertson. “Eliminating these barriers has been a high priority.”

    Over the past decade, direct admissions policies have increased the likelihood that in-state students both apply to college and apply to more colleges, said John Lane, vice president for academic affairs at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, in an email. In turn, that shift has effectively increased college enrollment, he said.

    “Direct admissions policies and programs are impactful because they eliminate the complications and uncertainties of longstanding college application processes,” said Lane. “Instead, students are proactively admitted.”

    UNC’s program

    The UNC System piloted its direct admissions initiative last fall and notified over 70,000 high school seniors with GPAs of 2.8 or higher of their eligibility for the program, Robertson said. 

    Those seniors could apply to six UNC institutions and all 58 state community colleges for the 2025-26 academic year by sharing on an online portal their email address, their potential major, and when they’d like to start college, he said. 

    UNC System officials haven’t been able to review outcome data yet for the pilot program, a spokesperson said. But over 5,000 students responded to the letter during the pilot, the spokesperson said. 

    The system simplified the program this fall. Students won’t have to formally apply to get into one of the colleges on their list, rather they are provided direct admission to institutions based on their GPA and whether they meet the program’s requirements, Robertson said. Then they just need to submit a program form to accept their admission, he said. 

    Students accepting admission to community colleges must still fill out applications, but they will already be admitted, according to the initiative’s website. 

    The program also expanded to include private colleges in the state and added more UNC institutions, said Robertson. The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, the system’s highly selective flagship, remains excluded from the program.

    Some of the private institutions in the program have additional direct admission qualification requirements, such as foreign language course requirements. 

    UNC System officials hope direct admissions will help the state’s institutions enrollment numbers long term by tapping into a growing college-aged student population. 

    Like most of the country, North Carolina is expected to see a decline in high school graduates between 2025 and 2030, according to a report last year from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. However, that pool of students is expected to grow again in North Carolina after that year. 

    WICHE predicts that North Carolina will be one of 12 states, along with the District of Columbia, to have growing numbers of high school students between 2023 and 2041. Overall, North Carolina should see a 6% increase in high school graduates over that period, per WICHE projections.

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  • California governor signs Cal State direct admissions program into law

    California governor signs Cal State direct admissions program into law

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    Dive Brief:

    • Qualifying high school seniors in California will be automatically admitted to a California State University campus beginning with the 2026-27 academic year under a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law this week. 
    • Under the program, eligible students will automatically receive letters notifying them that they have been directly admitted to Cal State campuses with enrollment capacity based on their academic records. 
    • The program expands a pilot announced last year limited to high school students in California’s Riverside County. Out of 17,000 students who received admission offers to Cal State for the fall 2025 term, 13,200 completed the required paperwork, according to state Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, who co-sponsored the bill.

    Dive Insight:

    California’s new legislation, called SB 640, aims to boost college access and help reverse enrollment declines at some of Cal State’s 23 campuses. 

    A September news release from Cabaldon’s office noted two campuses with the biggest declines were in his district: CSU Maritime Academy — which recently merged with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo — and Sonoma State University, which announced deep budget and program cuts at the beginning of this year.

    “Direct admission removes the applications hurdle that stops some students from going to college, and relieves the fear that they won’t get in anywhere,” Cabaldon said after SB 640 cleared California’s Legislature last month. 

    The lawmaker cited a 2022 academic study of Idaho’s direct admissions program, implemented in 2015, that found the initiative increased first-time undergraduate enrollments by 4% to 8% — an average increase of 50 to 100 students per campus. It also boosted in-state enrollment levels by approximately 8% to 15%, the study found. 

    Enrollment gains from the direct admissions program were concentrated mainly in community colleges, though it had “minimal-to-no impacts” on the enrollment of Pell Grant-eligible students, according to the study. At the time of publication, one of the researchers noted the lack of change was not surprising, given that the program did not focus on any particular student group.

    Meanwhile, a 2023 study of 33,000 students found a Common App direct admissions initiative geared toward marginalized student groups increased applications among Black, Latinx, multiracial, first-generation and low-income students.

    California joins a growing number of states incorporating direct admissions into the acceptance process for their public colleges. That list includes North Carolina, which this year offered 62,000 public high school students admissions into one of dozens of institutions through the NC College Connect Program, an expansion of a pilot launched last year.

    “The process of applying to college, transferring between institutions, and navigating the maze of financial aid feels like an insurmountable series of hurdles,” Shun Robertson, the University of North Carolina’s senior vice president for strategy and policy, told Higher Ed Dive earlier this fall. “Eliminating these barriers has been a high priority.”

    Institutions in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Hawai’i, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Utah and West Virginia also offer direct admissions programs.

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  • Inside North Carolina’s direct admissions program

    Inside North Carolina’s direct admissions program

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    This fall, North Carolina is one of the latest states rolling out a direct admission program that offers high school seniors acceptance to a range of public and private colleges. 

    Through direct admissions, colleges proactively admit students based on high school academic performance metrics such as GPA, SAT scores, or the amount of credits they received. 

    Around the start of the school year, more than 62,000 public high school seniors in North Carolina were offered direct admission to select colleges through the NC College Connect Program. Eleven of the University of North Carolina System’s 16 colleges, 29 private colleges and all 58 of the state’s community colleges are participating. 

    The UNC System first piloted NC College Connect last year in partnership with state agencies, the governor’s office and North Carolina’s community college system. The system launched the program to increase access to higher education in the state, Shun Robertson, UNC’s senior vice president for strategy and policy, said in an email. 

    For many high school seniors, “the process of applying to college, transferring between institutions, and navigating the maze of financial aid feels like an insurmountable series of hurdles,” said Robertson. “Eliminating these barriers has been a high priority.”

    Over the past decade, direct admissions policies have increased the likelihood that in-state students both apply to college and apply to more colleges, said John Lane, vice president for academic affairs at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, in an email. In turn, that shift has effectively increased college enrollment, he said.

    “Direct admissions policies and programs are impactful because they eliminate the complications and uncertainties of longstanding college application processes,” said Lane. “Instead, students are proactively admitted.”

    UNC’s program

    The UNC System piloted its direct admissions initiative last fall and notified over 70,000 high school seniors with GPAs of 2.8 or higher of their eligibility for the program, Robertson said. 

    Those seniors could apply to six UNC institutions and all 58 state community colleges for the 2025-26 academic year by sharing on an online portal their email address, their potential major, and when they’d like to start college, he said. 

    UNC System officials haven’t been able to review outcome data yet for the pilot program, a spokesperson said. But over 5,000 students responded to the letter during the pilot, the spokesperson said. 

    The system simplified the program this fall. Students won’t have to formally apply to get into one of the colleges on their list, rather they are provided direct admission to institutions based on their GPA and whether they meet the program’s requirements, Robertson said. Then they just need to submit a program form to accept their admission, he said. 

    Students accepting admission to community colleges must still fill out applications, but they will already be admitted, according to the initiative’s website. 

    The program also expanded to include private colleges in the state and added more UNC institutions, said Robertson. The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, the system’s highly selective flagship, remains excluded from the program.

    Some of the private institutions in the program have additional direct admission qualification requirements, such as foreign language course requirements. 

    UNC System officials hope direct admissions will help the state’s institutions enrollment numbers long term by tapping into a growing college-aged student population. 

    Like most of the country, North Carolina is expected to see a decline in high school graduates between 2025 and 2030, according to a report last year from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. However, that pool of students is expected to grow again in North Carolina after that year. 

    WICHE predicts that North Carolina will be one of 12 states, along with the District of Columbia, to have growing numbers of high school students between 2023 and 2041. Overall, North Carolina should see a 6% increase in high school graduates over that period, per WICHE projections.

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  • WEEKEND READING: University Collaboration – the case for admissions and professional registration  

    WEEKEND READING: University Collaboration – the case for admissions and professional registration  

    This HEPI guest blog was kindly written by James Seymour, who runs an education consultancy focusing on marketing, student recruitment, admissions and reputation and Julie Kelly who runs a higher education consultancy specialising in registry and governance challenges. Julie and James have worked for a range of universities at Director level in recent years.  

    The Challenge  

    All through August and September, many admissions and faculty/course teams have been working hard to get thousands of new students over the line and onto the next stage of their lives. It is more than just their UCAS application, interview, selection and firm acceptance or journey through Clearing – they have to actually enrol and succeed too.  

    Many of these students are training to be nurses, teachers, paramedics, social workers and doctors amongst many other allied health professional and education courses. They all need to go through essential and important Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Body (PSRB) requirements and additional compliance checks, from passports, to Disclosure and Barring Service questionnaires, to health questionnaires and more. Many are mature students who must demonstrate GCSE or equivalent competency at Grade C/4 or above. They are less likely to have support navigating this process as they are less likely to be in full-time education.  

    Most of these applicants have already been interviewed, attended selection days or Multiple Mini Interviews – MMIs (like selection speed dating) involving lots of competency stations.  

    These health students also must apply for their Student Finance loans in good time to trigger the all-important £5K+ NHS learning support fund – essential to enable them to succeed and even get to their clinical placements via bus, train or car.  

    It’s a very onerous process for applicants, their supporters, and the academic, admissions, and compliance teams, who must arrange and record all of this.  

    Clearly, getting all this information recorded and verified is important, but does it have to be so admin-heavy and time-consuming? Are we putting up barriers and disincentives deterring students from starting their studies?  

    At present, we have an inconsistent mess, often involving email and incessant chasing.  

    There has to be a better way  

    Over the last 10 years we have been involved in a number of process improvement/student journey projects at a number of UK universities.  In our experience it takes at least five times longer to admit a Nurse compared to a Business, Law or English student, and at least twice as long compared to a creative arts student who submits their portfolio for interview and review. Data from The Student Loans Company indicates that at least 25% of all new students only apply for their loans on or after results day in August – presenting real risk of delays in getting their money in time for enrolment.  

    Typically, only 85-90% of Nurses and other key NHS-backed students who have a confirmed UCAS place in August actually enrol in September. Another 3-5% have left before January.  

    This is not all about motivation or resilience – part of the issue is linked to getting these students over the line with all the additional hoops they have to jump through.  

    Another issue is around wasted resource across the sector and a poor student experience.  A student typically applies to their five UCAS choices, and many universities undertake the additional PSRB checks during the admission process.  A student is therefore having to supply their information to multiple institutions, which then need to be processed for students who may never actually enrol.  Surely it is better for students to supply this information once during the initial application stage? 

    Postgraduate Teachers including PGCE and Teach First students have to navigate a gov.uk application process (rather than UCAS) which feels like completing your tax return. A daunting and clunky first step to train in one of the most important careers any of us will ever do. They also only get three choices for courses that start in early September – only 2-3 weeks after many final year degree results are confirmed, putting undue pressure both on students, schools and institutions alike. 

    It’s clear that in the context of improving efficiency, eventual enrolment and reducing stress for all, a more collaborative approach across UK HE and professional training would be a real win. The same issues apply for onboarding, applications and selection for degree and higher apprenticeships.  

    The NHS workforce plan signals a clear need to train more Nurses and other key NHS staff and we know that teacher recruitment targets have been missed again this year.  

    Solutions and Future Projects 

    In the context of collaboration between universities, NHS, UKVI, UCAS and DfE we propose some key, essential ways to improve the process and increase the pipeline of future health and education professionals.  

    1. Create a safe, secure one-stop shop for PSRB checks, uploads and compliance so that students do it once and can be shared with all their university choices and options. There are a number of Ed Tech companies as well as UCAS, providing portals for applicants and the Gov.uk system is already improving each year.  
    1. As well as the process, revisit the timeline for applications and compliance for NHS and other PSRB courses – if this is all checked and ready by April-May and directly linked up to Student Finance Applications and/or NHS bursary support – far more students would be able to enrol, train and be ready to learn.  This would require proper process mapping and joined up thinking across different government departments, UCAS and universities themselves.  
    1. The HE sector and NHS should collectively review the factors, groups and critical incidents affecting non-enrolment and first year drop out – nationally and across all PSRB courses – and work at pace to ‘fix the leaks’ accordingly. At present these data sets are not shared or acted upon across the UK but only via individual universities, trusts and occasionally at conferences and sector meetings.  
    1. UCAS and exam boards need to urgently bring forward automatic sharing of GCSE results via the ABL system so that universities and applicants can be assured of level 2 qualifications.  
    1. Look at alternatives to the ‘doom loop’ of GCSE Maths and English retakes and essential requirement for entry to NHS and other professional courses. There are already alternative qualifications including Functional Skills and these need to be amplified, so more students are able to get over the line and start training.  
    1. Universities should work together not against each other. Each university or training provider spends many tens of thousands each year on recruitment campaigns.  For Nursing degrees alone, we estimate this to be at least £1M per year; pooling just 10% of this figure to ensure a consistent brand and overarching campaign would widen the pool of applicants rather than pit universities against each other.  
    1. Review the application process for Postgraduate Teacher Training – consider whether it should be given back to UCAS or another tech platform to improve visibility, choice, applicant journey and eventual enrolment figures.  Clearly only three choices is not enough with some providers being more efficient than others in responding to applicants and dealing with application volumes. The resulting bottlenecks impact on applicant confidence in the system. The early September start date for PG teaching courses also needs a review.  Apart from the application time pressure, these students are also starting before the campus (and school?) is truly ready for the start of term.  Why not start with the rest of their peers at the end of September and also introduce a January start point as an option? 
    1. Make funding more consistent and long term – at present universities are only paid to train students based on first year intake each year, leading to short term decisions, volatility and competition. The LLE due in 2027 is unlikely to lead to flexibility in PSRB course transfer. Giving universities and health trusts a 3-4 year funding model would iron out that volatility, encourage new entrants and provide certainty to invest in facilities, staff and support to train those students.  

    Conclusion and next steps  

    As the HE sector looks back on admission and enrolment for the 2025/26 academic year and prepares for 2026/27 entry we feel that something must change to enhance the admission process for PSRB courses, all of which are critical to the future of the UK.  

    The practical steps and ideas included within the article are all deliverable but need joined-up thinking across different parts of the process. We propose establishing a working group or task force to address quick wins and consider a roadmap for addressing longer-term solutions. 

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  • College admissions in a rapidly evolving world

    College admissions in a rapidly evolving world

    The years ahead will be anything but boring for college admissions officers. From demographic changes and increasing college competition to budget cuts and evolving approaches for admissions requirements — not to mention tectonic federal policy shifts and the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence — the field is as fluid as ever. 

    Those topics and more were under discussion at the Sept. 18-20 annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling in Columbus, Ohio. 

    While there are many forces outside the control of the admissions office, attendees tuned into the internal challenges and opportunities they’re navigating. Panelists, for instance, dug into data on diversity in college enrollment, how to best prepare future students for college math classes and when to deploy AI in institutional operations. 

    Here’s an in-depth look at some of the most interesting conversations Higher Ed Dive heard at NACAC’s 2025 conference:

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