Tag: admissions

  • George Washington U Pauses Admissions to 5 Ph.D. Programs

    George Washington U Pauses Admissions to 5 Ph.D. Programs

    George Washington University is pausing admissions to five Ph.D. programs for fall 2026, citing financial hardships.

    According to social media posts, applicants to the programs received emails last week alerting them that the programs “will not be reviewing applications for the 2026–2027 academic year.” The emails went on to say that their application fees would be refunded and offered them the opportunity to be considered for master’s programs instead.

    The Ph.D. programs affected are in clinical psychology, anthropology, human paleobiology, political science and mathematics.

    A university spokesperson attributed the pauses to financial difficulties.

    “Like many universities, we are taking a close look at how best to support our PhD programs while maintaining the highest standards in doctoral education in a difficult fiscal environment. Our recent actions do not reflect a long-term closure or suspension of programs,” the spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed in an email. “Rather, they represent a need to limit new commitments in order to ensure that we fully meet our funding commitments to continuing PhD students” in those five departments.

    Two faculty members told Inside Higher Ed that the university was also slashing the total number of Ph.D. packages across all departments within the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences. GWU did not respond to a question about those additional cuts.

    The suspensions follow other instances of high-profile institutions slashing admissions to Ph.D. programs due to budget concerns, including Boston University, the University of Chicago and Harvard University. In a recent Faculty Senate meeting, GWU president Ellen Granberg asked the university’s schools and divisions to prepare “budget contingency plans” amid declines in applications from international students, the student newspaper, The GW Hatchet, reported. International students accounted for about 13 percent of the institution’s enrollment this fall, a decrease from the previous year.

    Huynh-Nhu Le, who leads the clinical psychology Ph.D. program, said that faculty have been aware for a while that cuts might be coming. In addition to declines in international students, GWU has been a victim of the Trump administration’s research funding cuts. And the program’s cohort size was already shrinking; for fall 2025, the clinical psych Ph.D. admitted a record low three students, down from the typical eight or nine.

    But Le didn’t expect that the program would admit no new students for fall 2026. The pause came as a result of the College of Arts & Sciences allocating just two slots for its three doctoral psychology programs combined. Because the American Psychological Association requires a minimum number of students in a clinical psychology Ph.D. cohort to promote “professional socialization,” Le decided not to admit any this year.

    The decision is likely to have a “ripple effect” on GWU’s clinic, Le said, where first-year students typically perform vital duties like answering phones and conducting intake appointments.

    ‘Hoping It’s an Anomaly’

    Other departments had to make similarly difficult decisions. According to Joel Brewster Lewis, an associate mathematics professor and the director of the department’s graduate programs, annual Ph.D. funding packages are decided by the dean’s office. This year, the amount of funding available to the mathematics department was equivalent to the number of continuing Ph.D. students in the department, meaning there was no funding available for new students.

    “We as a department opted to continue their funding next year rather than defund them and run admissions on those packages,” Lewis wrote in an email.

    In the human paleobiology program, funding for an incoming Ph.D. student would have been available only if a current student graduated this summer, according to Alison Brooks, a professor in the anthropology department and a faculty member within the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology. One student is on track to graduate this summer, she said, but by the time the department knows for sure, it would be too late to admit another student.

    GWU’s human paleobiology Ph.D. program is one of the most recognized at the institution, Brooks said. In a typical year, the program admits roughly three students.

    “We have very high numbers of graduates in tenure-track jobs and other prestigious positions. Two members of our small faculty are in the National Academy of Science and Medicine. And generally we get some funding every year to support research initiatives, in addition to outside funding, to carry on with what we do,” she said. “We’re not necessarily being singled out, but we’re not being preferred, either.”

    Le, of the clinical psychology Ph.D. program, said she hopes this year is just a “blip.”

    “It’s really unfortunate. It’s not only our program—I think other clinical programs in the U.S. are going through the same thing,” she said. “I’m hoping it’s an anomaly for this year.”

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  • Trump’s admissions data collection strains college administrators

    Trump’s admissions data collection strains college administrators

    by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
    January 19, 2026

    Lynette Duncan didn’t expect to spend 20 hours over the past two weeks digging through a mothballed computer system, trying to retrieve admissions data from 2019.

    Duncan is the director of institutional research at John Brown University, a small Christian university in northwest Arkansas, an hour’s drive from Walmart’s headquarters. She runs a one-person office that handles university data collections and analyses, both for internal use and to meet government mandates. Just last year, she spent months collecting and crunching new data to comply with a new federal rule requiring that colleges show that their graduates are prepared for good jobs.

    Then, in mid-December, another mandate abruptly arrived — this one at the request of President Donald Trump. Colleges were ordered to compile seven years of admissions data, broken down by race, sex, grades, SAT or ACT scores, and family income.

    “It’s like one more weight on our backs,” Duncan said. “The workload – it’s not fun.”

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    John Brown University is one of almost 2,200 colleges and universities nationwide now scrambling to comply by March 18 with the new federal reporting requirement, formally known as the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement, or ACTS. By all accounts, it’s a ton of work, and at small institutions, the task falls largely on a single administrator or even the registrar. Failure to submit the data can bring steep fines and, ultimately, the loss of access to federal aid for students.

    After the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning affirmative action in college admissions, the Trump administration suspected that colleges might covertly continue to give racial preferences. To police compliance, the White House directed the Department of Education to collect detailed admissions data from colleges nationwide.

    The data collection was unusual not only in its scope, but also in its speed. Federal education data collections typically take years to design, with multiple rounds of analysis, technical review panels, and revisions. This one moved from announcement to launch in a matter of months.

    A rush job

    One tiny indication that this was a rush job is in the Federal Register notice. Both enforce and admissions are misspelled in a proposal that’s all about admissions enforcement. Those words are spelled “admssions” and “enforece.” 

    A December filing with the Office of Management and Budget incorrectly lists the number of institutions that are subject to the new data collection. It is nearly 2,200, not 1,660, according to the Association for Institutional Research, which is advising colleges on how to properly report the data. Community colleges are exempt, but four-year institutions with selective admissions or those that give out their own financial aid must comply. Graduate programs are included as well. That adds up to about 2,200 institutions. 

    Related: Inaccurate, impossible: Experts knock new Trump plan to collect college admissions data

    In another filing with the Office of Management and Budget, the administration disclosed that none of the five remaining career Education Department officials with statistical experience had reviewed the proposal, including Matt Soldner, the acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. Most of the department’s statistical staff were fired earlier this year as a first step to eliminating the Education Department, one of Trump’s campaign promises. RTI International, the federal contractor in North Carolina that already manages other higher education data collections for the Education Department, is also handling the day-to-day work of this new college admissions collection. 

    During two public comment periods, colleges and higher-education trade groups raised concerns about data quality and missing records, but there is little evidence those concerns substantially altered the final design. One change expanded the retrospective data requirement from five to six years so that at least one cohort of students would have a measurable six-year graduation rate. A second relieved colleges of the burden of making hundreds of complex statistical calculations themselves, instead instructing them to upload raw student data to an “aggregator tool” that would do all the math for them. 

    The Trump administration’s goal is to generate comparisons across race and sex categories, with large gaps potentially triggering further scrutiny.

    Missing data

    The results are unlikely to be reliable, experts told me, given how much of the underlying data is missing or incomplete. In a public comment letter, Melanie Gottlieb, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, warned that entire years of applicant data may not exist at many institutions. Some states advise colleges to delete records for applicants who never enrolled after a year. “If institutions are remaining compliant with their state policies, they will not have five years of data,” Gottlieb wrote.

    The organization’s own guidance recommends that four-year colleges retain admissions records for just one year after an application cycle. One reason is privacy. Applicant files contain sensitive personal information, and purging unneeded records reduces the risk of exposing this data in breaches.

    In other cases, especially at smaller institutions, admissions offices may offload applicant data simply to make room for new student records. Duncan said John Brown University has all seven years of required data, but a switch to a new computer system in 2019 has made it difficult to retrieve the first year.

    Even when historical records are available, key details may be missing or incompatible with federal requirements, said Christine Keller, executive director of the Association for Institutional Research, which previously received a federal contract to train college administrators on accurate data collection until DOGE eliminated it. (The organization now receives some private funds for a reduced amount of training.) 

    Related: Chaos and confusion as the statistics arm of the Education Department is reduced to a skeletal staff of 3

    Standardized test scores are unavailable for many students admitted under test-optional policies. The department is asking colleges to report an unweighted grade-point average on a four-point scale, even though many applicants submit only weighted GPAs on a five-point scale. In those cases, and there may be many of them, colleges are instructed to report the GPA as “unknown.”

    Some students decline to report their race. Many holes are expected for family income. Colleges generally have income data only for students who completed federal financial-aid forms, which many applicants never file. 

    Ellen Keast, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said in an email, “Schools are not expected to provide data they don’t have.” She added, “We know that some schools may have missing data for some data elements. We’ll review the extent of missing data before doing further calculations or analyses.”

    Male or female

    Even the category of sex poses problems. The Education Department’s spreadsheet allows only two options: male or female. Colleges, however, may collect sex or gender information using additional categories, such as nonbinary. 

    “That data is going to be, in my estimation, pretty worthless when it comes to really showing the different experiences of men and women,” Keller said. She is urging the department to add a “missing” option to avoid misleading results. “I think some people in the department may be misunderstanding that what’s needed is a missing-data option, not another sex category.”

    The new “aggregator tool” itself is another source of anxiety. Designed to spare colleges from calculating quintile buckets for grades and test scores by race and sex, it can feel like a black box. Colleges are supposed to fill rows and rows of detailed student data into spreadsheets and then upload the spreadsheets into the tool. The tool generates pooled summary statistics, such as the number of Black female applicants and admitted students who score in the top 20 percent at the college. Only the aggregated data will be reported to the federal government.

    At John Brown University, Duncan worries about what those summaries might imply. Her institution is predominantly white and has never practiced affirmative action. But if high school grades or test scores differ by race — as they often do nationwide — the aggregated results could suggest bias where none was intended.

    “That’s a concern,” Duncan said. “I’m hopeful that looking across multiple years of data, it won’t show that. You could have an anomaly in one year.”

    The problem is that disparities are not anomalies. Standardized test scores and academic records routinely vary by race and sex, making it difficult for almost any institution to avoid showing gaps.

    A catch-22 for colleges

    The stakes are high. In an emailed response to my questions, the Education Department pointed to Trump’s Aug. 7 memorandum, which directs the agency to take “remedial action” if colleges fail to submit the data on time or submit incomplete or inaccurate information.

    Under federal law, each violation of these education data-reporting requirements can carry a fine of up to $71,545. Repeated noncompliance can ultimately lead to the loss of access to federal student aid, meaning students could no longer use Pell Grants or federal loans to pay tuition.

    That leaves colleges in a bind. Failing to comply is costly. Complying, meanwhile, could produce flawed data that suggests bias and invites further scrutiny.

    The order itself contradicts another administration goal. President Trump campaigned on reducing federal red tape and bureaucratic burden. Yet ACTS represents a significant expansion of paperwork for colleges. The Office of Management and Budget estimates that each institution will spend roughly 200 hours completing the survey this year — a figure that higher-education officials say may be an understatement.

    Duncan is hoping she can finish the reporting in less than 200 hours, if there are no setbacks when she uploads the data. “If I get errors, it could take double the time,” she said.

    For now, she is still gathering and cleaning old student records and waiting to see the results… all before the March 18 deadline.

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about college admissions data was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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  • Rethinking Lead Quality for Marketing-Admissions Alignment

    Rethinking Lead Quality for Marketing-Admissions Alignment

    Why Quality Beats Quantity in Student Recruitment

    Many institutions measure enrollment success by the size of their funnel. However, lead volume alone doesn’t translate into student enrollments, and in many cases, it creates more friction than results.

    When marketing teams are tasked with generating as many student leads as possible, admissions teams are often left to sift through a flood of prospects who were never the right fit. The result is wasted effort, strained teams, and disappointing yield. A smarter approach focuses on lead quality, not volume, and requires marketing and admissions to work together from the very beginning.

    The Risks of a Volume-Driven Mindset

    A volume-driven approach creates several hidden risks that undermine enrollment goals.

    First, marketing may deliver impressive lead numbers that admissions teams simply can’t convert. When success is defined by quantity alone, campaigns are optimized for clicks and form fills, not for intent or fit. Admissions counselors then spend valuable time chasing prospects who lack academic readiness, program alignment, or enrollment urgency.

    Second, high lead volume increases operational burden. Admissions teams are forced into reactive mode — managing inboxes, repeating outreach attempts, and documenting interactions that rarely progress. Over time, this erodes morale and reduces the attention given to the strongest applicants.

    Finally, institutions often spend more on advertising without improving outcomes. Larger budgets drive more traffic, but without stronger targeting and messaging, enrollment yield remains flat. This cycle reinforces siloed operations rather than solving for them.

    As explored in my recent article about why admissions and marketing collaboration matters, alignment across teams — not scale — is the real growth lever.

    How Discovery Shapes Lead Quality

    High-quality recruitment doesn’t start with campaigns — it starts with clarity. And clarity is the product of strong discovery paired with powerful and differentiated storytelling.

    Discovery is where marketing and admissions teams uncover what actually drives enrollment success: who thrives in the program, why they choose it, what doubts they need resolved, and what outcomes actually motivate action. Without this foundation, messaging tends to default to broad, generic claims that attract attention but fail to reach the right students.

    Strong brand strategies don’t try to appeal to everyone. They’re built around intentional differentiation and can clearly articulate who the institution is a right fit for, what it stands for, and what makes its experience distinct. This, in turn, creates deeper engagement that translates into more qualified prospects. 

    When institutional storytelling is rooted in discovery, messaging becomes more precise and authentic. Instead of overpromising or relying on broad aspirational language, marketing communicates real program strengths, expectations, and outcomes. This clarity acts as a filter. Prospective students who see themselves in the story lean in with higher intent, while those who are misaligned self-select out earlier in the funnel.

    For admissions teams, this translates into more productive conversations. Leads arrive with clearer expectations, stronger program fit, and greater readiness to move forward. 

    In short, discovery-led storytelling reduces friction across the funnel. Marketing attracts fewer but better-aligned prospects, admissions spends less time correcting misalignment, and institutions see stronger enrollment outcomes driven by relevance rather than volume.

    Building Marketing-Admissions Alignment

    True alignment requires more than good intentions. It demands shared definitions, shared metrics, and ongoing communication.

    Institutions must define key performance indicators (KPIs) that connect lead quality to enrollment outcomes — such as yield, time to application, and retention — rather than isolating marketing performance from admissions results. When teams agree on what “good” looks like, strategy becomes easier to execute.

    Messaging, targeting, and follow-up should also be aligned around program goals. Marketing sets expectations honestly and clearly; admissions reinforces those expectations through consistent conversations. Feedback loops allow teams to refine targeting and messaging based on real applicant behavior, not assumptions.

    This approach echoes the mindset shift outlined in my colleague Brian Messer’s recent article, which covered why institutions should stop chasing student leads and focus instead on sustainable enrollment strategies.

    Less Volume, More Conversions

    A smaller pipeline doesn’t mean weaker results. In fact, institutions that prioritize lead quality often see higher conversion rates, stronger retention, and less staff burnout.

    With fewer but better-aligned prospects, admissions teams can focus on meaningful engagement rather than time-consuming, low-yield outreach. Applicants receive clearer guidance, faster responses, and a more personalized experience. And marketing and admissions share accountability for outcomes rather than deflecting responsibility across teams.

    Key Takeaways

    • Lead quality drives stronger enrollment outcomes than raw volume.
    • Discovery is the foundation of high-quality recruitment and clearer positioning.
    • Collaboration between marketing and admissions reduces silos, increases efficiency, and improves yield.

    When marketers prioritize lead quality over lead volume, everyone wins. 

    Improve Lead Quality and Align Marketing and Admissions With Archer

    At Archer Education, we work with your marketing and admissions teams to build sustainable lead generation and enrollment strategies. Our approach focuses on establishing lasting capabilities so that your institution has the tools, training, and insights to operate with confidence. 

    Our enrollment marketing teams conduct deep discovery to inform your campaigns, while our admissions and retention teams provide personalized engagement support to prioritize student success.

    Contact us today to learn more. 

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  • The boat is leaking: why is the change to admissions at one of the oldest Cambridge colleges a problem?

    The boat is leaking: why is the change to admissions at one of the oldest Cambridge colleges a problem?

    Author:
    Charlotte Gleed

    Published:

    This blog was kindly authored by Charlotte Gleed, former HEPI intern and current MPhil student at the University of Cambridge.

    A Guardian article revealing that Trinity Hall College at the University of Cambridge will target elite private schools for student recruitment has ignited a fierce debate this week. The article reveals how Fellows at one of the oldest Cambridge colleges voted to change their admissions strategy to approach a select group of 50 independent schools. The intention is to improve the ‘quality’ of applicants, following concerns that ‘reverse discrimination’ is the cause of this quality issue.

    But this diagnosis is a problematic one. And more concerning, it is a move which risks not only an interruption of access and widening participation efforts, but a radical setback.

    Why has Trinity Hall, Cambridge made this move?

    Trinity Hall claims that the change to their admissions policy is a ‘targeted recruitment strategy’. Their objective is to encourage students from the selected private schools to apply for undergraduate courses in a select list of subjects including languages, music, and classics. But this puts a – large and potentially destructive – spanner in the works for access to higher education.

    Not only does this strategy support a small minority of a privileged few, given that 7% of the population in the United Kingdom is privately educated. It also focuses on subjects, like music, which state schools have long struggled to maintain at equal levels to their independent counterparts. There has been a 25% drop in pupils studying GCSE Music in England over the last 15 years, and Parliament debated the issue in July 2025 over cuts and underfunding to musical education.

    A HEPI report from July 2025 raised concerns about the language crisis and the decline in uptake of students studying languages at school. So Trinity Hall are valid in their efforts to find ways to increase applications for languages, in particular. But their strategy of targeting the most – economically – selective schools is flawed.

    If this policy is implemented in the 2026 / 2027 admissions cycle and beyond the gap between outcomes for state and privately educated students in higher education will widen. Not only could this decision reverse sustained efforts to widen participation to higher education, but it will ultimately mean that ‘privileged pasts become privileged futures’, as the Dearing Report warned almost thirty years ago in 1997.

    Change to admissions policies is not always a bad thing. Back in 1965, Hertford College, Oxford devised, what is still a little known access programme called ‘The Tanner Scheme’. The programme was the first outreach initiative across Oxford and Cambridge: a revolutionary step for increasing accessibility to the most selective universities in the country – and the world. But its initial motivation was less egalitarian and philanthropic.

    The first version of the scheme was targeted at a select few boys’ grammar schools in the north of England, whose students the college admissions tutors believed were untapped talent. But the hidden goal was neither to widen participation nor improve access for these talented students, but to improve the academic record of the college within Oxford. Having exhausted the pool of privately educated talent, the next best option was academic students with ability and potential, not wealth.

    Sound familiar…? Only now potential and wealth are being combined.

    There is a real concern that a new precedent could be set within Oxbridge colleges, which threatens the long-established practice of widening participation. Colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge have a degree of independence unrivalled compared to most other higher education institutions. The Office for Students requires all higher education institutions to have an Access and Participation Plan (APPs) which identifies access and participation gaps unique to their student cohorts. APPs have not only held these institutions accountable but taken the sector in a positive direction towards increased access.

    But the Trinity Hall revelations show there is a loophole. Despite the Office for Students’ requirement, it appears that colleges can target what is an already overrepresented cohort without regulatory intervention. 29.0% of undergraduates accepted for the 2024/25 admissions cycle were privately educated, even though only 7% of the population is. While the majority of Cambridge acceptances come from ‘maintained’ schools (comprehensive and grammar schools, as well as sixth form and further education colleges) the disproportionate gap between the number of students attending independent schools and their acceptance of a place is troubling for access.

    That loophole needs closing. The ramifications for access to higher education could be catastrophic if a new trend begins. The Guardian reports that one member of staff at Trinity Hall, Cambridge called the policy ‘a slap in the face’ for state-educated undergraduates. But there is an even higher stake than this. It could mean that higher education becomes more inaccessible for those whose life it could transform most.

    The boat is not sinking – yet. But there is a risk it could.

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  • Who Benefits From Direct Admissions, in 5 Charts

    Who Benefits From Direct Admissions, in 5 Charts

    Some direct-admissions programs admit all students who fit certain criteria, while others seek out students based on particular traits.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Prostock-Studio/iStock/Getty Images

    Direct admissions, the practice by which colleges extend offers of admissions to students without them submitting an application, has become increasingly popular.

    About 15 states now have their own programs, which typically involve extending admissions offers to qualifying high school seniors in the state—or, for some open-access institutions, to all graduating seniors. Meanwhile, a handful of private companies and nonprofits have launched platforms in recent years to allow institutions to send out offers to students around the country.

    Such programs aim to help colleges boost enrollment and reach students who may otherwise not have applied to those institutions—and research shows that they’ve proven successful in those goals.

    But what kinds of institutions utilize direct admissions and which students accept direct-admissions offers? Niche, a college rankings company whose direct admissions product launched as a pilot in 2022, shared data about its Class of 2029 direct-admissions enrollees with Inside Higher Ed, providing a glimpse into the demographics, majors and locations of those students.

    “I think in this day and age of mobile, social media, AI—it’s just getting harder and harder to reach students and break through the noise,” said Luke Skurman, Niche’s CEO. “This is very in tune with [students’ expectations]. They’re used to pressing a button, having an Uber show up at their home, having food being delivered to their home. They like it being instantaneous. They like it being simple, transparent. I think there are institutions that really believe this is a natural evolution for this demographic.”

    Over a million students received offers from the 145 participating institutions last year. That number is likely to grow this admissions cycle; over 160 partner institutions have already extended offers to over 770,000 students. (The Common App, which in 2021 launched its direct-admissions offering that focuses on first-generation and low- and middle-income students, reported that 119 participating universities extended offers last year to 733,000 students. This year, the number of institutions jumped to 213.)

    But experts have noted that direct-admissions services run by private companies lack some of the benefits provided by state’s direct-admissions programs. Jennifer A. Delaney, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who researches direct admissions, said in an interview that effective direct-admissions programs shouldn’t require students to take any steps to receive any admissions offers—including filling out a profile, as Niche requires.

    Over all, enrollments through Niche’s platform this fall accounted for 11 percent of all enrollments at participating institutions, with each institution enrolling a median of 60 students through direct admissions. Inside Higher Ed broke it all down in five charts below.

    Colleges admitted higher rates of nonwhite and first-gen students through direct admissions.

    About 60 percent of students who enrolled through the Niche direct-admissions tool this year were students of color, while about 43 percent were first-generation. Among students at those same institutions who enrolled through other means, 48 percent were students of color and 34 percent were first-generation.

    Colleges using direct admissions are mostly, but not exclusively, private.

    Of the students who enrolled via Niche’s tool, a majority—69 percent—enrolled at private institutions.

    Damien Snook, Niche’s director of product analytics, said that the types of institutions that use the service range significantly from flagship institutions, albeit generally in smaller states, down to tiny religious colleges. Most are not selective but aren’t open access, either.

    “What we see from our direct-admissions partner more or less mirrors national trends. We do kind of meet that Goldilocks zone,” he said.

    At public institutions, enrollments from direct admissions made up a slightly smaller share—8 percent—of new fall 2025 enrollments compared to 12 percent among private institutions.

    Where is direct admissions most popular?

    California, Pennsylvania and Texas are the most common states for direct-admissions enrollees to hail from. That statistic isn’t entirely surprising, considering they are among the most populous states. They’re also the three most popular destinations for direct-admissions students, though Pennsylvania ranks higher than California on that list.

    Some of the areas where the product has been most successful, such as the Midwest, are where institutions that piloted and beta tested the tool found success, Snook said. They’re also areas that are projected to see decreased numbers of high school graduates in the coming years, meaning institutions may be looking to draw students from other areas of the country, which Niche’s tool allows them to do.

    Health majors reign supreme, but direct admissions students span a variety of majors.

    Unlike state direct-admissions programs, colleges on Niche’s platform can pick and choose students by attributes like intended major or location.

    “Some lean into the territories that they’re already established in, so they’ll search for students in their state, or they’ll lean into ‘I’m a tech school and I’m looking for students that are interested in STEM majors.’ But we also have institutions that do the opposite, who say, ‘We’re good at recruiting in our backyard, but where we really want help is our secondary market,’” said Snook.

    The trends in students’ majors mirror overall, national data trends, with the Niche data showing a slight decline in those studying computer science and an increase in those pursuing health degrees.

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  • 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. 

    Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    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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