More colleges offering admission to students who never applied

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November 26, 2022

News for Students

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Direct admissions, as the approach is often called, allows colleges to send offers to students based on just their GPAs or a few other criteria, such as the intended major or geographic location, without the hassle of essays, letters of recommendation, and months of insecurity.

More than 85% of four-year schools admit at least half of their applicants, federal data shows. They make those candidates jump through hoops first. The purpose of direct admissions, participants say, is to make the process less cumbersome, show low-income, first-generation students that university is within reach, and direct more prospects to institutions desperate for enrollment goals.

“There has to be a bit of a redistribution of power dynamics from the college to the families by now,” said Luke Skurman, chief executive and founder of Niche.com Inc., which provides profiles and assessments from hundreds of thousands of schools. Niche launched a program last spring for tried direct admission with two colleges and now works with 14.

In the past year, the Common Application, the SAGE Scholars, State of Minnesota, and Concourse Private Universities Scholarship Program – purchased in September by EAB enrollment management consultancy – have also launched or expanded direct admission programs in partnership with colleges or universities.

The process for most is quite simple: Students who want to learn more about colleges, or who are specifically interested in joining the direct-admission pool, register on a website with their biographical information and basics like GPA and areas of academic interest. Most students don’t even know which schools are participating. The platform then screens students based on criteria requested by schools and, after coordination with the schools, sends admission offers.

The 30 questions on the Niche website take about half an hour, Mr Skurman said.

When opening the screens, Niche first notifies eligible students who have expressed an interest in a school, e.g. by signing up to receive mailings – they will most likely be eligible for an offer. The next group of students they reach may have expressed an interest in similar schools.

Claire Gaber thought only of major public schools near her home in Portland, Oregon, until an email in February with the logos of Niche and Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland threw her off that path. “Congratulations, Claire!” was part of it. “Based on your Niche profile, you will be admitted for the fall semester 2022. No registration is required.”

“My first question was, ‘Is this real?’” said Mrs. Gaber, now 19 years old. “Then I read it.”

Encouraged by campus visits, talks with the rugby coach, and a $25,000 annual scholarship that brought the total cost among Oregon state universities, she is now a freshman at Mount St. Mary’s.

Under this model, a student’s file only goes to the official candidate pool if they accept the school’s overture and agree to be contacted further. Then it is up to the school to court the student.

“The dating metaphor, you can’t escape it,” says Joe Morrison, founder of EAB’s Concourse platform, comparing the process to swiping both parties right on an app.

Concourse’s Greenlight Match began last year as a pilot with 10 colleges targeting low-income, first-generation students in Chicago, primarily through community organizations. It now has more than 70 partners on the domestic front, including Auburn University and Southern Methodist University.

The colleges that have participated in direct admission pilots to date include institutions large and small, both public and private. Some more selective schools say they have started conversations about applying, at least for students interested in certain academic disciplines or for international students.

“Any project, opportunity, or initiative that helps remove friction from college students is something that lands on my radar,” said Jordanna Maziarz, director of undergraduate admissions at Montclair State University in New Jersey, who works with the Common Application and EAB. “Why do we have to make it so difficult for them?”

Last year, the Common Application accommodated approximately 3,000 candidates based on Montclair State’s GPA criteria. Thirty-one deposits made, and 27 actually registered.

Miguel Popoca Flores, a senior at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, said he didn’t realize he had so many options until he learned about Minnesota’s direct admissions program. Based on his GPA, he is guaranteed admission to schools including the University of Minnesota Duluth, Dunwoody College of Technology and Minnesota State University, Mankato.

He still applies to others, but if they don’t pass, “you always have this university as a backup,” he said. “You’re not stuck in limbo.”

Augsburg University in Minnesota participates in direct admission pilots with the Common Application and with the State of Minnesota, cutting its own application in an average of seven minutes.

Virtually all applicants with an unweighted GPA of at least 2.75 are admitted. Online offer letters will come in a few days, including details on guaranteed scholarships.

Augsburg had already contacted 184 students through the Minnesota pilot, nearly half of whom were not on the school’s radar, according to Robert Gould, vice president for strategic enrollment management. And as of Nov. 7, it received 1,581 applications through the Common Application and its website, up 44% from that time the previous year. It admitted 1,094 of them.

In fact, the road to direct admission can be a long one for some students as a number of schools require those marked for acceptance to still complete the application. Critics warn that this could deter prospects and undermine the goal of simplifying the process.

SAGE Scholars, a tuition-rewards program for private colleges, now offers something founder James Johnston likens to a pre-approval of a mortgage — subject to verification and possibly more paperwork, if schools want it.

More than 30 schools have signed up for the “FastTrak” program this fall.

Goldey-Beacom College in Delaware has approximately 700 students and was overwhelmed to see 4,333 students qualify for admission through FastTrak, based on the 2.5 GPA threshold.

Administrators limited the pool by geography and academic interest, reducing the field of automatic admissions to 434.

Larry Eby, executive director of institutional progress, said even modest gains from FastTrak would count as a success.

“If we have one enrolled student, that’s one we didn’t have before,” he said.

(This story was published from a news agency feed with no text changes.)

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More colleges offering admission to students who never applied

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