New Trends in College Admissions: Unexpected Gold?

Colleges and universities are, alas, business organizations as well as education institutions. Gone are the days when sprawling campuses contained empty buildings for weeks or months each year. Today, the campus business office exerts some pressure on academics: fill up spaces by attracting a year-round constituency that maximizes facility use while reduces per-student overhead. Therein lies some good news for applicants. Colleges are providing more admissions opportunities as a result, and possibilities are turning up in unexpected places!

Did you know that colleges are accepting students for terms other than the one for which they initially applied? Although a student may want to be admitted for the fall semester, she may find a letter of acceptance for a different term or semester! Two top Florida schools, UF and FSU, do this.

But wait! There’s more! To a small group of applicants, NYU offers a first class seat overseas. Choose from a limited number of spots in Florence, London, Paris, or Shanghai. Closer to our home in  Florida, University of Miami gives to its waitlist/spring admitted students the chance to begin a college education in Washington, D.C. (in collaboration with American University).

Well, if New York and Miami are in the game, Boston can’t be far behind. Lo and behold, Northeastern University is offering study overseas, too – as far away as Australia, as near as Costa Rica. Start your freshman year on one of its five outlier campuses and return to Boston to continue studies.

The lesson to remember is that it’s more important than ever to dive into admissions possibilities as promoted on a college’s website. When in doubt, call the school. Admission counselors are always pleased to chat about their offerings. They’ll never reveal an admission decision in advance; that’s a committee decision made in its own time.

Here’s yet another admissions trend: the number of applications continued to climb this year. Take the University of Michigan, for instance: applications shot up 25%, from 32,000 to 40,000. Some schools in their admissions cycle have more applicants on their waitlist than the number who actually received acceptances (Duke)!

While it may seem to some parents and students that admissions possibilities have contracted over time, what with the predictable glut of applicants for the brand name schools, there are actually some novel routes to higher education now available to the smart seeker. Call us for more guidance!