How COVID-19 is Changing College Admissions
- Lindsay Petry, Founder
- Sep 19, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 29, 2020
The current global pandemic has severely impacted the 2021 college admissions process on both the student and college side.
For students, their learning environments have been altered, extra-curricular activities have been seriously limited or canceled completely, standardized testing has become unsafe and unreliable, and college visits have become completely virtual. Not to mention, during a global pandemic college might be the last thing you want to, or can, worry about.
For college admissions professionals, standardized testing, a major component of the application selection criteria, has been removed; student's extracurriculars may be lacking through no fault of their own; and counselors are experiencing the same personal stressors as the rest of the world.
Let's first talk about the biggest change this year, standardized testing.
A large portion of applicants this year will not have test scores. The majority of institutions have recognized the effect COVID-19 is having on testing centers and moved to score optional or score free policies. But what does this mean?
Unfortunately, this will mean something different for every institution. I encourage you to reach out to each school you are applying to and discuss the application review process during COVID. But for many institutions, this forces a move towards a holistic application review. More emphasis will be placed on high school grades and curriculum and application essays and letters of recommendations will be scrutinized more.
It will be more crucial than ever for students to nail their essays and include impactful letters of recommendation.
Often times, in the admissions process test scores are used as a tie breaker between two applicants. Test scores are one of only two major data points in the application (the other being GPA). During this admissions cycle, admissions counselors will not be able to rely on this element of the application for decisions. It stands to reason other application factors will be used, but which factors will be subjective. Some counselors may use GPA, others may really narrow in on the essays, some may even look closer at extracurricular activities.
The other major change is high school transcripts.
Many schools were forced to adapt their grading systems because of virtual learning and school shut downs. Last year, seeing a pass/fail grade on a high school transcript was almost unheard of. This year, they will be all over the place.
Colleges realize this and are prepared for it. College admissions counselors will likely use your freshmen and sophomore grades to determine what your academic trajectory would have been. However, as noted above high school gpa and individual course grades are the second data point in your application.
Effectively, COVID-19 has removed all concrete data points from the application review process.
The take away here is that although we can say without a doubt that this admissions cycle has been severely impacted by COVID-19, it is also an unprecedented time. College admissions offices are still scrambling to figure out how this admissions process will fully shake out. All we know for sure is that every aspect of the application will matter even more this year.
Read our other blogs posts on tips for a stellar supplemental essay!
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