College Admissions News
Auburn has announced that it will no longer be test-optional beginning with next year’s admissions cycle. On the other hand, starting next year, UNC Chapel Hill will no longer require students with a weighted GPA of 2.8 or higher to submit a test score. Applicants below that cutoff will be required to submit an ACT of at least 17 or a minimum SAT of 930.
The College Board eliminated Landscape, its data-aggregating tool sold to colleges to examine “information about high schools and neighborhoods to help colleges understand more about where students live and learn.” Critics said the collected information defied the discontinuation of Affirmative Action by serving as a proxy for race in the admissions process. Despite the shuttering of this big data provider, the Opportunity Atlas online tools are still freely accessible to admissions offices seeking location-based socioeconomic statistics about applicants.
Tulane University placed a private high school in Denver on a year-long Early Decision (ED) suspension this year. A student from the high school backed out his ED commitment last spring, prompting the ban. ED is considered binding, but it is not legally enforceable. Tulane relies heavily on ED applicants, typically filling roughly 60% of the incoming class from that pool. This suspension reinforces the critical importance of enrollment management at Tulane.
Two additional enrollment management issues were in the news this year. Duke admitted an additional 50 students off of its waitlist in August, just two weeks before the start of the fall semester. Also, after the May 1 commitment deadline, Syracuse sent dramatically increased merit aid offers to numerous students who had turned down their initial offers. In both cases, these schools were aiming to increase their revenue in unconventional ways.
Reports of struggling colleges often involve small regional liberal arts schools. However, a recent article from the Wall Street Journal revealed that the University of Chicago is encumbered by hefty financial problems. It ran a fourteen-year budget deficit and now must cut $100M in expenses. In contrast to this contraction, Vanderbilt is currently expanding its footprint to include sites in NYC and West Palm Beach.
NEW TOOL
The popular college ranking site, Niche, just released a new cost comparison tool. Although the most accurate financial results come from completing net price calculators through individual schools, this tool is fast and efficient and works well for an initial investigation: www.niche.com/truecost. Note: you cannot edit the list of selected schools after the report is generated, so be sure to add any and all colleges that interest you.
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PSAT results are out and offer a starting point for crafting your testing plan.
Jan. 9th is the sign-up deadline for the Feb. 14th ACT. Note other deadlines here: https://www.act.org/content/act/en/register-for-the-act.html
It may seem early to plan your summer, but many competitive programs have fall application deadlines.
AI literacy is a core skill. Take this free class to get up to speed: https://course.elementsofai.com/
Juniors need to upload a completed resume in their shared Google Drive folder.
Warm regards,
The MCA Team