On Monday, March 14, California State legislators along with Governor Gavin Newsom, ratified legislation amending the California Environmental Quality Act, so UC Berkeley (Cal) admissions officials will not need to reduce Fall 2022 enrollment for first year, transfer, or graduate students, as previously predicted. As a result, UC Berkeley officials will no longer encourage 1000…
On-going cancellations of the SAT and ACT administrations has interrupted the traditional college admissions recruitment cycle, which may eventually affect demand for college. Rick Clark, Director of Undergraduate Admissions at Georgia Tech, writes: The mass cancellations and ensuing test-optional landslide has severely limited a big part of how colleges solicit applications through what we call…
According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, preliminary application counts for Fall 2021 released by the University of California show a 15% increase from last year’s Fall 2020 applications, netting nearly 250,000 single applications. Yet, will increases in applications render to more acceptances and more enrollment? Some speculate that the increase in applications is…
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is the latest university admissions office to extend their application deadlines for Fall 2021 admissions. Other colleges, including the 23 California State Universities (CSU), the nine University of California (UC) campuses, as well as the University of Texas Austin and Texas A & M have all already extended their application…
Confirmed COVID cases are rising at different rates amongst the different regions in the United States and globally just as many college students will be released from their campuses at the Thanksgiving Break. As they begin traveling home, students may have to quarantine once again, just as they did to start the school year, but…
On September 1, 2020, a California Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunction, to be finalized on September 29, 2020, barring the use of SAT and ACT scores in Fall 2021 University of California (UC) admissions evaluations. Essentially, the judge implemented a “test-blind” admissions policy, meaning SAT or ACT scores cannot be considered, even if…
In the current economic backdrop, where the median view of economists predict a near 5% year over year decline in GDP (total amount of goods and services produced in the American economy) for 2020 (officially a recession), where both initial and continuing unemployment claims stubbornly loom above their longer run average, and though the economy…
The 2020-21 school year plans of 1075 colleges, almost a third of all colleges in the US, as compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education While the pandemic shows no sign of abating, increasingly college administrators are wrangling with how to maintain the efficacy of their institutions in a time of crisis. As crowded school…
Although statistically the young have proven not to be affected medically by COVID-19 like more vulnerable populations of all ages with pre-existing conditions as well as those over the age of 50, doesn’t mean they have no risk of serious health consequences. Yet, knowing college-aged students can spread the virus to others at greater risk…
College administrators are proposing two scenarios for the 2020-21 school year, first, a hybrid model of modified residential on-campus living + online instruction + limited in-person instruction and secondly, continuing distance learning with no on-campus residency. With either model, students’ college experience is severely curtailed. Incoming UCLA freshmen, who are not able to acquire housing,…
Beginning with the first Advanced Placement (AP) exams on Monday, May 11, thousands of students were unable to submit their answers. As students continued taking additional tests during the week, more and more students reported technical difficulties and expressed frustrations about not being able to submit their answers. For the students who experienced technical glitches…
Ahead of the traditional, widely accepted national enrollment deadline of May 1 for first year college students, although some colleges have extended the enrollment deadline to June 1 due to the COVID-19 health crisis, college admissions officers are already extending offers of admissions to waitlist candidates. I contacted two different admissions officers on the West…
Amidst the COVID-19 health crisis disrupting educational and instructional continuity, students, parents, and educators are asking and being asked questions about the current educational process, which is also spurring discussions about the value of education. The following is a selection of education-related news stories from the past few weeks, offering insights about the shifts…
The $14 Billion bailout for U.S. colleges and universities as part of the recent CARES Act will not solve the widening financial deficits in higher education. Costs to maintain buildings and the physical grounds, despite the lack of students present on campus, as well as salaries to faculty and staff must still be paid. Additionally,…
Our parents are our first teachers and often are our primary teachers. As such, the responsibilities of parents are great to be “guides on the side”, not “the sage on the stage”. Then, our children blossom into the extraordinary beings they are. In an essay for People magazine, Michelle Obama shared the following lesson she…
