On Monday afternoon, enrollment leaders at about two dozen colleges joined a conference call to discuss their plans for responding to the novel coronavirus. The officials represented institutions in the Enrollment Planning Network, a group of private colleges — including American University, Boston College, Bucknell University, and Texas Christian University — that regularly share data and best practices.
One item on the agenda was the May 1 deadline for admissions deposits. Did anyone plan to extend theirs, so as to give applicants more time to make a decision?
Only one official was leaning that way, according to three people who participated in the call. The consensus, they said, was that pushing back the deadline would be impractical and unnecessary, and, as one put it, a delay would also “create more angst for families.”
As a pandemic spreads uncertainty throughout higher education, enrollment officials are weighing tough questions about how to balance institutional needs and the concerns of applicants during an unprecedented crisis. As The Chronicle reported this week, dozens of colleges have pushed back their May 1 deposit deadlines to June 1; as of Wednesday afternoon, nearly 150 colleges had done so, according to one tally.
As colleges and universities have struggled to devise policies to respond to the quickly evolving situation, here are links to The Chronicle’s key coverage of how this worldwide health crisis is affecting campuses.
But the profession is divided over the advisability of extending the May 1 deadline, known as the National Candidates Reply Date. Though some high-school counselors and enrollment leaders are urging colleges to make the move, officials at a half-dozen highly selective colleges told The Chronicle this week that they don’t think it’s a good idea. As with most questions in the admissions realm, there’s more than one way to look at it.
Boston College, which plans to email admissions decisions on Thursday, is keeping its May 1 deadline, according to John L. Mahoney, vice provost for enrollment management. “In a situation so overwhelming and so fluid,” he wrote in an email on Tuesday, “I think it’s premature to do that and feeds the confusion people are experiencing.”
William T. Conley, vice president for enrollment management at Bucknell, expressed similar thoughts. The university, which plans to release admissions decisions next week, has decided to keep its May 1 deadline, too.
“The fact is, most students have been in the process for at least 16 months,” Conley said. “To have yet another decision pushed off just adds more anxiety for a family. Maybe I’m rationalizing, because, yes, it’s in the best interest of universities to have an early sense of where deposits are tracking.
“But amid all this uncertainty, it’s also good for families to look for something that in some sense they have some control over,” he continued. “One could argue that this is an opportunity to reduce some of that anxiety that’s associated with all these unknowns to say, ‘Wait, John’s gonna go to college, and let’s make that decision by the deadline that’s requested and required.’ That might give them some solace.”
What about families that are anxious because their financial circumstances have changed as a result of the unfolding crisis?
Bucknell plans to tell admitted applicants that they can request an extension, as it does each year, Conley explained. “We’re going to be very understanding,” he said. “We certainly recognize that the uncertainty of financial circumstances will, no doubt, increase the number of requests for an extension, and for a reconsideration of financial-aid packages. We’ve got from March 26 to May 1 to do that, and more time, if needed.”
‘The New Normal’
The emerging debate over deposit deadlines involves unanswerable questions about the near future. Conley and several other enrollment officials told The Chronicle that pushing back their deadlines might suggest to families that on-campus events for admitted applicants, previously scheduled for April, would be held in the following month. It’s a strong possibility that campuses won’t be accessible for visits in May.
“Things are starting to look so bleak, I’m not sure June 1 does the trick,” said Todd Rinehart, vice chancellor for enrollment at the University of Denver, which is considering whether to change its deadline. “Students may need to make decisions without visiting campuses this year.”
One thing that most everyone agrees on: Pushing back a deposit deadline poses logistical challenges to colleges. It’s not, several enrollment officials insist, as easy as flipping a switch from “May” to “June.”
A slew of what Conley called “downstream transactions” affecting an entire campus can’t happen until the first-year class is locked in. Course registrations, housing assignments, orientation planning, advising assignments, and many other tasks typically happen between mid-May and early August.
Eric Nichols had to confront those realities when he decided that extending his university’s deadline was necessary. “In my heart of hearts, I thought it would be an easy decision,” he said, “but it wasn’t a decision I could make myself.”
Nichols, vice president for enrollment at Loyola University Maryland, raised the issue at a cabinet meeting last week. Though everyone agreed that families could use more time to weigh their options, he said, there were many logistical questions to consider. Like how a later deadline might complicate planning for four orientation sessions, scheduled for mid- to late June.
The cabinet also discussed how a later deadline would affect the board’s annual budgeting meeting, in early May. Typically, with a tally of first-year deposits in hand, Nichols can give trustees at that gathering a solid estimate of headcount and net revenue for the fall. This year, forget it.
As Nichols and his colleagues were discussing the possibility of moving the deadline, one of them floated an alternative: What if Loyola just granted extensions to anyone who asked for one?
“That’s when I put my first-gen hat on,” Nichols said.
What we were hoping to know around May 1 we were not going to know anyway.
Raised by a single mother who didn’t attend college, Nichols remembered what it was like growing up in a low-income household. “Underrepresented students, especially first-generation families, aren’t necessarily savvy enough to know that they could ask for an extension, just as they don’t necessarily know that they can ask for financial-aid appeals,” he said. “It seemed more equitable to just move it back for everyone.”
His colleagues were receptive, Nichols said. Last Sunday, Loyola’s president gave him approval to go with June 1.
If the deadline hadn’t changed, Nichols would have expected hundreds of families to request extensions. “What we were hoping to know around May 1,” he said, “we were not going to know anyway.”
Last week, Heath Einstein, dean of admissions at Texas Christian University, thought a lot about the “downstream effects” of moving its deadline. He spoke with the registrar’s office, the financial-aid office, the housing office, and so on.
“The enrollment process happens in this very ordered way,” Einstein said. “Even pushing one thing back a few days can interrupt everything, applying a ton of pressure to systems across your campus.”
Ultimately, Texas Christian opted to extend the deadline to June 1. For one thing, Einstein said, the extra month would give the university more time to ramp up virtual experiences meant to replicate in-person visits, and more time to communicate with families.
“This allows more time for the new normal to sink in,” Einstein said. “Right now there’s so much uncertainty in the air, and every hour brings something new. Giving families a little more time to assess their financial situation, the viability of coming here — that seemed like a win.”
The Illusion of Control
To understand why an enrollment leader might hesitate to move a deadline, it helps to understand their mind-set. The longer we give students to make a decision, some might think, the more likely they might be to lose interest and pick another college. The student-recruitment machine is designed to push applicants to Act Now. No one likes losing control of the process — or even the illusion of control — especially in a year when the economy made so much else uncertain.
Moreover, other recent shifts in the profession have injected more suspense into enrollment projections. Under pressure from the Justice Department, the National Association for College Admission Counseling recently changed its mandatory ethics code to a statement of best practices. That move, some admissions officials predict, could erode the profession’s adherence to many of the code’s fixtures, including the sanctity of the May 1 deadline.
If some big-name colleges don’t change their deadlines, it could be because they’re banking on their reputations, as well as the pressure that ye olde May 1 deadline implies, to reel in the bulk of their class. The nation’s most-selective colleges, with sky-high yield rates, know that they’re the first or second choice for most of their applicants. Many of those applicants do, in fact, have plenty of information about colleges already, and they will have made up their minds by late April. And among students from affluent families, a June 1 deadline might well provide no benefit at all.
But many applicants fit a much different description. “I worry about the students who don’t have all the information they need,” Einstein said. “The students who are squeezed out by forcing them to make a decision on May 1 will be the students who are always squeezed out.”
Holding fast to these deadlines, I think it’s kind of selfish, and not practical for most families.
Tara Miller agrees. A college counselor at Austin High School, in Texas, she advises 500 seniors, many of whom worry about paying for college. Now that the economy is buckling, she expects those concerns to grow.
“Most families are already stretched to some degree to send their kids to college,” Miller said. “Now they’re weighing whether they might lose jobs, or if they should keep their sons and daughters close to home. Holding fast to these deadlines, I think it’s kind of selfish, and not practical for most families.”
Miller’s high school has shifted to virtual instruction, which she expects to continue to the end of the school year. That means she must find a way to help her students with big chores, like completing financial-aid forms and federal-aid verification, while working from home.
“We need more time to help them,” she said. “We can’t have these nuanced conversations during a big webcast. Without that luxury, the students most hurt by this will be the students with the most need.”
The students most hurt by this will be the students with the most need.
If colleges were announcing — the horror — delays in getting admissions decisions out by April 1 because of coronavirus disruptions, that would cause anxiety, and possibly a national panic. By contrast, it’s hard to see how extending a deposit deadline would rattle a family that was already feeling good about a particular college. Anyone who wants to make a deposit is free to send it right in.
Still, in the end, whether or not a college extends its deadline probably won’t matter as much as how much aid it provides to a given family, especially one whose financial situation has taken a bad turn. That’s why the University of Denver’s Rinehart said colleges should do more to promote their financial-aid appeals process.
Oh, and waiving or reducing deposit fees this spring? Maybe someone will start a campaign urging colleges to do that.
For now, there’s just “Push Back National College Decision Day,” an online petition started last week by Julia Finke, a high-school senior in Norfolk, Va. As of Wednesday evening, the petition had 5,255 signatures.
Finke, an accomplished actress who wants to attend an urban college with a strong theater program, is still weighing her choices. She has not visited any of the colleges on her list, but she had planned to hit several of them in April. Even if she’s unable to do that, she thinks giving seniors living through an unprecedented crisis another month to decide is a good idea.
“Choosing a college affects the rest of your life,” she said. “Being put on quarantine doesn’t make that decision any easier.”
