In a regular school year, Carrie Harlow’s work takes her all over Vermont. She holds financial aid application sessions in computer labs and conference rooms, meets with students in cafeterias and offices, and leads groups of high schoolers on excursions to tour college campuses.
This year, she has been forced to compress all these interactions into video or phone calls.
Harlow, a counselor in the career and education outreach program at the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation, worries that the digital approach to a college search is hurting students at an important transitional time.
“I’m really worried that some students are falling through the cracks, that they’ve become disengaged in some ways,” Harlow said. “I worry about how much they’re thinking about their futures right now.”
Harlow is not alone. It’s been a strange year for college admissions across the board. Faced with high school seniors anxious for answers, college counselors and admissions deans have struggled to provide them.
And those seniors have sent their applications in time for the January or early February deadlines at a large number of schools across the country, still uncertain of what lies ahead. Will students be on-campus for their freshman fall? What will on-campus life look like? Will they be vaccinated?
Evelyn Monje, a senior at Winooski High School, described the application process as challenging and anxiety-inducing. Through the Community College of Vermont’s Early College program, Monje will earn 16 college credits by the time she graduates this spring.
On top of her accelerated academic track and the stressors of the pandemic, Monje is working four jobs and researching scholarships and grants to help pay for college.
“There have been some tears,” she said. “The fear and urgency have definitely impacted my mental health in terms of trying to balance all the things going on in my life.”
The high school counselors and college deans lament their inability to ease students’ concerns. They’re supposed to know all the answers, but not this year.
“We can’t predict the future,” said Adam Warrington, admissions director at Community College of Vermont. “We want to be able to tell students exactly what the next semester and the one after that will look like, and it’s been difficult to be able to give anyone an assurance about anything.”
Missed connections
While they’re doing their best on Zoom, counselors find that meeting remotely doesn’t offer the same opportunities for connection and deep reflection as in-person conversations.
“Personally, I feel I do my best work when I’m face-to-face with a student, because I feel like I can get a better read of them,” said Sarah Soule, a post secondary planning coordinator at Middlebury Union High School — where students these days either come to school just two days per week or are completely remote.
“It’s been a harder process to walk kids through because things feel really disjointed,” said Nikki St. Mary, school counselor at South Burlington High School. “Some of the things we do are just way better done in person. Sitting with kids, having conversations, being reflective about what they’re doing, answering questions — it’s really hard to do that stuff over Zoom.”
Students have been concerned, in particular, about new standardized testing policies with schools — including Middlebury College and the University of Vermont — that are test-optional, and about the prospects for a full campus life in the fall, Soule said.
On the college end, the lack of in-person contact has posed its own set of challenges.
Monje, the Winooski senior, had planned to tour colleges last summer and was disappointed when she and her mother had to cancel their travels.
“As a small-town Vermonter, it was really important to me that I like the atmosphere, that I’m able to connect with other students on that human level. It was really challenging thinking about deciding where to spend four or five formative years without any hands-on experience,” she said.
Bereft of the traditional means of engaging prospective students — campus tours, in-person meetings, college fairs — schools have tried to come up with creative alternatives.
At Champlain College in Burlington, Director of Admissions Diane Soboski and her team have found it’s important to connect applicants not just with the admissions staff, but also with current students and local residents.
Champlain’s admissions office has gone well beyond webinars and meetings; virtual events have included games and Champlain College trivia nights. Those activities help students understand the social scene at the schools they are applying to.
“Students want to know what the culture is like,” Soboski said. “They’re wondering: Am I going to fit in? Am I going to make friends? Am I going to find organizations where students have similar interests to me?”
Those questions are particularly poignant for high school seniors who are studying at home and missing out on many of the social experiences they expected in their final year of high school, Soboski said.
In addition to virtual tours, information sessions and meetings, Vermont Technical College in Randolph Center is mailing gift boxes to all its accepted students this year, said Jessica Van Deren, assistant dean of admissions. Vermont Tech was able to offer limited in-person tours in the fall, too.
Beyond online events, social media can help prospective students a feel for campus culture, said Ryan Hargraves, executive director of undergraduate admissions at UVM.
Enrollment trends
What all of these changes in the college admissions process will mean for enrollment, exactly, is still uncertain.
Community College of Vermont’s enrollment of new high school graduates doubled last fall and numbers for the spring semester look promising, according to Warrington. In part, Warrington credits a generous gift from the McClure Foundation for the college’s increased enrollment; it offered every graduating high school senior in Vermont a free course at CCV.
Application numbers are up significantly at Champlain (30% to 50%) and Middlebury (about 30%). UVM is still processing its applications but predicts enrollment growth, Hargraves said.
But numbers can’t tell the whole story, Soboski said.
“One of the challenging parts of my role is to ask: What does that mean? Do we have tons of students who are interested in coming to Champlain? Does this mean that students haven’t had the time to vet where they want to go, so they’re sending out a ton of applications to a ton of places?” she said.
Anecdotally, Soule has noticed several new patterns in student preferences — more students seem interested in schools closer to home, and in community college and in technical schools. She thinks that’s mainly for financial reasons.
Financial aid has been a major topic this year, as many families’ financial situations changed because of the pandemic. The number of first-generation and fee-waiver applicants to the Common Application declined this year by 3% and 2%, respectively.
Harlow and her colleagues at VSAC are working to help students communicate these changes to schools, often with an email or letter to the financial aid office.
“Right now, financial aid offices are very understanding. They know this is happening. A lot are very open to working with families and talking to them about changes,” Harlow said.
For some students, though, it’s not just the cost of tuition, but the idea of paying expensive fees for a diminished experience, St. Mary said.
Holding out hope
Although the pandemic’s long-term impact on college admissions remains to be seen, online activities for prospective students seem to be here to stay.
“Why wouldn’t we continue to hold all these virtual events? That option has been a wonderful addition to the way we do business,” Van Deren said.
Many admissions officials also like the idea of remaining test-optional after the pandemic subsides.
“I think that’s kind of been a Covid win for kids,” St. Mary said, who thinks test-optional is more equitable.
For the moment, school counselors hope students will be able to visit campuses or get a better feel for them virtually before the May 1 college decision deadline. Harlow feels confident that the students will manage to adapt, no matter how the spring pans out.
“I am always incredibly impressed with the resilience of the Vermont students that I have the privilege to work with,” Harlow said.
