This was a calmer week on the college front, but the FCPS craziness made up for it!

BIGGEST COLLEGE-RELATED NEWS OF THE WEEK

VIRGINIA TECH

I was starting to get a little nervous that VT hadn’t shared the Common App announcement I blogged about last week, but it came on Monday!

TEST-OPTIONAL ADMISSION

More schools every day, although this week felt like “test optional: state school edition.” We had announcements from UT Austin, Texas A&M, University of Illinois, Ohio State, Miami University, University of Utah and more.

The big one everyone’s waiting on is the University System of Georgia, but I’m not particularly concerned - I think they will come around. Speaking of Georgia, Emory was one of the last highly selective private schools to make the announcement this past week, so maybe that will spur some movement in the state.

ACT

Would it really be a weekly update without an announcement from the ACT? The latest is positive: they are adding a number of new test dates this fall. Now if they could start providing a bit more information about the July test, that would be awesome!

COLLEGE VISITS

In-person visits are happening again, which I’m glad about! An outdoor college tour with everyone wearing masks seems pretty low-risk (I probably wouldn’t go to indoor information sessions, though). You can register for tours at Catholic, Tulane, Elon, SMU and more.

If you’re a rising senior who missed the opportunity for college visits, it might be worth driving over to Catholic even if you know you have no interest in that particular school. You can learn a lot from any campus tour about factors that appeal to you (or turn you off) and then you can use those factors to guide your virtual research.

BEST ARTICLES OF THE WEEK

I love McSweeney’s! This was a hilarious parody about waitlist movement for the HS Class of 2020. Do you know that some schools are actually calling students they denied to retroactively accept them?

This piece from the Washington Post sheds some interesting light on the cost of Coronavirus testing at UVA and other Virginia schools, and also provides information on the financial implications of students staying home in the fall. The wording was a little bit unclear at the time I read this article, but my understanding is that Virginia colleges and universities will lose a combined total of $527 million in tuition revenue if ten percent of students stay home.

This article in the Daily Princetonian provides surprisingly accurate insight on the inner workings of the process at Princeton. The author cautions at the end that his sources were outdated, but I completely agree with the person who mentioned that the process hasn’t really changed much in terms of what goes on internally.

This interactive visual from the New York Times on the spread of the virus was absolutely chilling but completely worth checking out.

OFFICE HAPPENINGS

My own focus this week was really on Fairfax County, both in terms of our office and also personally! I have a rising third grader at an elementary school in the Langley pyramid and another one in full-day preschool at a school that typically follows FCPS.

For those who aren’t aware, FCPS announced their return-to-school plan earlier this week and it’s not great. Parents need to choose one of two options by July 10:

• Two days of in-person instruction at school with no synchronous virtual instruction on the off-days

• Four days of full-day virtual synchronous instruction at home

Pretty much everyone I know is choosing the first option, and most of my clients seem to be doing the same.

UPDATE (2pm): I just saw this article and figured I should add it here. Yikes! A whole other dimension….

—

If you have any questions about the impact of the recent plan on high school planning or college admissions, feel free to submit them here and I will answer them on a blog post next week. You don’t have to be a client - just trying to help facilitate the sharing of information!