Now that our students have headed back to school, they are juggling classes and extracurriculars along with finishing up their applications. We’re so proud of their work ethic!
BIGGEST COLLEGE-RELATED NEWS OF THE WEEK
MATH TUTORING FROM VIRGINIA TECH
I’ve been excited to pass on the information for so many interesting FREE programs lately! This one from Virginia Tech has Department of Mathematics students offering free virtual math tutoring to students in grades K-12. I really encourage kids to take advantage of this service during Fall 2020 and hopefully beyond!
COLLEGE BOARD LAUNCHES AFRICAN DIASPORA CURRICULUM
Between rescheduled SATs and online AP exams this spring, most people I know aren’t interested in hearing more from the College Board. But they remain an influential organization, and they’ve created an ambitious new AP curriculum on the African diaspora. This was developed alongside Columbia’s Teachers College and the non-profit African Diaspora Consortium.
This program has been tested in select public schools for the past three years, and now it will be available to students across the country. This curriculum is not an AP subject course - instead, it is linked to the Capstone program, which gives teachers more flexibility to cater the course to their student population.
DIVISION I SPORTS UPDATE
The big news in college sports is that the Big Ten conference will start its season on October 24, citing advances in rapid testing that make it possible for student-athletes to play football this fall after all. Big Ten originally announced in August that it was suspending football in the fall and considering a spring season.
Meanwhile, the NCAA Division I Council released several updates this week. The NCAA college basketball season start date has been pushed to November 25, with the DI Council saying that many schools will have sent general students home by this point, leaving six weeks or so for basketball to begin on mostly-empty campuses. The Division I Council also extended the recruiting “dead period” through the start of the new year. This means that coaches will not be able to recruit prospective student-athletes in person, though they can still do so virtually.
BEST ARTICLES OF THE WEEK
This is not an article, but SUCH a cool webinar series out of Franklin & Marshall College! F&M is teaming up with admissions professionals from other schools to put out really helpful webinars about the admissions process. I can’t emphasize enough what a great resource these will be. If you only have time for one, I particularly recommend the “Selective College Admission: Case Studies” presentation to 9th-11th grade students and families. And remember: you do not have to have any interest in F&M to benefit from this. Case studies run by individual admissions offices are often-times only open to alumni or special friends of the institution - but this is a valuable opportunity for any family to gain insight into the inner workings of a selective admissions office. You can sign up here for a morning or evening session.
Back in the good old days of last February, when we were still doing crazy things like shaking hands with each other, sending kids to public school, and walking around without masks over our faces, I tried to analyze the impact of the return to Early Decision on the overall application landscape at UVA. I was genuinely curious about how it would all pan out in the spring and planned to post a follow up after regular decision results came through. I never did, partially because I did not have access to all of the data I wanted, but mostly because I believed that COVID’s impact on waitlist movement would probably cancel out the increase in selectivity I’d originally envisioned. However! I was wrong.
College Kickstart put out a blog post with all of the notable changes in admissions rates from this year, and even with an incredibly active waitlist, UVA’s admissions rate declined. Same thing happened with Boston College, for the same reason. BC filled 37% of its class with Early Decision applicants, so the admit rate fell by 15%. UVA was not far behind: with the added Early Decision option accounting for 19% of the class, the admit rate fell by 13%. Since both schools are keeping that Early Decision option, we assume that the rates will stay similar this cycle. A good reminder that if you are confident a school is your number one choice (and you know how you will pay for college), Early Decision might be the way to go.
Traditional college sports may be risky during COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean that intramural competitions aren’t taking place. The National Association of Collegiate Esports has seen a major increase in schools looking to esports programs to replace a fraction of the lost school spirit and lost revenue that accompanied the suspension of traditional sports. Almost 200 colleges in the United States already offer scholarships for esports players. I can’t say that I think streaming and esports will ever replace college football or basketball for fans, but it is definitely an interesting trend to watch.
OFFICE HAPPENINGS
We are busy with so many virtual tours and information sessions. It has been exciting to see what schools have been able to put together online to replace in-person campus visits. For a list of upcoming virtual fairs, tours, and information sessions for students and parents, see our latest post. Some of these virtual events begin as early as this weekend - let us know what you think of them!
Speaking of virtual events, this past weekend I gave a long-planned virtual presentation to a community organization to which many of my families have belonged over the years - it was a lot of fun and there were 93 different sets of families in attendance! We were able to survey the moms to tailor the presentation to address their most common topics of interest and fears, and the format worked very well. We also collected a ton of questions in advance so that I could answer them for the benefit of the group at the end of the session.
Shannon was just asked to hold a similar presentation for a different group in D.C., and she’s been busy working on preparations this week. We do these often for various high schools and local parent organizations, especially in the fall, and are always happy to expand our reach. If you have a group that would like one of us to come speak at an event, please reach out and we’ll do our best to fit you into our calendar!
In other exciting news - we finished up with our last service academy nomination packet for the first Virginia deadline next week. Had some COVID-related snafus so I drove the materials to FedEx myself to make sure they got where they needed to be.
Casual Friday :)
It occurred to me that it’s been a LONG time since I’ve personally mailed a student’s application materials anywhere. Between having admin staff here on site during normal times plus the fact that most everything is sent electronically now, I honestly can’t even remember. Years and years. 7-8 at least. But hey, we are a full service operation and I am not above running around if needed!
Happy New Year to our friends who are celebrating Rosh Hashanah this weekend- and Happy Friday to everyone else (although I think most of us could use a fresh new year right about now, am I right?!)!