Early adopters of direct admissions expect record class sizes

The first of May is the traditional deadline for admitted applicants to respond to their offers of admission in the US. But for all but the most competitive colleges and universities, 1 May does not mean that much any more.

Community colleges and most public and private four-year colleges are still admitting students. Many will be doing so right up to when colleges welcome students for the fall. Still, 1 May is a customary day to take stock of admissions.

And one group is declaring success: the colleges and companies pushing direct admissions. Although there have been experiments previously, this was the first big year for direct admissions, in which students do not apply to colleges; instead, they each create a portfolio of their grades, standardised test scores (if they have them), what they want to study and where they want to study (it might be a state or region, or a type of environment, such as urban or rural). Colleges then offer the student a spot.

Direct admissions appeals primarily to the students you do not hear about this time of year. These are the students who do not have 4.0 grade point averages (GPAs) or killer SAT scores. In other words, it appeals to the students who enrol at most colleges.

Most colleges using direct admissions are not done with the admissions cycle for enrolling students for the autumn of 2023. And most colleges using direct admissions are admitting only a small number of their students that way – for now, at least.

Success at Augsburg

All year, Inside Higher Ed has been watching Augsburg University, which is one of the few colleges to admit all its students this year through direct admissions. Augsburg is a liberal arts college with professional programmes in Minneapolis.

At Augsburg, Robert J. Gould, vice-president for strategic enrolment management, said the experience had been a success by just about any measure.

Deposits for enrolling in the fall are up 14 per cent from where they were last year in a standard admissions system. The total is 528, and Gould said he expected to beat Augsburg’s record class (from 2019, pre-pandemic) of 636. He said he expected the total number of students to commit to the university to hit nearly 700, then to drop a bit due to summer melt.

Gould said he was particularly pleased with the characteristics of the incoming class:

• The average GPA of students who made deposits was 3.38, a little above last year’s.
• Students of colour made up 73 per cent of the deposits, up from 62 per cent last year.
• Pell Grant recipients were 61 per cent of deposits, up from 48 per cent at this point last year.
• Male students made up 46 per cent of the deposits, up from 39 per cent last year and several more years in which men were only in the 30s.

Gould said his message for others in admissions was very simple: “copy and adapt” what Augsburg had done.

Companies project growth

Several companies have started working with colleges on direct admissions. They generally do not have numbers that go as far as Augsburg’s, but the numbers they have suggest significant growth.

EAB purchased Concourse, a company that started out focused on direct admissions, in September.

Since then, EAB has had 193 institutions make direct admissions offers to students. Those institutions have made 39,165 admission offers this year, according to John Michaels, a spokesman, who stressed that most of the colleges were still making offers.

That compares with 12,631 admission offers made through Concourse last year (2021-22, with fewer colleges participating), and 4,323 the previous year (2020-21).

EAB colleges have made $2.1 billion (£1.7 billion) in scholarship offers to prospective students this cycle as compared with $536 million in offers during the previous cycle.

EAB, like the other companies mentioned in this article, also has a large business with colleges doing traditional admissions.

Another company, Niche, just got into direct admissions this year, but has sensed a large demand for it, said Luke Skurman, the CEO. Niche’s original goal was to have 10 colleges in the programme, but it ended up with 25 due to demand and expects to expand to 100 colleges for the next admissions cycle. Feedback had been “resoundingly positive”, Mr Skurman said.

For this year, Niche client colleges already are averaging 22 deposits each through direct admissions, and “several” have seen more than 60.

Carli Swartz, director of college relations at Sage Scholars, another admissions business that has entered direct admissions, stressed that, for “most of our schools, reporting deposits in late April would be almost meaningless. The process of admitting students, and students making decisions, is midstream.”

So far this year, 619 students have been offered admission at 68 colleges. Ms Swartz said she expected the numbers to go up considerably. The 68 colleges total was twice the number expected, she said.

An expert opinion

One of the higher education experts who has been tracking direct admissions is Jennifer Delaney, a professor of higher education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Professor Delaney recently talked about her findings in an interview at her university.

“It is not clear that the ‘traditional’ college admissions process is needed today,” she said. “The idea that we ask each student to search for colleges, then to fill out individual, customised applications, seems outdated at a time where there are state longitudinal data systems that already collect most of the information that is asked for on college applications.”

But she added that direct admissions had more appeal to certain students. “We also know that there are inequities in the current college admissions process such that those students who have more social and cultural capital are more likely to engage in the process and to attend college,” Professor Delaney said.

“The administrative and bureaucratic barriers present in traditional college admissions systems are unnecessary barriers. They deflect students from attending college, even when they would benefit from pursuing college degrees. Removing these barriers is likely to be most impactful for vulnerable student populations such as those who are low-income, first-generation, rural, foster youth and from minority backgrounds. Removing these barriers should produce additional equity and equality of opportunity.”

This is an edited version of a story that first appeared on Inside Higher Ed.