Pandemic complicates college application process
‘It’s thrown a wrench into everybody’s plans’
With about a month left until most college application deadlines, Connecticut high school seniors are debating what to do with the next few years of their lives — or whether the pandemic will even allow them to set foot on campuses next fall.
“It’s thrown a wrench into everybody’s plans,” said Jacob Smith, a 19-year-old senior at Farmington High School. “It’s been an added difficulty and stressor on top of what is usually already a very stressful time for high school seniors looking to attend a college.”
Members of the higher education community have expressed concern about drops in college application rates, on both a national and statewide scale. Chaka Felder-McEntire, founder and executive director of Higher Heights Youth Empowerment Programs in NewHaven, has spent about two decades guiding underrepresented Connecticut students through the college application process.
“We facilitate the process for 12 districts across the state. Usually by now, we’re in the thousands of applications completed,” Felder-McEntire said. “Right now, we’re only in the hundreds.”
The number of students completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, is also low, she added. According to the state, FAFSA completion is strongly associated with enrollment in higher education. About 90% of high school seniors who complete the FAFSA attend college directly from high school, compared to 55% of those who do not complete it. Compared to this time last year, FAFSA completion rates are down 16% across Connecticut.
Melanie Garcia-Flores, 17, a first-generation college applicant from New Haven, said she’s planned her whole life to pursue higher education and wants to become a nurse.
“Before COVID, I thought I had everything down,” said the senior at Hill Regional Career High School. “But no, it went differently.”
Like manystudents, she planned to take the SAT in March, only to have her test date canceled at the last minute as the state shut down. Eventually, she was able to take it
once. But Garcia-Flores said the most difficult part of the application process was finding help from adults.
“Usually when you’re in high school, you go to your guidance counselor’s office,” she said. “They tell you what you have to do, help you with the deadlines, help you with recommendations and your essay. I and a lot of other students didn’t get that opportunity.”
With help from Higher Heights, Garcia-Flores completed applications to a number of in-state schools, including UConn, the University of Hartford and Southern Connecticut State University. Still, she remains concerned about other students who are trying to navigate the process alone.
“It’s definitely difficult,” she said.
Some sticking closer to home
Several high school guidance counselors said the shift to hybrid and remote learning schedules have mostly limited them to reaching out to students online or over the phone. Manchester High School counselor Melane Thomas said in her experience, “the support is there, it just looks different.”
“It’s not the student meeting me face-to-face,” she said. “It’s online, it’s a phone conversation, which obviously feels different and doesn’t feel as personable.”
Under normal circumstances, Thomas said she held mandatory classroom preparation sessions. But now those sessions are held online and are optional for students, “which leads to low attendance,” she said.
“I’m finding that it’s more challenging to get students constantly thinking about this stuff and actually following through,” she said, recognizing that many Connecticut students are lacking resources and juggling responsibilities at home, situations the pandemic may have exacerbated.
Thomas also noted many students are expressing more interest in Connecticut’s community colleges, thinking that their college experiences may begin remotely anyway.
Smith, the senior from Farmington said he’d been hoping to visit schools as far away as Illinois and Texas, but “that unfortunately wasn’t able to happen.” Instead, he’s using school websites to take virtual tours and research tuition costs.
“I look at all of these prices ... [and] I think, ‘Do I really want to be paying these crazy amounts of money when I can receive an education locally for far less, and still get a great education?’” he said. “Connecticut has some great public colleges and universities. I shouldn’t overlook them, especially with all the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus.”
A basketball player, Smith said he would like to continue the sport in college but was mostly looking at Division III schools, which do not offer athletic scholarships. The senior has also spoken with his parents about looking into Tunxis Community College in Farmington and then transferring to a four-year institution to study finance or economics.
“That’s a great deal,” he said.
Hartford Public High School senior Courtenay Jackson, 18, said he saw athletics as a potential path to higher education and ultimately pursuing a career in business.
“My family is a big college family. My mom’s whole side of the family graduated from UConn and my dad went to Nichols College,” he said. “The goal was always to go to college, and football was really the way we thought we could go through to get there.”
Jackson was able to visit a few schools with his family during the summer of his junior year and began working on his college essays early. But with this year’s football season canceled, Jackson said: “Alot of people are panicking and not knowing what to do.”
“Senior film is very important to many people in Connecticut,” he explained. “Not being able to play really affects our exposure.”
Jackson said he is using social media to showcase his skills and training, as well as constantly reaching out to coaches.
“As a lot of people tell me, college is not for everybody,” he said. “But ... if you feel like you need to do it for your next step in life, then you have to do what you have to do.”
To take the SAT — or not
In West Hartford, Conard High School senior Eleanor Khan, 17, spent several months studying for the SAT three times a week, before many schools announced they would not require standardized test scores for admissions consideration. Khan, who has three older siblings, said she feels grateful to have family members and counselors at school who can help guide her through the process.
With recent news of the coronavirus vaccine, Khan said she is interested in going to college in Washington, D.C., where she may study psychology, or possibly enter a pre-law program. Given the economic recession and overall health concerns, she said it made sense that students may be taking longer to apply or applying to fewer schools.
“It’s really made people realize that being able to go to college is a very certain privilege, even just to be able to apply to a lot,” she said. “Applications are expensive. Some of mine are $85-$90. That’s a lot of money.”
Conard High School counselor Kristin Mangini said she is seeing a similar number of college applications to prior years and it is not unusual for families to tackle the FAFSA later on, since it is due in February. However, she said the decision of many schools to go test-optional is a significant change to the application process from previous years.
Her colleague Dawn Hoblet said: “We don’t know how that’s going to play out in terms of their responses to student applications. That makes it hard for us to advise students and parents about what is a realistic application versus what isn’t.”
The counselors explained they are still recommending students take the SAT at least once because while some schools call themselves test-optional, their applications may ask students why they are not submitting test scores. Seniors may also need the scores to qualify for private scholarships.
Vern Granger, UConn’s director of undergraduate admissions, said applicants to the university will not be negatively impacted if they choose not to submit test scores, and that information will not be used to determine merit scholarships or acceptance into honors programs.
“Admissions officers at all universities are also going through the pandemic as well,” Granger said. “We know that all students have been impacted by their ability to participate in internships, enrichment programs, other opportunities... We understand that, and that’s why context is so important to the holistic review process.”
Thomas, the Manchester High School counselor, said she tries to remind students “that there is going to be life after COVID.”
“Maybe down the road, you might not be in online classes ... maybe you’ll be going to a college campus,” she said. “There’s so many unknowns, and kids have a hard time envisioning what they don’t know. That’s a hard thing to navigate ... [but] I want to provide a ray of hope.”