Florida universities are receiving fewer applications for 2021

Fewer high school seniors are applying to Florida’s universities this fall, and admissions officers say the cancellation of SAT sessions and college information nights, along with other disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, are likely to blame.

Florida is the only state in the country where colleges still require traditional incoming freshmen to submit SAT or ACT scores for admission. The others have adopted test-optional policies for their universities this year because the pandemic has led to the cancellation of many testing sessions, limiting the ability of high school students to sit for the exams. Families, admissions officers and high school counselors are urging Florida to follow suit and drop the requirement this year.

At the University of Central Florida, the state’s largest university and where enrollment just surpassed 72,000 students, applications are down 21% and 50% fewer students have submitted SAT scores to the school compared with last year. Traditional first-time freshmen who don’t submit scores from college entrance exams like the SAT are ineligible for admission at UCF and other state universities.

“We are concerned about what we’re seeing,” said Gordon Chavis, UCF’s associate vice president of enrollment services, on Wednesday during a presentation to the university’s Board of Trustees.

Chavis and admissions directors from the other colleges wrote a letter to the Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system, in August, asking them to temporarily waive the requirement because of the pandemic. But the board

hasn’t given any indication it intends to do so.

It’s not clear if Florida’s high school seniors are applying to private or out-ofstate public universities that have adopted test-optional admissions policies this year, planning to attend schools with open admissions policies like Valencia College or simply waiting to apply to state universities because they don’t have exam scores yet.

UCF will continue to accept applications until the spring, and the admissions office has seen the numbers pick up over the past several weeks, Chavis said. All of the state’s public universities are seeing similar trends, he added.

At Florida State University, the number of students who have submitted applications is down 32% from 2019, said John Barnhill, the associate vice president for academic affairs. Barnhill said he thought the cancellation of entrance exam sessions might be among several reasons FSU hasn’t received as many applications.

“College nights and faceto-face school visits are not happening and while all of us are doing virtual recruiting, I think students have more pressing concerns than applying to colleges right now,” Barnhill wrote in an email to the Orlando Sentinel

The school has pushed back its priority application deadline from Nov. 1 to Dec. 1 because of the pandemic and Barnhill said he expects more students will start applying soon.

“I do believe that what we are seeing is a delay and come November, we will see numbers of applications pick up,” he said.

The University of Florida did not provide numbers to the Sentinel upon request, but spokeswoman Brittany Wise said the school was “down” on applications submitted but about the same number of students had started them compared with last year.

“Our application deadline is a few weeks away and, given the fact that most applications come in during the final few weeks before the deadline, it’s too early to know how many potential students will apply,” Wise said in an email.

Schools that continue to require applicants to submit test scores during the pandemic stand to lose tens of thousands of students, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, which sent a letter to the Board of Governors last week. Additionally, doing so places a burden on families and high schools that must administer the exams during “extraordinary circumstances.” Applicants who are already disadvantaged because they are low income or students of color are likely to feel a “disparate impact,” the letter said, because of the costs associated with sitting for an exam.

“The existence of public universities is predicated on their ability to serve all the citizens in their respective states, not just those with means or privilege,” the letter said, adding that “Inequities caused by COVID-19 disruption — loss of family income, secondary school closures, interruptions in the K-12 educational program — will worsen an already difficult situation for millions of students.”

The Seminole and Orange County school districts had scheduled free SAT exam sessions on Wednesday, so more students may apply once they receive their scores.

Some teenagers also may have delayed applying because they are overwhelmed by the changes the pandemic has brought to their families or by the other decisions they’ve had to make about school, particularly whether to be do remote or in-person classes this fall.

“I think a lot of kids … are focusing on what’s happening with them right now,” said Nicola Williams, coordinator of school counseling for the Seminole school district. “It may be a little decision fatigue.”

At UCF, students have submitted applications at a quicker pace in recent weeks, and Chavis said he’s expecting that trend will continue during the next several months as more students are able to take entrance exams. The fall 2021 application deadline is May 1.

Even if the Board of Governors agrees to waive the entrance exam requirement this, year, it would likely be a temporary change. While schools across the country have adopted “test-optional” admissions practices permanently or are considering doing so, “that is not a conversation that is happening on our campus,” UCF’s Chavis said.

Though fewer prospective students are applying now, enrollment at UCF increased nearly 4% to more than 72,000 students this fall. The university admitted more traditional freshmen this year, especially from 11 Central Florida counties, because of research suggesting fewer admitted students would accept their admissions offers at colleges across the country than in previous years.

But more students enrolled at UCF than the school anticipated, resulting in a freshman class of about 4,165 students, up from 3,792 in 2019.

UCF resumed in-person classes this semester for the first time since switching to online-only instruction in March, but many courses remain online-only. That is likely to change next semester, when the university intends to teach as many courses on campus as possible.

However, the university plans to continue social distancing protocol in classrooms, leaving seats open and not filling rooms to capacity.

The campus doesn’t have enough space — roughly 40 frequently used rooms currently seat 14 or fewer students — to accommodate every class, so many will remain online-only.

Though the number of new virus cases at UCF more than doubled this week, the school attributed the spike to students becoming infected at bars and other social gatherings. UCF has not seen any evidence the virus has been spread in classrooms, Johnson said.

The school has not yet decided whether it will cancel or delay spring break, as some others have done, to reduce transmission of the virus after students return to campus, but Johnson said it will likely make that call within the next few weeks.