Virus complicates college admissions
Between canceled standardized tests, virtual college tours and online classes, the admissions process for the Bay Area’s new high school seniors is swirling with even more uncertainty than usual.
For students, counselors and colleges one change is most pressing: The use of standardized tests, which for most colleges, have become optional as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. After March, many test dates got canceled.
The University of California and California State University systems will be testoptional, as well as private Bay Area universities like Stanford, Santa Clara University, University of San Francisco and St. Mary’s College.
But making tests optional, while perhaps necessary, isn’t making things any easier. Some students are worried about what happens if they don’t submit test scores — even if the reason was they never had a chance to take a test.
Claire Quigley, a senior at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, was scheduled to take her ACT in June.
When that got canceled, she had to reschedule. She went on the ACT’s website as soon as the new dates came out, but so did everyone else, it seemed, and the website crashed. When she was finally able to log on, all the spots to take the test were taken.
“Pretty much all colleges around the nation are testoptional, so I wasn’t as worried,” she said. “But
then again, there’s also that thought like, ‘What if they pick a student who has a test over me?’ That’s just always in the back of my mind.”
Caoimhe Lyons, a senior at St. Ignatius College Prep in San Francisco, had a similar experience. She signed up to take the SAT in March but ended up having to cancel it because of another commitment. So she registered for May and June. Those both got canceled. She then tried to sign up for September and October, but all the spots were taken. She has the same fear as Quigley.
“If they’re choosing between me and a different applicant, and it’s 50/50 but the other person did get the chance to take the test, does that give them a leg up over me?” she said.
College admissions officers said they don’t yet know how they’ll handle the lack of test scores.
“We’re spending a lot of time reviewing and reconsidering our evaluations process,” said Eva Blanco Macias, vice president of enrollment at Santa Clara University. “There’s a lot of questions right now with the class of 2022 about how schools are going to review the application ... and we’re still having to answer some of those questions for ourselves.”
Allen Koh, CEO of Cardinal Education, a college admissions consulting firm in Burlingame, said that the test cancellations have been “an unmitigated disaster” and “discouraging” to students.
“Psychologically, a lot of these kids are broken,” he said. “A standardized test is almost like training for an Olympic event — there’s peak performance, and then trying to stay at that level of performance is very difficult.”
He also explained that he isn’t sure that optional truly means optional.
“I don’t think admissions officers are always consistent with how they talk to students versus how they speak internally,” he said. “Externally, they’re saying that standardized tests will be optional, there will be absolutely no penalty ... what we’re worried about is a huge swath of middle and lowerclass Americans who would tremendously benefit from taking standardized tests that have checked out because they’re not getting good advice.”
Test scores may still be tied to merit scholarships, he said. They can also bolster a student’s academic record, as they did before they were made optional. Because of this, Koh said, any students who can take the test, should.
But for students who weren’t able to take the test, like Quigley and Lyons, all hope isn’t lost. One option they have is asking their school counselors to explain in their letters of recommendation that testing in their area was canceled, said Iris Berkley, a college consultant at CollegeBound Academics in Orange County.
“It’s always good to have that verified by your school counselor,” she said. She added that students could also send their senior year’s first quarter grades to colleges, even though that isn’t usually required.
Another concern is a wave of wouldbe college freshmen deferring their admissions for a year because universities are going online. Deferrals take spots in the next year’s class, according to officials at UC Berkeley and Santa Clara.
“For each person allowed a deferral, that is one fewer person admitted the following year,” a spokesperson for UC Berkeley said.
Santa Clara’s deferral requests rose from 15 in 2019 to just over 30 this year. Both colleges said that they do have limits on the number of students allowed to defer admission in order to keep things fair for the incoming class.
“We have reached the level where we’re not comfortable with expanding (deferrals) for current students to then hamper the next incoming class,” Blanco Macias said.
San Francisco State University had 48 students defer this year — about 1.5% of its fall 2020 class. Last year, the school did not even offer deferrals. Stanford declined to provide numbers because fall enrollment is not yet finalized, and USF did not respond to requests for comment.
But counselors think students don’t need to be worried about the deferral phenomenon.
“Students should not be discouraged by the number of students taking gap years this coming year,” Koh said. “It’s actually not nearly as many as people had feared, because the reality is, if you take a gap year, what are you going to do with your time?”
“That’s probably the least of the concerns,” Berkley added. “If anything, (classes going online) probably resulted in fewer gap years and more kids deciding to go to community college.”
Quigley said that “if corona is still a thing” by next spring, when she’s choosing a college, she’d opt for a community college over a gap year or attending classes at a fouryear university online.
“I’d rather save the money,” she said. “I find no point in paying a lot of money just to be at home taking online classes.”
But all the changes for admissions this year may bring some silver linings — test scores, whose fairness has been called into question in recent years, could become optional for good if this year goes well.
“If you can make it through this and successfully enroll a decent freshman class, then you’re going to wonder why you need these tests at all,” Berkley said.
Colleges are also shifting to virtual campus tours, which can make seeing and researching schools a lot more accessible, Berkley said.
Naia Urruty, a senior at Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco, said she’s worried about choosing a college without getting to visit first because she wants to “see the community and how the students interact.”
But she’s done some virtual tours, and she said that even though they’re not the same as the inperson experience, they’re still “pretty helpful.”
“They’re easy to attend,” she said. “For some schools it’s more convenient to do virtual tours — like if you want to go to a college that’s far away, you can can just do a virtual tour now.”
Consultants and school counselors encourage students to do virtual tours as part of their research, which they emphasize is even more critical this year as students navigate the application process from home. Overall, they want students to not worry about uncontrollable factors right now and instead focus on their essays and letters of recommendation.
“We are telling all of our students to be ambitious,” Koh said.