Summer heat isn’t conducive to virus transmissions, so opening the campus in August isn’t the challenge. The challenge is to stay open through the fall and winter. A college that overpromises but has no creditable and detailed plan to deliver may make you regret later in the year.
Not CC kids. Most kids here (and kids of parents here) seem to apply to at least 10 and up to 15 or 20 in normal years.
Anyway, my D21 has no plans to change anything. She has five schools she is planning to apply to, and we have planned trips for Sept and Oct to visit the three that we had to cancel this spring.
Nothing changes for my 21 kid, still chasing huge merit and only applying to schools that give huge auto merit. Our local state uni is still high on her list. Total schools applied will be 5 or less.
I think you are going to have a tough time figuring out what the student experience was vs a prospective student experience. There have been schools that poured all of their resources - quite successfully- into supporting current students. This may have come at the expense of a prospective student wanting to talk to a professor, for example, or a speedy responsefrom admissions. Admissions offices have been scrambling to manage their incoming classes (everything from visa processing to social distancing in dorms.) In a perfect world, everyone would get everything, but in many cases, the staff that handles this is also working remotely and under challenging circumstances. I suspect everyone is getting better at this. Some decisions that were unpopular in March turned out to be brilliant (move out, rest of the semester online.) Some more optimistic March decisions (extend spring break and we’ll reevaluate) turned out to be abysmal and left lots of unfinished business.
Just saying that without knowing a lot of students at any school, it’s going to be hard, and the past may not be the future.
I think it also varies at a school. DS, finishing senior year, had 4 classes, all with profs he’d had before (sometimes 2 or 3 times.) Two classes were seminar/thesis oriented. Another was smaller and workshop-ish. He had as great an online experience as could be (and even post commencement, chats with his profs) but I often feel like as lousy as the timing was - who wants to miss the end of senior year and graduate in your parents ’ living room? - he was lucky because he had great relationships with profs, knew his classmates, etc going into it. I have more concerns for incoming freshmen- it’s a rough way to learn the ropes. If you are going to try to follow anyone and reach a conclusion, that’s the group I would watch as it’s most relevant to you.
Yeah CC is skewed towards the shotgun approach, but will more “normal” students move to that? Just something to watch.
This is something we’ve been kicking around at the dinner table. There is a chance that the college experience is drastically different in 2-3 years. I’m not saying it’s likely, but there is a chance.
This has lead us to “why do you like that school?” and contemplating if those details will still be there in 2022. Professors will most likely be there, but a lot of what a HS applicant is drawn to is the experience or the vibe. My D loves Columbia, and it’s obviously a good school, but when we drill down past the academics she loves NY and all it can offer. Columbia went from her likely ED choice to RD that night.
@gardenstategal I disagree that prospective students won’t get attention from admissions and faculty. Just this summer, my D and I have both experienced crazy fast replies to emails from both professor and admissions officers and our D has even had a few of them respond by calling her instead of just responding via email.
I encourage kids to reach out!
Personally, though I know it may not be a popular decision, I vote B. C is a distant second. A would be difficult to tolerate.
Any judgments we make will not affect where my daughter applies, but by the time we need to send in the deposit, we should have a better picture of how a school’s plan was actually implemented. It helps that she does not plan on utilizing ED, but on the other hand, she does plan on EA for all schools, so applications will be submitted before any real issues will likely arise. Unless something changes, she’ll be applying to around 5 schools.
I have been closely watching schools that she is interested in throughout this process and have formed my own opinions. I have responded positively to a couple of things. First - clear positioning on reopening. I have a more positive response to schools where (even as a non member of the university) they took a position early, and could focus their attention on minimizing risk. And an even more positive response when they set forth a detailed plan, reviewable by the public. I like the public accountability of that. I have a less positive response to silence and vague language. But that makes sense, because communication is something I have always valued. Even if the news is bad, I prefer prompt communication. It’s not going to change the news to wait.
The other thing I have been watching (and by default, judging) is prospective student online offerings. All of these virtual information sessions and virtual tours, etc are uncharted territory. Which schools responded quickly and effectively has affected my opinion of the schools. While most have put forth virtual options, some now have robust offerings, some offerings are live, some are pre-recorded, etc. I think the schools that were able to put forth quality virtual programming in a short time frame rose higher in my mind than those that weren’t able to do that. I can’t help but think that the next 24 months will require a lot of “thinking on your feet” by universities and so it’s a good way to see how quickly that can be done.
@homerdog, how admissions responds over the summer may not be how they responded in March or April. That was my point - for folks that eliminated schools on that basis.
Ah I didn’t know anyone would eliminate schools from a list back in March! Of course admissions was slammed then. My point is that, moving forward, I bet admissions is going to work very hard to get kids to apply.
“B. Primary goal is to restore the college experience, at the cost of increased risk of outbreaks. The most extreme version would be going fully back to the previous way of doing things (within what local health orders and the like allow)”
There’s no way the extreme version of B happens, no college will be able to go back to the previous way, at least this Fall. The Stanford model seems reasonable for a medium-sized private university with a significant amount of grad programs and look at all the non-traditional things they had to do:
- only two class years in any given quarter, with freshman getting the first quarter and seniors the spring. So if you're a freshman, it'll be just you and say the juniors.
- mandatory summer quarter -never happened there
- classes over 50 are online, so calc, econ, writing, cs, all online as those classes are large at Stanford.
- seeing athletic events in your dorm on a laptop, definitely not the Stanford experience
I could go on, but you get the idea. Also all the semester schools that have announced plans are ending the semester by Thanksgiving.
And if you leave campus, you’ll be quarantined for two weeks, not something that happened last year.
A refreshingly different approach, AlwaysMoving.
I don’t think you can judge online offerings by what happened over this spring term. A lot of training and learning is going on among professors. That was an emergency situation. Even schools that are opening are mostly hybrid and will have larger classes online. The schools have time to do more planning than they had in March.
Homerdog - noticed you have a kid at Bowdoin. one of my sons is also currently at Bowdoin. have another son at Bates. Caught off guard today when Bowdoin announced only freshmen coming back to campus fall 2020 and implied that only Seniors may come back Spring 2021. Do not expect their zoom town hall tomorrow night to resolve or change their mind. Bates (& Colby) going back to campus fall 2020 albeit 2-2 format and with a lot of changes (understand of course)- I do not understand why Bowdoin would not do the same… Any thoughts / insight?
@ddsc2021 I’ll PM you when I get a chance later tonight
got your reply - replied back to it.
Thelonius Monk - I like some of these ideas. Better then going online I think:
- only two class years in any given quarter, with freshman getting the first quarter and seniors the spring. So if you’re a freshman, it’ll be just you and say the juniors.
- mandatory summer quarter -never happened there
- classes over 50 are online, so calc, econ, writing, cs, all online as those classes are large at Stanford.
- seeing athletic events in your dorm on a laptop, definitely not the Stanford experience
HomerDog - looks like per bowdoin student paper - 164 upperclassmen + 37 incoming freshmen are taking leave of absence this fall. all 37 freshmen are deferring to fall 2021. looked like 75% of so of the upperclassmen are taking leave for this fall only (so far). apprx. 11% of student body. quick math- $28,000 fall semester x 201 = $ 5.62 million - this is based on everyone paying full cost (which I know is not correct)… still looks like a big number, at least to me…
Wow. Super surprised it wasn’t more!