Colleges are increasing turning to Spring Admission as 1) a revenue strategy to fill empty beds left by spring study-abroad, off-campus internships, and drop outs, and 2) a cynical ploy to manipulate their reported SAT/GPA and admit rates. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/education/11accept.html?_r=0
The schools contend that there is little difference between the fall v. spring admit pools. But let’s face the truth-- the coach has put you on the bench while the 1st string plays. The popular but promiscuous boy on campus is asking you out on a date only because his hotter girlfriend is out of town.
Were you offered spring admission by your love interest? Are you going to swallow hard (i.e. occupy yourself at community college, or mark time in Europe shoe-horned 3 to a room) and accept the offer? Or are you going to tell your promiscuous love interest to stick it, and get on with your life elsewhere?
This article is from 2011…
I don’t believe my top choices have Spring admits, but if I was Z-listed at Harvard at did not get into my other top choices I would take them up on the offer
Several schools D applied to had spring admission starts. We talked about it beforehand and decided that it just wouldn’t work for us. She is only employed until Labor Day each summer and we don’t have the financial resources for her to attend some type of fall workshops or travel a bit (besides,all her friends will have left home). Well, one school waitlisted her and the other offered fall admission so we dodged that bullet.
Those schools that find they have the space in the spring that they do not have in the fall, have taken advantage of this to offer up to some students. My son , a few years ago, was offered two such spots and was not the least bit interested. He really wanted to go to school in the fall and have that full experience. In his case, that preference outweighed his desire to go to either school that gave him the option of spring admit. Both schools were reach schools for him, and had his other options not existed as they did, he might have decided otherwise.
I did not find the title offensive or even inappropriate. Even appropriate. The spring admits are what come with a certain proposal, just as step children, and are not part of the main scheme of things. And like step children can bring joy and fulfillment, but there is usually that period of adjustment as one misses the early period of freshman year. So it’s not a bad analogy, IMO.
My intention was not to be offensive but to characterize the dilemma as I see it. S1 is being seduced by the siren call of a spring admit-- groan. We are quietly hoping that he will reason out for himself that a fall admit at other school makes more sense.
NUin at Northeastern must be the worst of these types of programs. More expensive than a semester on campus and virtually no financial aid. So you know this is both to fill beds in Spring and make some extra cash in fall. 500 students participate, which is around 1/5 of the freshman class. And no reporting their SATs either, which really calls into question NEU’s supposed high SAT scores.
“Love the school that treats you right”- absolutely!
Think of it this way…Fall Start or Spring Start, you still graduate with the degree! But still look into financial aid, what type of orientation programs they will have, how hard will it to be to keep up with course sequences, etc.
I guess it comes down to 1. what your others options are and 2. How good of a job the school does at supporting and incorporating Spring starts into the school.
Last year, my son got an unexpected Spring start acceptance. He was planning to take a full gap year so, as part of his process of considering his acceptances, he asked if he could defer until Fall 2015. The answer was no. It was quite clear to him from the exchange that they viewed him as “lesser”. He declined them and went elsewhere, to a school that is equally as good and seems like a better fit. It was nice to have choices.
Some schools - Middlebury for example - seem to do a better job of marketing their mid-year start.
My kids and I certainly see special things about a fall admit. You do miss out on all of the orientation things, meeting people, the fun,and also info given. You kind of just enter into a settled environment with a spring admit. Most of the kids I know who did that do regret that miss but wanted the school enough to do so. My son might have considered NEU had he gotten a straight up fall accept.
More like, students who graduate one semester early or one semester late are likely to have an extra fall semester. Of course, it is likely that about half of drop outs have an extra fall semester. The desire to balance fall and spring enrollment (particularly those enrolled to capacity, like many state universities) is the incentive for colleges to have spring start admission.
Study abroad and off-campus co-ops should have a neutral effect on fall versus spring enrollment, if equal numbers of students do them in the fall and spring.
If the college allows spring start students to take transferable community college courses in the fall before the spring start, that can be a way for the student to reduce some of the costs (i.e. 1 semester of CC + 7 semesters of four year school may cost less than 8 semesters of four year school).