"Direct admission" -- i.e. being admitted to a college without explicitly applying there

How common these days is getting “direct admission”, where an applicant is admitted to a college without applying there? (Note: “direct admission” is also used to describe admission directly to a competitive major like nursing, which is not the subject of this post.)

There seem to be at least three varieties:

  1. State university systems where an applicant is rejected from the campus applied to, but admitted to a different campus that they did not (explicitly) apply to. This exists in some form in CA, PA, and TX. However, in-state applicants often know that such redirection is possible.
  2. Colleges that admit students who did not explicitly apply to them by using information from shared applications (e.g. The Common Application) or testing companies. Supposedly practiced by some CT and IL public universities and some private schools.
  3. State universities that have coordinated with in-state high schools to admit students who may not have applied anywhere at all but are admitted based on their high school records meeting the standards of the state universities (passive application). Supposedly practiced in ID, MN, and WI, and will be practiced by CSUs in CA in the near future.
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I am interested in this too. I’ve heard it mentioned more in the last couple of years.

Niche now offers this direct admission tool, which I think is simply skipping the application process and “applying” via their platform. https://www.niche.com/about/direct-admissions/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=UG|G|US|EN|NA|Search|Brand|DA&utm_id=go_cmp-20198171249_adg-148251043654_ad-659930307058_aud-1927305041168:kwd-2079369484681_dev-c_ext-_prd-_mca-_sig-Cj0KCQjw3aLHBhDTARIsAIRij58fL-drclLchipV1iBniMWGrFg1W7PI5GJAiJEoPx9cZfhl50xbPI4aAtmmEALw_wcB&k_cca=collegecrosschannelaudiencesocial&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20198171249&gbraid=0AAAAAofgfBij6tM5O-qxFAHkCbqXf8rDq&gclid=Cj0KCQjw3aLHBhDTARIsAIRij58fL-drclLchipV1iBniMWGrFg1W7PI5GJAiJEoPx9cZfhl50xbPI4aAtmmEALw_wcB