Spring is typically the time for high school juniors to visit colleges, and seniors to commit to one for the fall. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic is changing the process – and may continue to affect the college application process for years to come.
A recent survey conducted by Junior Achievement USA and Citizens Bank determined that more than two-thirds of teens are somewhat or very concerned about the pandemic’s impact on their families and day-to-day lives. The survey involved 1,000 teens ages 13 to 18 from across the country who aren’t currently attending college. 44 percent of the high school juniors and seniors surveyed say COVID-19 has impacted their plans to pay for college.
“More than 70 percent of the students who responded said they have been talking with parents and say they understand how this is affecting the family financially,” Christine Roberts, head of student lending for Citizens Bank, said of the survey.
At ConVal, Director of Student Counseling Kim Chandler said she hadn’t seen many seniors who had actually changed their original college plans yet, but they’d reconsider if their college opted to operate virtually this fall. Typically, incoming college freshmen must commit to their school of choice by May 1. Many colleges are pushing the date to June this year, Chandler said.
“A couple parents don’t want to be spending $50,000 a year for their kid to be sitting in their kitchen on an online class,” she said. “We’ll have to wait and see.” The University of New Hampshire and Keene State have announced their intention to open as usual in the fall.
Chandler said she’s unsure how COVID-19 related financial troubles will affect students’ college choices. “Our conversations are making the assumption that everything is going to go back to normal,” she said, particularly with juniors who are just beginning to look at colleges. Instead of visiting colleges in person, prospective students can tour colleges virtually – “better than nothing,” Chandler said.
She helped students fill out the common application for local scholarship groups online this year. Local groups still plan to grant scholarships, although some are offering a little less than in the past, she said. Many fundraisers were canceled this spring, which is likely to have an impact on funds for next year’s applicants.
Graduating seniors going to college to play sports won’t know whether their plans or scholarships are affected until the colleges determine how to operate this coming year, Chandler said, but noted that the disruption in this year’s winter and spring athletics season could affect an underclassman athlete’s shot at a scholarship in the future.
College application standards could be really different next year, Chandler said, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The state canceled the SATs this year, and the nonprofit College Board canceled spring test dates too. Colleges are saying they won’t look at test scores this coming year, and won’t penalize students whose high school curriculums that went to pass/fail, Chandler said. Advanced Placement course exams, usually hours long, will be just 45 minutes long and taken from home this year, junior Henry Bernstein said. “This is drastically different from what we have been taught to expect,” he said, and the class material had to change as a result since the announcement came at the end of March.
As far as the SATs go, Chandler said she hopes colleges continue to not request test scores after this year. There is already a list of so-called “test optional colleges,” she said, but she’s curious to see whether this year’s disruption in standardized tests, GPA, and class rank shifts the focus to a more holistic view of a student going forward. “That would be wonderful,” she said.
Overall, though, Chandler said her seniors seem much more concerned with the loss of their senior milestones: graduation, yearbooks, and prom, than they are about college-related uncertainties.
“Teenagers want to be together. For a lot of students this is really hard, to not be able to gather with their friends,” Chandler said. “That’s the biggest piece that I hear when I speak to my students. They miss their friends.”