Webinar: College Admissions Trends – College Bound Mentor Podcast #14

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Welcome to the College Bound Mentor podcast! Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all.

This is Episode #14 and you’ll hear Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie share the webinar they presented on everything that’s new with college admissions. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re enjoying the show!

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College Bound Mentor Podcast Episode #14: Webinar: College Admissions Trends

Want to hear the latest trends in college admissions? In this episode, Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie share the webinar they presented on everything that’s new with college admissions. Hear the biggest changes over the past year when it comes to college admissions, which schools are becoming harder to get into, how schools are using technology to assess students, new questions you might encounter in your college essays, and what you can do to increase your chances of getting into your favorite school. This episode covers everything from college admissions to test-optional schools. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • Are schools still test-optional?
  • What’s the importance of Letters of Recommendation?
  • How popular is the Common App?
  • Should you do Early Decision?
  • How can you increase your chances of getting accepted to a college?
  • Does legacy matter anymore when applying to college?
  • What are some new college essay questions?
  • Which schools do video interviews?

Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com.

Check out the episode and show notes below for much more detail.

Show Notes

What is the College Bound Mentor podcast?

Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie know college. They also know students. With over 30 years combined experience mentoring young people, they’ll show you why understanding yourself is the key to finding the right college. Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all – giving you valuable insight to survive the college application process and beyond. Hosted by Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, and Stefanie Forman, Partners of College Bound Mentor.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Lisa Bleich 0:02
Do not over Edit. Let them shine through. Very easy to know what is written by a 17 or 18-year-old.

Hey, CBMers, welcome back to College Bound Mentor, where we help you survive the college application process and beyond. We’re your co-hosts, Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie and on today’s episode, we’re going to share with you our annual College Admissions Trends webinar. We talk about the ever changing world of college admissions and current trends as we see them. We hope you enjoy it. Alright? So we’re going to talk about changes to college admissions. We’re going to talk about what the key trends are. We’re going to talk about how they’ve impacted college admissions, because that’s really what’s why they’re important. So the first trend is that testing is still in flux, and what we are seeing is that several colleges, selective colleges have brought back testing, and some not so selective. So we put a list of some schools that have brought back testing. MIT was one of the first to start, and then a lot of the IBS came back. Yale is test flexible, so you have options. You could do your SAT, ACT, or you could do AP or IB instead, so you have some form of testing. Purdue also brought it back. Some of the schools had never gotten rid of it, like Georgetown, but that’s something that we’re seeing. Is a trend. Vanderbilt is intended to bring it back for the class that graduates high school in 2028 most though colleges did remain test optional for 2025 and many will continue at least for the next two to three years, but we’re watching that carefully. The UCS have remained test blind. They were test blind right at covid, and they haven’t heard anything from them that they’re going to change that. Another interesting trend that we saw was that 43% of the Common App applicants submitted test scores in 2024 and that actually stayed consistent with 2023 we anticipate that that will be even higher in 2025 the SAT, as many of your students have noticed, has moved to a shorter Adaptive Test, and that the AC T will follow suit nationally in the spring of 2026 there will be some sites that will Have it on the digital version even sooner, but nationally, it will be spring of 2026, and so for you with if you have younger kids, that would be one to look at, because the ACT is anticipated to be shorter, they’re not making it harder, and they are making the science section test optional. That’ll be a big change for the AC T, and that is because it’s a business like anything else, and it’s now backed by private equity. And so that is the reason why we are trying to see competition between the SAT and the ACT, but it could be an advantage for your kids. So for those of you who have younger kids, the other thing is that we’ve noticed that AP scores can help if they’re good, but they’re not a requirement. So if a student has really good AP scores, that can also boost their application, but if they don’t have them, it’s also not going to hurt them. And the other thing with the APS is that those also were higher last year nationally, the scores were higher because of the way that they created them. So that’s another trend that we’re seeing.

Stefanie Forman 3:25
Yeah, someone was wondering, what do you consider to be a quote, unquote good AP score?

Lisa Bleich 3:31
So I would say a 4 or 5 is really a strong AP score. And those would be scores that I think or anyone should be proud to have. It’s, you know, considered an A or a B in the class certain times, depending on when the student takes it like a student, takes a an AP exam, perhaps doing their software, it’s their first AP that they’ve taken, and they get a three that could also be a good score. So it really depends on when they’ve taken it, what the subject is, and then how that compares to what the national average ranges. And there’s

Stefanie Forman 3:59
a follow up. This is a hard one, but what is considered a good SAT score?

Lisa Bleich 4:06
You know what? That? It depends on the student, and it depends on the school to which they’re applying. So I can’t really answer that question, but for the most Select Schools, what we saw, and that was what I’ll talk about, which next is that, because of the test optional, we saw that well, first of all, it led to increased applications, which we really saw from covid Until now, and now we’re seeing them plateau or even a small decline at some schools, the mid 50% score ranges shifted higher. So what we saw what used to be considered, you know, a good SAT, if you had a 1400 that was considered a really strong SAT. But we saw everything shift up maybe 100 points. And so we were seeing that the mid range for the most Select Schools was anywhere from, you know, 1550 and that’s, you know, insane, because it’s such a high score. We do think that we’re going to start to see a little bit of a shift back so that the pre covid test scores will that work. Considered good, which is like, you know, 1400 1450 plus is still going to be considered a good score. But it really depends on the school and it depends on the student. The way to look at that is to identify and all of you, when you get your reports from us, we have the mid 50 percentile for each of their schools. So you could see how your how your child fits within that mid 50 percentile range. You can also look at your high school’s school profile, and you could see how they compare to the average at their high school. And those two markers will give you a sense of if it’s a good score or not for that particular school. So other things that happen because of test optional impact is that it did enable the schools to admit the most diverse classes ever. But then, of course, we’ll see how that’s changing a little bit for other reasons, it did put more emphasis on the transcripts and the letters of recommendation to measure academic readiness. The letters of recommendation are really important. We’ve seen that over and over, and we’ll talk about that a little bit later. They’ve also used a lot of non cognitive factors to measure potential. What we did see was that, I would say pre test optional. Sometimes, if a student had a really high test score and they didn’t do as great in their classes and their transcript, that in some instances, could really help them. Now we’re seeing that that alone is not enough to get you in. It really has to corroborate with your transcript. There has to be a match there. We’ve also seen that if you don’t submit a test score to the test optional schools, it may not keep you out if the transcript matches the school profile, meaning that the that you’re at the higher end of the students that are applying from your high school and really like everything in admissions, the impact of not submitting tests depends on the school and the applicant, and we do see that that trend, as more schools require testing, that is going to shift as well. So we’re going to have to see how that comes up the next next year or two. So what’s the impact of tests required so more students are going to take the SAT and the ACT Next this year? We also, and we want to just make you might have already seen this, that there isn’t really enough testing capacity, and so it’s important that you register early, so that you get the location that you want. It’s also really hard to discern if test optional is really test optional. So there’s a couple of ways that you can determine that. First of all, we always like to look at the pre covid test optional policies. So if a school was test optional pre covid, then they typically really are test optional, like they’ve seen even before they had to become test optional, that that was something that they valued. There’s also the common data set, which can give you a sense. And if those of you who don’t know the common data set, if you just Google any school common data set, there is a value that will tell you how much they consider testing, and you can also get that data down to the how many students submitted tests, how many were admitted with with testing, without testing, and then how many matriculated with test optional or not. So that can also give you some greater clarity on how important it is to an institution. The other thing we we do think that emphasis is still going to be on the transcript and the letters of recommendation to measure that. I don’t think that’s going to change. We also anticipate that there’s going to be a recalibration of that middle 50 percentile down, because now that they’re required again, everyone’s going to submit them, so it’s going to bring them down. We do anticipate that like that, more schools will follow suit, so there will probably be more testing for other schools. And the other thing that was interesting when we were at a conference and we were at a seminar on this, one of the was actually the representative from Wash U the dean of admission there, he said it’s going to change the type of students that are applying for some schools, because if certain levels of schools require testing, and a student perhaps isn’t as good a test taker, then they’re going to change their focus to similarly, select schools that don’t require testing. So it’s going to change the mix of students that are applying to schools. So that’s going to also be something that to be looking out for in terms of the strategy. All right,

Abby Power 8:58
so moving away from testing. These are just some other things we’re seeing in the past couple years. Up to last year, certain schools have joined the common app. They used to have their own applications. And when a school joins the common app, they typically exponentially increase the number of applications they get. And the reason we’re bringing this up, even though it kind of has happened in the past, the trend is still staying with us. So Maryland, University of Washington, UT, Austin, they’re just getting more and more applications, because it used to be isolated to kids who use their own application well. But one of the reasons we’re pointing out here is because we have a lot of kids in New Jersey schools, and for the this reason, Rutgers has become a lot more selective. The number of applications for them increased from 43,000 to about 77,000 so obviously, if the number of applications go up, the acceptance rate is going to go down. So whereas Rutgers might have been considered a real likely school. For a lot of kids, we’re anticipating that it’s going to be more challenging to get in there this coming year. And

Lisa Bleich 10:06
the other thing that we saw with Rutgers is that, because last year was the first year, obviously, that this happened, that certain majors were harder to get into, like business was harder to get into some of the engineering majors. So just keep that in mind.

Abby Power 10:17
Yeah. Okay, so another sort of standalone trend is with the University of California schools that tend to be really popular with our clients. And in the last few years, it’s been very hard for out of state students to get into the more well known UC schools like Berkeley and and UCLA. You can see that the admit rates for out of state have been pretty consistent over the last few years, and you know, it’s pretty grim at eight per you know, 7.3% and 9.3% okay, but so there are some lesser known UC schools that are still super high quality, that offer more opportunity for admission for out of state students. So if your student is interested in one of those UC schools, it’s important to check them out. So we have UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, Irvine Davis, Merced Riverside Santa Cruz, and you can really see for Riverside Merced Davis and Irvine at the bottom in Santa Cruz, the acceptance rates for out of state students are really pretty compelling. So it’s nice to have an open mind, because even though UC schools are very different from each other, they share a lot of the same great characteristics. So if your student is interested in one of the more selective ones, it’s probably a good idea to consider the other ones. And the University of California school system has one single application, and then you submit, you have to pay to submit it to different schools, but all the work is done. Another sort of standalone trend is for early decision. We know that this is kind of top of mind for everyone as we’re getting to the early decision deadlines and last year and the year before, we’re really seeing that early decision worked well for possible schools, but not as much for reach schools, and especially for far reach schools. So you know, a lot of people say, Oh, you never know, but really, you kind of do know the reason to do early decision is to increase your chances of admissions at a school. Because early decision admissions rate can be twice, three times, sometimes even four times, as likely as regular decision. But the schools aren’t taking different kinds of kids. They’re taking kids with the same qualifications. They’re just taking more of them. And so it really doesn’t work to just kind of throw an application in for a school that you don’t meet the qualifications in terms of academics and rigor and test scores. And then another thing that we’re seeing that that we talk about a lot with clients, is there are a few schools that have early decision and early action, and a few years ago, it was really hard, you know, there wasn’t that much of a distinction between admission rates for early decision and early action. But now we’re seeing schools like Northeastern University of Chicago, Villanova, we’re really seeing them push the early decision over early action. I’d say the same with University of Virginia. That’s not on here for a couple of years. We saw that with Tulane, but they seem to have reversed course a little bit evened it back out. But if you see a school, or you’re interested in a school that has early decision and early action, it’s good to sort of understand the school’s sort of strategy around those two before you just decide, okay, I’m not ready for early decision. I’m just going to do early action. It’s the same thing. It’s generally not the same thing. The acceptance rates are different.

Stefanie Forman 13:42
So we’re going to talk about technology and how it is impacting decisions. Data Analytics increasingly drives decision so a lot of schools, they’re using machine learning to analyze students transcripts from a given high school and how that’s going to translate to their success their first year of college during that transition. It can predict anything from performance. Can make decisions and admissions, and it can also determine the likelihood of students so they can basically because the student going to matriculate, if we accept the student based on their academic profile, the stool the school that they come from, the income of the family, so all these different deterrents, and then also student engagement. It’s tracked beyond campus visits. So we talk a lot about demonstrated interest. What does that mean? And I think the first thing that we say, when we say demonstrated interest, people think like, oh, you show demonstrated interest in a school that means that you have to visit that campus. And we’ll talk about that and how that’s changing in the next few slides. But there’s so many other ways to track student engagement. It’s also not realistic for every student to be able to visit all of the campuses that they are interested in attending. So what else does that mean? That means that, I mean this is going to. Found a little bit big brother is always watching, but Right. Are you opening the emails from the schools? Are you attending virtual info sessions or virtual tours? Are you having email interactions with an admissions rep if a school is visiting, if a college is visiting, is doing a high school visit, are you sending a thank you note? Are you having some interaction with the person who came to your school and can also determine family income as well? And we’ll talk about that a little bit further, about why that can impact a decision that a college is going to give to an applicant. Yieldability. All right, so yield ability is a word that we continue to hear in college admissions, or yield rate or yield. So what is yield? It’s the percentage of students who enroll from the pool of accepted applicants. So like Abby mentioned earlier, that if you apply to a school early decision in a lot of cases, it’s gonna the acceptance rate’s gonna be a lot higher versus regular decision or early action. Why? Because colleges want to know you will come if they accept you. So that’s gonna look really good, right? If a college offers acceptances and early decision is binding, so all those students have to go, so the yield rate’s high, that’s gonna look really good alternatively, right? There’s always that story every year where a parent comes to us, or, you know, you hear some gossip, don’t engage in this gossip, but they’re like, Why did so and so not get into this school? It was a safety school for him or her, and it’s because, when we have all this technology and the data analytics schools are going to say, well, you know, this applicant, they’re so much higher, their profile is so much higher than the average student. You know what? They’re not going to come to this school. So that’s something else that colleges are thinking about. So again, safeties are no longer reliable. I don’t like using the word safety anymore, just because of yield rate and data analytics and all this information that colleges are using to make their decisions and a way to manage yields. For some of these schools are wait lists. So admission cycles are getting prolonged, with schools actively using wait lists to manage enrollment. So and also, I do want to say that weightless trends, they change every year. So I think this past year, we saw, for the most part, that it wasn’t the longest waiting game that some of our students got in off wait lists pretty early on in May and June. And the previous year, we saw some students getting in as late as August. So again, so schools can use this wait list to say, like, oh, you know what, let’s see how everything shakes out. And if they don’t really predict their yields for that year, they can go to the wait list. So a school can have a 16% acceptance rate of off the wait list one year and it could be close to zero over the next year. So those can really train change year to year. So how do colleges predict yield? I think Lisa mentioned this a little bit ago, that we were at a conference, and someone from WashU admissions was talking about this. So he mentioned that colleges considered yield rates of different groupings of student in aggregate. So some of these groups we have geography, so maybe the closer they live, the more likely they will enroll into that college. So that’s private universities, but that’s also Right, that makes sense. With public universities, they take such a large amount of students from that state campus visits more likely to enroll. But colleges don’t always see this data point anymore. So I was talking earlier about demonstrated interest. A great way to show demonstrated interest is visiting the college. But a lot of schools don’t consider demonstrated interest anymore. So this is kind of a moot point. Plenty of colleges still do, but again, a lot of colleges do not consider demonstrated interest anymore, and that list is growing, so they won’t see this data point anymore. Financial Aid stronger the financial aid offer, the more likely to attend. So that makes sense. And then all different application components, so the stronger the different components are, the less likely to enroll, because they will have many other offers. So that goes back to our point, why safeties and like these aren’t really a thing, because a lot of colleges are predicting and making these assumptions that these students who have really strong applications and who have profiles who are a bit higher than than that average, that they’re not going to attend the school if they get in. And so another thing, another way to manage yield rate is to expect alternate enrollment options. So Summer Start. So I live in Westfield, where Lisa lives in New Jersey and Penn State’s a super popular school, and it’s gotten more competitive. So one thing that we recommend to students in. This is a real dream school of yours. You really want to go, you can check off that you are interested in Summer Start that will increase your chances of getting in. There’s spring starts first year, semester abroad, guaranteed transfers. All different schools have these different options for students, and a lot of they’re also really great opportunity. So if this is a dream school of yours, or a school that you think you’re really successful in at first, there’s that like shock or disappointment, there’s so much you can do at the during that first semester or semester abroad, colleges are looking to grow class sizes and increase enrollment in other campuses. So for example, Northeastern a lot of our students will get, they’ll actually get scholarships with this, but it will be some type of global scholarship, because they have a campus in London, they also have a campus in Oakland, California, so they’ll encourage that. NYU has campuses in Shanghai and Abu Dhabi, and also locations, like 13 other locations, but those are main campuses. Penn State, the other campuses not as popular as the main campus, so they’re really looking to grow those class sizes there. And then again, if you’re open to starting at different terms, you’re going to have some really great options at other schools, Tulane springs, scholars, all these other schools, UC USC, NYU, Middlebury, Northeastern, which I spoke about earlier, university, Miami, a ton more. They all have alternate starts, spring starts, abroad starts. So there’s some really great options to be open to. Now we’re

Lisa Bleich 21:33
going to switch gears and we’re going to talk about the essays, because I think that’s where everybody’s all the seniors, that’s where they are right now. And one of the things that we’ve we’ve always known, but it’s become even more important, is that authentic essays are more important than ever. There’s so many different ways to make an inauthentic essay right now, so the better you can keep your kids essays. So ChatGPT and other tools, and I’m and I know none of the parents in this presentation. Have ever done that helping students? They’re just tools, but colleges can really tell the difference between the students voice and someone else’s voice. And that was really clear at that conference, was that, you know, these are some of the direct quotes after reading 15,000 applications, what stands out most is their essay. Some of the best essays have authentically shown who the students are, how they would mesh with the Tulane community. Do not over Edit. Let them shine through. Very easy to know what is written by a 17 or 18 year old. GW said it loses the voice in the application process. We were asking about red flags. You know, don’t think too much about the essays. We want to see students with a strong stance on public policy, we want to see their passion. The minute you lose your voice, you won’t be a good fit in any of our five schools. And then the last one at a select another selective nutrition said is it’s clear when a student has no idea of who we are within 10 seconds of reading the application, and it’s an automatic deferral. And that brings to the idea of demonstrated interest. Demonstrated interest has really been replaced with demonstrated fit. And I think that’s a really important distinction, because colleges want to understand that students know what they have to offer, what the students interests are, and how they’re going to contribute, and then what’s that overlap, and how do those things come together? And that’s where they can really show that they’ve done their research, that they understand what the school’s about, what the vibe is, what are the classes, was the research, the opportunities. We did a really good podcast on that, the why College, why major essay, and how to approach that. And of course, we’re obviously helping your students do that, but this is something that’s really important, is that’s how they can show that demonstrated fit, and it does have to be authentic if you’re trying to, we can always tell when a student is writing something that they don’t really understand or they don’t really truly believe, and so their essay just doesn’t, it doesn’t come through. I mean, some of the comments on some essay was like, I’m not buying this. I don’t see this connection so, if I don’t see the connection, yeah, for sure, the admissions are not going to see the connection. So that’s something that’s really important. The other thing that we’re seeing is that colleges are still seeking diversity, but they’re doing it differently post the Supreme Court decision. So this is the first year what that emission a full cycle. And so what they what we’ve seen is that, particularly among the most select schools, that there’s greater emphasis on first generation, low income students, or even called, you know, Bigley. A number of colleges about 32 have initiated, started in 2023 something called the small town and rural initiative. So the stars initiative, and so that’s another way for them to have diversity in a different way. The other thing that they’re looking at to get at diversity is that they’re looking for essays that determine lived experiences and experiences with different points of view. Those are increasingly important. And so the biggest recommendation that we are giving to students who are. Are not seniors, because seniors are you know, they’re writing their essays now, but younger is to make sure that you provide opportunities for your kids to have experiences with different, diverse points of view, because that’s become super important among colleges and questions about that. It’s still the first year, but there were a number of colleges that did distribute their data. You can see that in some instances, like with MIT, there was a big drop in terms of diversity on campus, in terms of black and Hispanic students, but on other campuses, like, you know, Emory pretty much stayed the same. Duke went up, Yale went up slightly. So I feel like there’s a mix and the way that some of the schools really try to increase that diversity was through what we were talking about before, focusing more on first generation and low income students.

Abby Power 25:49
Not a very fun topic, but if you’ve watched the news at all, everyone knows that it was a challenging year on campuses with a lot of a lot of campus strife post the conflict in Gaza. So with all the encampments and Islamophobia and anti semitism and the protests, the colleges really struggled. So one trend we’re seeing, or anyone that supplies to is that there is even more Jewish engagement overall on campus. So with culture, Jewish cultural organizations. So we’re seeing that reported all over the place. Colleges were definitely caught off guard last year, as we can all imagine, and many did not respond well, we’re hoping that they’re better prepared for what comes this year, although it’s hard to tell, but they definitely have formulated plans to bring groups together, and this addresses what Lisa was talking about. They’re trying to bring people together across differences and across differing opinions, and kind of encourage listening to each other to to alleviate the tensions. But as you can probably see from the news already, tensions are still high on some campuses, so Columbia, which was really in the news of time last year, has implemented this thing called listening tables, where they’re bringing groups of students and faculty together. This is a this is something you’ll likely hear, but many schools have talked about institutional neutrality, which means that they are taking the stand that they will not make any comments on political issues, they’re going to remain neutral about anything that could be viewed as being political. So I think you’re going to be hearing that a lot more dialog across differences, as Lisa managed, has really increased in importance for the schools as they’re trying to kind of get through this challenging time. And one of the ways that the colleges are trying to figure if the kids that they’re admitting are equipped to deal with people with different perspectives is they’re adding supplemental essay questions around that we’ll talk about that in a second. These questions are really tough for a lot of kids to answer, because some kids just haven’t had that experience, sometimes through no fault of their own. You know, they live in a place where it’s not an issue. So, you know, I think it’s really challenging. And if you do have younger students, I think it’s really important to expose them to what’s going on in the world, especially if they’re going to be applying to more selective colleges. Because really, the those schools are very concerned that kids have had some kind of exposure to dealing with conflict. So this year, we’re seeing a focus on these types of essay questions, and they’ll take a couple of different forms. How have you, and this is also to do with the fact with the Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action. So between the idea that the schools don’t know what race and ethnicity the applicant is, and all the conflict on campus, you know, they’re trying to get at how your diverse background has equipped you to be part of a diverse community. So how have you had meaningful dialogs and difficult conversations across differences? We’re seeing that question at so many schools. How will your lived experience contribute or impact the larger diverse campus community that’s a replacement for what’s your race or ethnicity, and how will you be a change agent for issues facing the world? A lot of schools are saying, What do you think the biggest issue in the world today is, and what have you done to work towards changing that issue? Or what will you do on our campus to help fix that issue? So again, if you have younger students, these are the things that the colleges seem to be focusing on. I think

Lisa Bleich 29:24
that the lived experience one, it does get at, you know, your background, your cultural experience, your racial experience, but it also just gets at your lived experience. So I think that there are lots of different ways that a student can bring diversity outside of those factors, and that’s something that we always try to get students to think about as well. About as well. Yes, good point. Lisa, thanks.

Abby Power 29:46
You know, just to illustrate that point, here are some essay questions that were new this year or adjusted from previous years. So Carlton, I mean, they get right at it. Think about someone you connect with, who’s different from you. What do you find? Most meaningful about your interactions with them. I mean, they’re just asking directly. Boston College kind of fixed a question that they’ve had for years about the Jesuit tradition of finding worthwhile conversation partners, some support our viewpoints, while others challenge them. Who fulfills this role in your life? They used to stop there, but now they’ve asked, please cite a specific conversation you had where this conversation partner challenged your perspective, or you challenged theirs. So how has the applicant worked across differences and heard different perspectives and process those perspectives? Columbia, which is again, has been in the news probably more than other any other school, they say a hallmark of their experience is being able to learn and thrive in an equitable and inclusive community with a wide range of perspectives, and then they want to know about an aspect of your perspective, viewpoint or lived experience that’s important to you, and describe how it shaped the way you would learn from and contribute to our Columbia’s to Columbia’s diverse and collaborative community, meaning, what are you going to bring to our diverse community that’s going to help everybody grow from different perspectives? And Duke asks, We believe there’s a benefit in sharing or questioning our beliefs or values. Who do you agree with on the big important things, or who do you have the most interesting disagreements with? What are you agreeing or disagreeing about? I mean, as you can imagine, these are very challenging questions for kids to answer if they’re just kind of going about their normal lives. So again, for your younger students, it’s a good idea to look for opportunities that give them exposure to differing viewpoints.

Stefanie Forman 31:28
Something else that we’re seeing another trend that interviews are in person interviews or virtual interviews, they’re being moved to videos or just overall, being eliminated. So fewer and fewer schools are actually offering in person interviews or again interviews via zoom. So here are some schools that require or have optional videos. And also, if the school has an optional video, we don’t really see it as optional, we’re really going to encourage the student to submit something. And these optional videos, they can just be a one to two minute, it depends on the school, but it might be a one to two minute opportunity to really say, share anything that you want to about yourself to the school. You can talk about a passion, a quirk, something that might not be present anywhere else in the application, or it might be more of a formal interview with specific questions to ask. So here are some schools, brown Wash U Chicago, and some of these schools have been doing it for a while, and some of these schools that they’re new to this year, Babb said, Bowdoin, Rochester, Duke, Northeastern, Wake Forest, Emory tufts, Case Western and Claremont. McKenna Cornell just dropped interviews that’s very new. And so did Case Western on this year, and then wash you didn’t drop so when they dropped interviews on this year, but they replaced it with something called chat, so informal chats that you can sign up for with current students at Wash U so this is something to look out for, because it’s and, oh, and we also encourage you and your students to look at each college website, because these changes are happening quickly. So just something to think about moving forward, another trend, something else that you might be seeing on the news a lot, is legacy. Legacy is in the hot seat. So recently, California passed legislation to mandate that college reports legacy numbers, but they did not take away funding. Interestingly enough, Virginia just spanned legacy. Think it started as a just it was mandated July 1, and Colorado did that a few years ago. I believe in 2021 but might need a fact checker for that, many other states have proposed legislation, but nothing has officially passed. New York State has been working on this. I believe Massachusetts, some others in the Northeast, and most public flagships do not consider legacy and missions. That makes sense also, just because of the sheer size of some of these universities, make it difficult for that to be a factor when they have so many applications coming in. If you look at this list, this is a list of the most recent colleges that have ended legacy admissions, and it’s really interesting because you have a school like Carlton right around 2000 and a school like Michigan, that’s about 50,000 so it’s really impacting all different schools and sizes. So Carlton, Loyola, Marymount, occidental University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Pitt, Virginia Tech, Wesleyan and Michigan. So a real interesting range of schools. So keep on the lookout for that.

Lisa Bleich 34:41
The final one is about financial aid. I sure you’ve heard in the news that last year it was a bit of a disaster with the Financial Aid. FAFSA is still in the process of making amends to what they did last year. But typically it’s due October 1. It will now be due December 1, by December. Hours they will have it available, so that may cause some delays for financial aid for early decision. However, many of the private schools will also require the CSS Profile, and so they will be able to, they should be able to get all the information that they need financially to be able to give a decision for early decision, if you’re living for financial aid. Thank you, CBMers for tuning in. To catch more episodes of College Bound Mentor, make sure to Follow or Subscribe to your favorite podcast platform and tell a fellow parent or student about this podcast. To learn more, visit CollegeBoundMentor.com Until next time, you got this!

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