Score At The Top Blog

On April 20^th, we posted a blog titled “The Coronavirus and College Admissions: Uncertainty and Trepidation: Part I,” in which we discussed the serious economic and related consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on college finances and admissions, and we followed that blog post with others on the same topic.

In this post, we’ll discuss the findings of McKinsey & Company, a broad-based provider of information to business and industry leaders, as presented in their May 21^st mckinsey.com article titled COVID-19 and US higher education enrollment: Preparing leaders for fall. While the article was aimed at higher education administrators, much of its information is also highly relevant for students, parents, and high school educators and counselors.

Topics: College Admission, College Counseling, College Planning

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In several recent blogs, we enumerated the effects of the Coronavirus on colleges and applicants. This blog will expand and summarize our findings.

Application deadline and decision dates: Despite the pandemic, most colleges are not changing their application deadline and decision dates for next year, at least at present, and the “at present” is an important proviso.

Topics: College Admission, College Application, College Counseling, College Planning

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It’s important for you to stay active, focused, and especially resilient during your time at home. The more resilient you are and the more you seek out and take advantage of opportunities to do interesting things, the more you’ll be enhancing your life, adding to your potential for admission to your top-choice colleges. With that in mind, we’ve created a spreadsheet of ideas for you – one that provides a broad spectrum of activities, many of which sound like downright fun 

Topics: College Admission, College Counseling, Extracurricular Activities

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“Extracurricular activities? How?” you might well ask. Social distancing has blown apart extracurricular activities as we once knew them — and a return to the old “normal” any time soon seems unlikely.

Topics: College Admission, College Application, College Counseling, College Planning, College Tips

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High school students applying to college may have gone wide-eyed at the news that some of the colleges they are strongly considering have gone "test optional" – meaning that ACT and SAT scores are not required. While that’s true, it’s not the same as saying that ACT and SAT scores don’t matter. In fact, ACT and SAT scores will be considered if submitted.

Topics: College Admission, College Counseling, College Planning, Going to College, College Tips

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Topics: College Admission, College Counseling, FSU, UCF, Going to College, Florida State Universities, College Tips

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In an interview posted on Kusi.com, under the title “Navigating college admissions amid Coronavirus pandemic,” Robert Massa, who teaches about higher education at the University of Southern California and is a former admissions dean from Johns Hopkins University and Dickinson College, offered these thoughts, among others, on how the COVID-19 pandemic could affect a student’s quest to attend the school of their choice.

Topics: College Admission, Test-Prep, College Counseling, College Planning, Coronavirus

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It isn’t all bad news: We’ll get through this current crisis, and the sun will still come up tomorrow – and the next day, and the next – but it’s very serious news right now, and the landscapes illuminated by those sunrises are certain to be different from those we’ve known. What follows are some ways in which colleges, students, and their parents will be affected by past, present, and likely future.

Topics: College Admission, College Application, Financial Aid, Scholarship

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The College Board just postponed the June SAT, and also announced that it will offer one test every month from August to December, and that it will increase testing capacity for those tests dates. Priority registration will be offered to juniors who don’t yet have an SAT score and for those who previously registered for the June administration. It will also offer school-day testing in the fall and likely explore a test-at-home option similar to the upcoming AP exams.

Topics: Study Tips, ACT, College Admission, College Counseling, College Planning, SAT, Test Optional

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The Coronavirus has affected almost everything – including college admissions (see here for an expansive view). The recent changes have been dizzying.

In the last two weeks, many colleges, some of them highly selective, have made the SAT/ACT test-optional for applicants – typically as a short-term trial (see below) – with Covid-19 being the proximate cause. For those colleges, waiving their test score requirement will go into effect for the 2020–21 admission cycle and will be evaluated in 2021 (or 2023 for a few) after the close of that cycle in order to determine whether to make the policy ongoing. Here’s our most recent listing of those schools and what they’ve reported about the duration of the change (in years):

Topics: College Admission, ACT/SAT, Educational-Consulting, Test Optional

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